id stringlengths 32 32 | url stringlengths 31 1.58k | title stringlengths 0 1.02k | contents stringlengths 92 1.17M |
|---|---|---|---|
66fbfe0bf6a69227bea228a14d2ad800 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-09-oe-block9-story.html | Babies, the old-fashioned way | Babies, the old-fashioned way
You’d think the healthcare establishment would have bigger fish to fry than Ricki Lake. (The 47 million uninsured, maybe?) But Lake’s recent documentary, “The Business of Being Born,” which includes footage of her own delivery of her second child at home, was on the agenda at the American Medical Assn.'s annual meeting in mid-June. Lake was personally name-checked in a “Resolution on Home Deliveries” introduced by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: “Whereas, there has been much attention in the media by celebrities having home deliveries, with recent ‘Today Show’ headings such as ‘Ricki Lake takes on baby birthing industry.’ ” The AMA ultimately passed the resolution without the Lake citation, but not before the Hollywood media got wind of it and, overnight, home birth was thrust into the mainstream light.
It’s about time.
Last year I flew to Britain to be with a good friend for the birth of her first child. She’s American but married into Britain’s National Health Service, lucky duck. The differences in the prenatal care she got there were striking. First and foremost, she never saw a doctor. As a healthy woman with a normal pregnancy, she saw midwives. And one of their first questions to her was, “So, would you like to give birth in the hospital maternity ward or at home?”
Planning a home birth with a midwife may sound old-fashioned -- maybe you think it sounds crazy -- but a solid body of research shows that for healthy women who seek a normal, nonsurgical birth, there are several benefits. At home, a woman can get one-on-one care and monitoring from a midwife trained to support the normal labor process. The mother-to-be is free to move about, eat and drink, sit in a birth tub -- Britain’s national health guidelines call water the safest, most effective form of pain relief. A woman will be helped to give birth in positions that are effective and protective: sitting, squatting, on hands and knees, even standing.
The physiological birth process is automatic: hormones fire, the cervix gradually opens, the uterus contracts, the baby descends, muscles engage. An optimal birth, one in which mother and child emerge as healthy as can be, is one that begins spontaneously, progresses on its own and concludes with the least amount of intervention necessary.
But hospital maternity care in the U.S. is typically not supportive of this process. More than half of women are induced into labor, or it is sped up with artificial hormones; the vast majority of women labor and push in the desultory flat-on-the-back or leaning-back position; and (perhaps not surprisingly) nearly one-third of women end up giving birth through major surgery, the caesarean section.
This has led to an epidemic of pre-term births in the United States. A 2006 survey showed that the majority of babies are now born before the spontaneous onset of labor, which leaves them more prone to breathing and feeding difficulties. Caesareans are also contributing to a rising maternal death rate, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year.
Which is why some women, such as those in the film Lake produced, choose to give birth somewhere other than a hospital. Their choice is backed by sound science. Studies of “low-risk” women in North America planning out-of-hospital births with midwives have found that 95% give birth vaginally with hardly any medical intervention. The largest and most rigorous study to date, published in the British Medical Journal, found that in North America, babies were born at home just as safely as in the hospital.
Organized medicine can’t believe this. Dismissing the research evidence, the AMA resolution states that “the safest setting for labor, delivery and the immediate postpartum period is in the hospital” or an accredited birth center. In its own statement earlier this year, the American College of Ob/Gyns went even further, implying that women who choose home birth are selfish and irresponsible: “choosing to deliver a baby at home ... is to place the process of giving birth over the goal of having a healthy baby.”
Compare that to this information in Britain’s NHS-issued handout my friend was given at her first prenatal appointment: “There is no evidence to support the common assertion that home birth is a less safe option for women experiencing uncomplicated pregnancies.” In a joint statement last year, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal College of Midwives said, “There is no reason why home birth should not be offered to women at low risk of complications, and it may confer considerable benefits for them and their families.”
The AMA’s statement calls for legislation that could be used against women who choose home birth, possibly resulting in criminal child-abuse or neglect charges. The group says this is about safety, but with no credible research to back up its claim, this argument falls flat. Women are simply caught in a turf war over the maternity market, and it would appear that the physicians’ groups are perfectly willing to trample the modern medical ethic of patient autonomy -- grounded in our legal rights to self-determination, to liberty and to privacy -- in their grab for control.
If these groups were truly making maternal and child health a priority, they’d be reforming standard maternity care, not strong-arming women into it.
|
d986d250adaca953655cf205f3888d69 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-09-sci-prostate9-story.html | Prostate technique questioned | Prostate technique questioned
Medical castration to treat localized prostate tumors does not prolong survival and its side effects far outweigh any potential benefit for most patients, researchers reported today.
The technique, which involves using drugs to block the body’s production of the male hormone androgen, is a powerful tool when used in conjunction with surgery or radiation for treating aggressive prostate tumors.
Many oncologists had assumed this treatment could be of benefit with localized tumors as well, and the use of the drugs surged a decade ago, with an estimated 30% to 50% of such patients receiving the therapy.
But its use has fallen in the last five years because of changes in Medicare’s reimbursement policy, and some experts think this new finding might spell the end for the treatment.
“This study suggests that physicians who recommend hormonal therapy for localized tumors are not doing their patients any favors,” said Dr. Howard M. Sandler, a radiation oncologist at the University of Michigan Medical School who spoke as a representative of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
“I hope that it does change clinical practice and that fewer men do receive primary hormonal therapy,” he said.
Added Dr. Matthew B. Rettig, an oncologist at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, “There is no clear data that has ever shown that patients with early-stage disease benefit from primary hormone therapy . . . and this is further evidence to support that.”
One in six American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime. An estimated 186,000 new cases will occur this year, with nearly 29,000 deaths.
An estimated 85% of newly diagnosed prostate tumors are localized, so-called stages T-1 and T-2. Guidelines promulgated by national organizations recommend one of three approaches for treating such tumors: surgical removal, radiation therapy or expectant management, better known as watchful waiting.
The rationale for watchful waiting is that most of these tumors grow so slowly that an elderly patient is likely to die of something else before the tumor kills him.
“A lot of men think radiation and surgery are too aggressive, but observation sounds like you are not doing enough,” said Dr. Siu-Long Yao of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, who led the new study. Hormonal therapy, which sounds rather benign, “has become the second-most popular treatment after surgery, surpassing radiation,” he said.
But it has dramatic side effects, including a 10% to 50% increase in the risk of fractures, diabetes, heart disease and sudden cardiac death; a 500% increase in hot flashes; and a 267% increase in impotence. It also has adverse effects on fats and cholesterol and causes enlargement of the breasts.
It is also expensive. Treatment with such drugs as leuprolide (Lupron, Viadur, Eligard), goserelin (Zoladex) and triptorelin (Trelstar) peaked at more than $1.23 billion in the U.S. in 2003, the second-highest Medicare Part B drug expenditure that year.
Yao and his colleagues used national databases to collect information on 19,271 men -- who had a median age of 77 and were diagnosed with localized prostate cancer between 1992 and 2002 -- and followed them through 2006. About 41% received only primary hormonal therapy and the rest were merely observed.
The team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. that the 10-year death rate from prostate cancer was 17.4% in those receiving no therapy, compared with 19.9% in those receiving hormonal therapy. There was, however, no difference between the two groups in deaths from all causes.
There was a slight benefit from the therapy for men who had what are known as poorly differentiated tumors, which are generally more aggressive. About 40.2% of the men with those tumors who received hormonal therapy died of prostate cancer, compared with 45.7% of those who received no treatment. No effect on deaths from all causes was seen, however.
Earlier studies seemed to show that the less advanced a tumor was at diagnosis, the less benefit there was from hormone therapy.
The therapy started to fall out of favor after the Medicare Act of 2003 reduced reimbursement for it by about 50%, according to a recent study by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic.
--
thomas.maugh@latimes.com
|
04ae2f3c5a51f544930ac8bfd82f59ac | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-10-fi-iphone10-story.html | Store aims to plug people into iPhones | Store aims to plug people into iPhones
When the new iPhone goes on sale Friday, Apple Inc. will also launch an online software store peddling a potpourri of programs such as games, pedometers, tip calculators and language translators for the device. The company hopes that by enabling buyers to transform the phone into a personalized electronic Swiss Army knife of sorts, it can boost sales.
“We live in a post-modern world of fragmented preferences,” said Shiv Bakhshi, an analyst at research firm IDC. “The more applications out there, the more people will find the iPhone useful.”
The store is another way that Apple is changing the mobile market since the first version of the iPhone went on sale in June 2007.
The new App Store will be the only retailer of Apple-sanctioned software programs for the iPhone family and the iPod Touch. It’s an approach that breaks from tradition; typically the manufacturer of the phone doesn’t sell software, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group.
The updated phone is the Cupertino, Calif., company’s biggest push yet to expand its share in the cellphone market and turn the iPhone from a luxury item to a mass market hit. With the new iPhone 3G, the iPhone could regain some of the momentum it lost in recent months. And that could be helped by the launch of the App Store, which could open its virtual doors as early as today to accommodate early iPhone buyers in places such as New Zealand.
But there’s a risk in opening up the iPhone to a plethora of outside programs, Enderle said. For example, he said, will the iPhone be able to handle various new programs that zap its power? And, he added, will the programs hurt the iPhone’s reliability and performance?
For current iPhone owners, the App Store will appear as an icon on their phone screen as part of a free software update. (Owners of the iPod Touch can update their software for $9.99.)
By clicking on the icon, a customer will see categories such as “lifestyle,” “entertainment” and “productivity.” Apple has already demonstrated some of the programs at an Apple developers’ conference in June, such as a virtual musical keyboard activated by touching the screen.
Other programs expected include medical references, an EBay auction tracker and a home automation remote controller. If a customer wants to make a purchase, the program is wirelessly downloaded to the iPhone and a credit card is billed.
CareerBuilder.com, the online jobs site, has developed a program for the iPhone called Jobs that enables iPhone users to access CareerBuilder’s database on the go, with results given by the users’ location.
“We think job searching can be an impulse thing,” said Marcelino Alvarez, an executive interactive producer at Wieden & Kennedy, an advertising agency that worked with CareerBuilder. A user on vacation in Honolulu, for example, can check out job openings in Hawaii.
Lexcycle, a firm in Portland, Ore., created a product called Stanza, which enables a user to read electronic books -- mostly classics -- for free.
Apple initially resisted allowing outside developers to have access to the iPhone’s core programming information but changed its position this year.
Since March, more than 200,000 copies of the developer kit have been downloaded. Some have paid $99 to register as an official iPhone developer and go through a certification process to make it into the App Store. The developer sets the price, Apple processes the sales and keeps 30% of the revenue.
For software developers, the payoff is unknown. But it has a potential to be huge, said Luc Vandal, a software developer in Montreal. He is selling two programs at the App Store: Linguo, a $2.99 application that translates sentences into 17 languages; and Steps, which for $1.99 turns the iPhone into a pedometer by using the device’s motion sensor.
“There’s only one place that millions of users can get iPhone applications,” he said. “I would be surprised if it’s not a good success.”
--
michelle.quinn@latimes.com
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
The iPhone and Apple
As soon as today, Apple will launch its App Store, a virtual shop for programs for iPhones and the iPod Touch. Here are some of the programs expected to be available when the doors open:
G-Park
Use the iPhone to remember where you parked the car and map how to return to it.
Price: 99 cents
Fright
An updated selection of scary videos to show friends.
Price: 99 cents
Band
Turns the iPhone’s touch screen into a virtual musical keyboard
Price: unknown
Linguo
Type in a sentence and hear how it would sound in one of 17 languages.
Price: $2.99
Sources: Apple and software developers
|
2bc46ebc241d19fa901e469d28329984 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-10-me-algebra10-story.html | Calculating a new age for algebra | Calculating a new age for algebra
Every California eighth-grader will be tested in algebra -- ready or not -- under a policy approved Wednesday that could make the state the first in the nation to require an upper-level math class before high school.
The state Board of Education voted for the change under pressure from federal officials and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who broke months of silence by siding this week with advocates who want algebra to become mandatory in eighth grade within three years.
Proponents say the new policy will push school districts to ensure that eighth-graders are ready for the demands of algebra. Critics say the anticipated three-year time frame is unrealistic. The new mandate, they contend, overlooks the real need to help school districts better prepare students.
Lucila Zetino, a summer school student at Monroe High in North Hills, typifies both the state’s aspirations and its failings.
Zetino, 18, was part of an early push to get all students into Algebra 1 in eighth grade. Zetino flunked the class and has been flunking it ever since. Now she is attending classes after her senior year -- giving it another try, determined to earn her high school diploma.
Zetino’s struggles demonstrate the depth of the challenge. Her math slide began at Millikan Middle School in seventh grade, she said. Then came eighth-grade algebra, when her teacher quit and was followed by several long-term substitutes. “I don’t think I was prepared. I think they just, like, pushed me into algebra. . . . Math was like a different language I never understood. I felt hopeless.”
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, more than half of eighth-graders, along with more than 2,000 seventh-graders, took algebra in 2007. But only 21% of eighth-graders tested proficient. About two-thirds of those who failed the class passed on their second try.
At many low-performing campuses, the picture is more dire. At Gompers Middle School in Watts, for example, only 30% of eighth-graders took algebra, and only 15% of those scored proficient. Moreover, only 1% of students in general math, an easier course, tested proficient.
The state’s curriculum for eighth grade has long included algebra, and schools get penalized on their own report card, the state’s Academic Performance Index, for every eighth-grader who doesn’t take the algebra test.
The next step, the state board decided, was to force all students to take the test -- and thus an algebra course -- at a younger age. Under the likely terms of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, the state would have three years to make the transition.
State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell had proposed instead a second, easier, algebra test as a fallback for some students. That test, already in development, would have been ready in spring 2010.
Requiring all students to take algebra “will hurt kids and contribute to other problems; I pray that I’m wrong,” O’Connell said after the vote. “Absent additional resources, we’re setting our students up for failure.”
Statewide, only 24% of students, regardless of age or grade, scored proficient in algebra in 2007.
In eighth grade, 38% tested proficient -- a number virtually unchanged since 2003. But more students are taking algebra: less than a third in 2002 and more than half today.
For months, O’Connell’s two-test option had considerable support. The governor’s office raised no objection, and state board President Ted Mitchell co-signed a letter to federal officials with O’Connell.
“Board members were uncomfortable with a second test that would create the appearance of mastery of algebra but not actually do that,” said Mitchell, explaining why he and other board members altered their positions.
Federal officials have complained that California established algebra as eighth-grade material but didn’t require students to take the algebra test. Instead, they could take the more basic general math test. The requirements and the test have to match under federal law.
Washington couldn’t tell California exactly how to comply with the law, said Holly Kuzmich, deputy chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. “But education policy is leading us to getting kids access to algebra by the eighth grade, and we know that’s what leads kids to jobs and college.”
She added: “We are delighted at the governor’s push for high standards.” Kuzmich said she knew of no other state that required algebra as early as eighth grade.
For months, advocates lobbied against O’Connell’s approach.
“This $1-million proposed ‘algebra light’ alternative test will be a disaster for California kids and teachers,” said Jim Lanich, president of California Business for Education Excellence, before the vote. “It will be a watering down of academic standards. . . . It will institutionalize a lower expectation for minority and low-income kids.”
There also were critics from a nearly opposite perspective who wanted a test that matched the state’s new “algebra readiness” curriculum. Some of these advocates wanted the state to wait out the Bush administration.
For them, even the easier algebra test was “meaningless and cruel” for students who, because they weren’t ready, hadn’t taken algebra, testified Charles T. Munger Jr., a math curriculum expert.
The state board postponed the decision in May and also punted in June, but had to act this month to avoid possible sanctions.
The federal government could have stripped away several million dollars that the state uses to oversee programs for students from low-income families. The state also could have lost flexibility for developing reforms.
The approved solution creates another problem. If 95% of eighth-graders don’t take the algebra test, a school could be judged as “failing” under federal rules and subject to penalties.
Schwarzenegger stayed out of the debate until 24 hours before trustees were to act.
“We must set our goals higher,” the governor wrote to the state board. “Algebra is the gateway to critical thinking, pivotal for success in science, engineering and technology.”
To graduate, California students must pass two years of high school math, including Algebra 1, and the high school exit exam. To enter the California State or University of California systems, students need a C or better in three years of high school math, which usually takes them at least through Algebra 1, Geometry and Algebra 2.
In L.A. Unified, as in other urban districts, students will need more help before eighth grade. The district has had trouble attracting and keeping qualified and effective math teachers.
Its teaching corps needs training in imparting the concepts of math as well as skills that will lead to algebra, said Jeanne Ramos, director of secondary mathematics.
Zetino’s current teacher, Brian York, is taking part in a new effort among schools in his area to coordinate early math instruction.
“You can’t just say, ‘Eighth-graders, you’re taking algebra,’ ” York said.
Despite clear explanations, good humor and words of encouragement, York can expect only about 50% of his class of algebra repeaters -- some of whom barely speak English -- to make it through, based on past experience. But he’s going to keep trying.
So is Zetino, who wants to be a cosmetologist or find a job in the arts.
“I really want to graduate from high school,” she said. “I’m hoping I do good in this class.”
--
howard.blume@latimes.com
|
0b6054b2a5a5e99786c74b4459128497 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-10-sci-moon10-story.html | Rock analysis turns up evidence of moon water | Rock analysis turns up evidence of moon water
A new analysis of volcanic glass recovered from the moon decades ago found the rocks contain traces of the constituents of water, challenging a long-held notion that the moon is perfectly dry.
Using a technique that was not available when Apollo astronauts collected the minuscule rocks in the early 1970s, scientists were able to detect telltale signs of water trapped inside the pebble-like glass. Their discovery suggests that water was present deep within the moon when the pebbles were formed during violent lunar eruptions 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion years ago.
The analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature, may cause scientists to rethink theories on how the moon was formed.
“The water that these guys have discovered is a scientific gold mine for us to figure out the history of . . . the moon,” said Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who was not involved in the research.
The pebbles, about the size of a period on this page, are made of magnesium-rich green volcanic glass and iron-rich orange glass that solidified moments after eruption. They were recovered from the moon’s equatorial region during the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 space missions.
Earlier studies of the pebbles detected the presence of sulfur and carbon, indicating the volcanic glass was formed in a fiery eruption. For the latest study, scientists measured the composition of the diminutive rocks molecule by molecule, using a technique 10 times more sensitive than that used in previous work.
They didn’t search for water directly because when water is incorporated into any rock it naturally separates into smaller components. So researchers looked for one of those components, hydrogen, which would signal the presence of water.
Testing the interior of the pebbles, scientists found trace amounts of hydrogen along with chlorine and fluorine, which, like carbon and sulfur, are found in rocks from explosive eruptions. The discovery of hydrogen alongside the other elements suggests that the water came from inside the moon and not from an external source, such as a comet.
Based on the amount of hydrogen found in the pebbles, scientists estimated the lunar magma contained 260 to 745 parts per million of water, similar to what is found in the Earth’s upper mantle.
“Up until our study, there was really no evidence for [indigenous] water on the moon,” said Erik Hauri, a staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and an author of the report.
The finding throws at least a little water on the currently favored hypothesis concerning the moon’s origin. Many scientists think the moon was formed when a large proto-planet slammed into Earth, sending into space molten debris that eventually became the moon. Scientists have long assumed that the heat created by the collision would have vaporized any water present and that the small gravitational field of the primeval moon would not have been strong enough to recapture the vapor.
Researchers said they eliminated solar wind as a possible source of the hydrogen found in the tiny rocks. Solar wind is a stream of charged particles, including hydrogen ions, that continually bombard the surface of the moon. If hydrogen from the solar wind seeped into the pebbles, it could give a false reading of water.
But in such a case, “you would expect high concentration on the surface which decreased toward the core,” said Alberto Saal, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown University and lead author of the report. When Saal and colleagues analyzed a glass bead from its edge to its core, “what we found was exactly the opposite,” he said.
Some scientists think water may exist elsewhere on the moon. Ice may have been deposited by external sources such as comets, Hauri said. NASA plans to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter this year to map the moon and look for surface water that could be hidden in permanently shadowed areas near the poles.
--
wendy.hansen@latimes.com
|
bf9a07ad6ea7c64c5c37d6ecb8411068 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-fg-sudan11-story.html | Sudan genocide case sought | Sudan genocide case sought
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor will ask judges to issue an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan next week on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, diplomats and an official close to the case said Thursday.
The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, issued a statement Thursday announcing that he would submit evidence of crimes committed against civilians in Sudan’s western region of Darfur over the last five years, though he will wait until Monday at the pretrial chamber to name names.
If the judges issue an arrest warrant, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir would be the first sitting or former head of state to be charged with genocide by the 6-year-old international court in The Hague.
The prosecutor may seek the arrests of other senior Sudanese officials later, said the official close to the case, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the proceedings.
U.N. officials are concerned that the request for warrants could cause the Sudanese government to retaliate against peacekeepers and aid workers in Darfur -- or even eject them. But they have not asked Moreno-Ocampo to soft-pedal his charges against Bashir, said U.N. and court officials.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had tried to keep the court’s quest for justice in Darfur on the margins of negotiations with Sudanese officials, concerned that it would disrupt the deployment of additional troops for a United Nations-led peacekeeping force. But Thursday, he told reporters that “in principle, I believe that peace and justice should go hand in hand.”
The Sudanese envoy to the world body fueled fears that a request for Bashir’s arrest would jeopardize U.N. operations in Darfur. “All options are open,” Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem said. “It is playing with fire.”
Darfur has been racked by violence since a rebellion against the central government began in 2003. At least 200,000 people have been killed, according to most estimates, most of the deaths blamed on militias that critics charge were unleashed by the government to put down the insurrection.
The U.N. in January took command of an African Union peacekeeping effort in Darfur. The force is expected to eventually consist of 26,000 troops, though it has grown only slightly from the original 9,000 African troops because of delays in deployment and supplies.
U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers, who have faced repeated attacks from gunmen, began retrenching in Darfur after an attack Tuesday on U.N. forces that killed seven and injured 20. The Sudanese ambassador blamed the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Unity rebel group, but U.N. officials say they suspect that the Sudanese army was linked to the attack.
Humanitarian groups have been withdrawing staff members from remote areas and preparing for demonstrations or attacks in response to Moreno-Ocampo’s actions Monday.
“We take the situation quite seriously,” said a humanitarian coordinator for Darfur, especially because nongovernmental organizations and the U.N. have faced frequent violence over the last six months. The coordinator requested anonymity for security reasons.
Sudan probably will not turn over its leader if a warrant is issued. Sudan has ignored arrest warrants issued last year for an official and a rebel leader, and even promoted the official, Ahmed Haroun, to oversee humanitarian affairs for the people he is charged with helping displace in Darfur.
“I swear to God, I swear to God, I swear to God, we will not hand over any Sudanese to the International Court,” Bashir recently told a gathering of Sudan’s Popular Defense Forces.
Moreno-Ocampo’s strategy is risky, human rights groups and diplomats say. Besides potentially alienating the head of state who controls U.N. access to Darfur and triggering a retaliation, proving the crime of genocide is very difficult, said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch.
Moreno-Ocampo will have to show that the systematic killings in Darfur were ordered by Bashir with the specific intent to eliminate the Massalit, Zaghawa and Fur groups on the basis of their ethnicity.
The government claims that the conflict was triggered by rebels from those groups, and that the government and allied militias responded in self-defense. Any casualties occurred in the course of a counter- insurgency operation, and in intertribal warfare, officials have repeatedly said.
“If genocide is the charge that the ICC prosecutor is pursuing, he has set himself a high hurdle to get over,” Dicker said.
Though warrants against Bashir would be a first for the ICC, its prosecutor would be following a path blazed by other tribunals.
A special court backed by the U.N. indicted Liberian President Charles Taylor in 2003 for atrocities committed during a 10-year civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. His trial is underway.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was indicted by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1999, while he was still in office, and was turned over to authorities after he was overthrown in a popular uprising. He died of heart failure in 2006 during his trial in The Hague.
Moreno-Ocampo, an Argentine who helped put his country’s former ruling junta behind bars, has been called quixotic in his quest for justice while at the International Criminal Court. He has opened investigations of violent campaigns in the Democratic Republic of Congo, northern Uganda, Darfur and the Central African Republic. The court has issued 12 arrest warrants.
Moreno-Ocampo will be making his new far-reaching case against a backdrop of criticism after the recent collapse of his prosecution of a Congolese warlord accused of using child soldiers. The trial chamber suspended the trial of Thomas Lubanga after the court ruled that the prosecutor withheld evidence that could help the defense.
The Darfur case could help shore up Moreno-Ocampo’s credibility, or undermine it.
“Charging a sitting head of state is going to generate a lot of commentary and controversy,” Dicker said. “But given what has happened in Darfur since 2003, it is hardly a surprise that the trail of evidence leads to the head of state. It is an important step toward the end of impunity.”
--
maggie.farley@latimes.com
|
fb22cf5473432135e99e44112038bff9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-fi-sag11-story.html | SAG rebuffs studios’ contract proposal | SAG rebuffs studios’ contract proposal
The major Hollywood studios called on the Screen Actors Guild on Thursday to put their final contract offer to a membership vote, a proposal the union rejected, continuing the stalemate in negotiations.
As expected, the largest actors union did not accept what the studios called their final offer, which they said contained more than $250 million in improvements over the previous three-year contract, which expired June 30.
But SAG maintains that the proposed contract doesn’t meet its key goals, including higher payments for actors from DVD sales and guarantees that all programs created for the Web will be covered under the contract. The guild made a counteroffer Thursday that adopted some of the studios’ proposals. The studios, however, rejected it.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, offered SAG an accord similar to one recently negotiated by the smaller actors union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, that SAG blasted as unacceptable.
Despite the guild’s costly campaign to persuade members of its sister union to reject the agreement, AFTRA members ratified the contract this week, putting more pressure on SAG to reach a deal and creating some hope in the industry that a strike is less likely.
Still, no quick resolution to the dispute is in sight. The parties have not decided when discussions will resume.
SAG leaders want to keep talks alive in the hopes of negotiating better terms. Insiders say SAG could also use the extra time to build support from members through an educational campaign similar to the one the guild led against the AFTRA agreement.
Studios are being careful to avoid any rash actions, such as imposing a lockout or enforcing contract terms, that might backfire and create support for SAG leaders. The longer that actors work without a contract, the thinking goes, the more pressure will mount on the guild’s leaders to conclude a deal.
The studios have said that the proposed wage and salary increases would be retroactive to July 1 if SAG ratified the agreement by Aug. 15. If not, there would be no back payments.
--
richard.verrier@latimes.com
|
4d66abd5dcf345146ea04bef4f33ecb3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-me-citizen11-story.html | Surge in new Latino citizens | Surge in new Latino citizens
The number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S. citizens swelled by nearly 50% last year amid a massive campaign by Spanish-language media and immigrant advocacy groups to help eligible residents apply for citizenship, according to a government report released Thursday.
Despite Mexicans’ historically low rates of naturalization, 122,000 attained citizenship in 2007, up from 84,000 the previous year, with California and Texas posting the largest gains. Salvadorans and Guatemalans also showed significant increases at a time when the overall number of naturalizations declined by 6%.
At the same time, the number of citizenship applications filed doubled to 1.4 million last year, the report by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics found.
The surge in naturalization of Mexicans, their largest year-to-year increase this decade, came amid pitched national debate over immigration reform. The report cited the campaign by Spanish-language media and community groups, along with a desire to apply before steep fee increases took effect, as two major reasons for the jump in naturalizations.
“Immigrants are tired of the tone and tenor of the immigration debate, which they feel is humiliating and does not recognize their contributions,” said Rosalind Gold of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’ Educational Fund in Los Angeles. “That climate has fueled their desire to have their voices heard.”
New citizens interviewed Thursday echoed those sentiments. Erika Lorena Rivera, 30, came to Los Angeles from Mexico at age 1, became eligible for naturalization a decade ago but decided to take the plunge -- along with four relatives -- just last October. Rivera, a supervisor for a Los Angeles hair accessory firm, said she was offended by what she perceived as growing anti-immigrant bias and was moved to apply for citizenship after seeing ads about it on TV.
“I became a citizen to have full rights and vote for a president for the first time,” said Rivera, adding that she and her family plan to vote for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
The increase in Latinos with the power to vote could affect the political landscape in November, analysts said. Louis DiSipio, a UC Irvine political science professor, said one of the biggest impacts could be in Florida, a key battleground state that posted 54,500 new citizens last year. Although the ethnic Cuban population there has dominated the Latino political landscape and tended to vote Republican, he said, more of the newer immigrants are coming from South America and trending Democratic. For the first time this decade, more Latinos were registered as Democrats than Republicans, 35% to 33% as of this spring, according to Gold.
Beyond November, the swelling Latino numbers nationwide will continue to recast the political landscape for local elections, DiSipio said. He said that growing Latino naturalizations in the late 1990s, thanks to a 1986 amnesty for illegal immigrants, helped California Democrats gain an 800,000-plus voter edge and that similar gains could occur with the newest increase.
Gold said that new Latino citizens have higher voting rates than longtime Mexican Americans and that their political allegiances are shallower. As a result, she said, their votes are still up for grabs for those elected officials willing to work hard to reach them. In addition, she said, the proportion of Latino voters identifying themselves as independents is growing.
Erica L. Bernal-Martinez, senior director of civic engagement for the association of Latino officials, said grass-roots organizations planned to continue their push to encourage naturalizations among the estimated 4 million to 5 million eligible Latinos. Mexicans have historically had low rates of naturalization -- 35% compared with 59% for all immigrants -- but that appears to be changing as media and community organizations pour unprecedented resources and energy into their civic engagement campaigns, Bernal-Martinez and Gold said.
More than 400 community organizations across the country, along with major Spanish-language media, have joined forces in a “Ya Es Hora” (It’s Time) campaign to help eligible voters become citizens and register to vote. The campaign plans to hold naturalization workshops in 10 cities Saturday.
“We think with this type of promotion and outreach, we can really rewrite this story of Latino naturalizations,” Gold said.
However, steep fee increases last July sharply reduced the overall monthly number of new applicants from August to December. Applications peaked at 457,000 in July, then plummeted to a monthly average of about 30,000 after the application fee increased to $675 from $400.
The new report found that California posted the largest gains in new citizens in 2007, from 153,000 the year before to 182,000; followed by Texas, from 38,000 to 53,000; and Illinois, from 30,000 to 39,000.
After Mexico, the largest number of new citizens came from India, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, South Korea and El Salvador.
The overall decrease in the number of naturalizations last year occurred after special congressional funding to process the backlog of citizenship applications ran out. But applications continued to soar in the Latino community because of the targeted citizenship campaigns, experts said.
Jorge-Mario Cabrera, an El Salvador native and Long Beach community activist, finally naturalized last year with his mother; he had been eligible since 1992. He said he had not become a citizen sooner because he wasn’t sure why it would matter and he still clung to his allegiances to his native land.
That changed a few years ago when the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would have criminalized illegal immigrants and those who aided them. Millions of immigrants and supporters poured into the streets to protest, and community organizations mobilized to urge people like Cabrera to naturalize, register to vote and make their voices heard.
Cabrera, 39, and his 73-year-old mother took the plunge.
“We felt there were millions of voices left unheard every year, so we decided our two votes were needed to make a difference,” he said.
--
teresa.watanabe@latimes.com
To view the complete citizenship report, visit https://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics/.
|
b4dbc3364f74cc90318d8def0139b579 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-na-divorce11-story.html | McCain’s broken marriage fractured other ties as well | McCain’s broken marriage fractured other ties as well
Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain and offered a significant -- but less than exuberant -- endorsement.
“Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed,” the Republican matriarch said in March. “Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party.” They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.
In a written statement, she described McCain as “a good friend for over 30 years.” But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain’s decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.
The Reagans rushed to help Carol, finding her a new home in Southern California with the family of Reagan aide Edwin Meese III and a series of political and White House jobs to ease her through that difficult time.
McCain, who is about to become the GOP nominee, has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record.
In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.
“I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow,” McCain wrote. “I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980.”
An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had “cohabited” until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.
Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.
Until McCain filed for divorce, the Reagans and their inner circle assumed he was happily married, and they were stunned to learn otherwise, according to several close aides.
“Everybody was upset with him,” recalled Nancy Reynolds, a top aide to the former president who introduced him to McCain.
By contrast, some of McCain’s friends, including the Senate aide who was at the reception where McCain first met Hensley, believed he was separated at that time.
Albert “Pete” Lakeland, the aide who was with McCain at the reception in Hawaii in April 1979, said of the introduction to Hensley: “It was like he was struck by Cupid’s arrow. He was just enormously smitten.”
As the pair began dating, Lakeland allowed them to spend a weekend together at his summer home in Maryland, he said.
The senator has acknowledged that he behaved badly, and that his swift divorce and remarriage brought a cold shoulder from the Reagans that lasted years.
In a recent interview, McCain said he did not want to revisit the breakup of his marriage. “I have a very good relationship with my first wife,” he said. In his autobiography, he wrote: “My marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was entirely mine.”
Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said: “Of course we will not comment on the breakup of the senator’s first marriage, other than to note that the senator has always taken responsibility for it.”
Carol McCain did not respond to a request for an interview.
About all she has ever said is this to McCain biographer Robert Timberg: “John was turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again.”
After leaving the White House, Carol McCain worked in press relations in the Washington area, retiring about five years ago after working for the National Soft Drink Assn. She now lives in Virginia Beach, Va., and has not remarried. She has two sons from an earlier marriage: Andy, a vice president at Cindy McCain’s beer distributorship, and Doug, a commercial airline pilot.
Carol and John McCain had a daughter, Sidney, who works in the music industry in Canada.
John McCain, who calls himself “a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution,” said in his memoir: “My divorce from Carol, whom the Reagans loved, caused a change in our relationship. Nancy . . . was particularly upset with me and treated me on the few occasions we encountered each other after I came to Congress with a cool correctness that made her displeasure clear.
“I had, of course, deserved the change in our relationship.”
Joanne Drake, spokeswoman for Nancy Reagan, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
--
The first Mrs. McCain
McCain met Carol Shepp through a mutual friend and fellow midshipman at the Naval Academy, from which McCain graduated in 1958. That friend, Alasdair E. Swanson, married her in 1958. In the early 1960s, the Swansons lived in Pensacola, Fla., where Alasdair Swanson and McCain served as Navy pilots.
But that marriage ended in June 1964 after Carol sued for divorce, alleging that her husband had been unfaithful.
According to McCain, he started seeing Carol shortly afterward. They were married in Philadelphia, her hometown, in July 1965. McCain adopted her two sons, and they had a daughter together. Then in October 1967, McCain’s plane was shot down and he was captured by the North Vietnamese.
She became active in the POW-MIA movement. A former model, she dedicated herself to her children and kept the family together, friends said, while awaiting his return.
“She had the perseverance to carry on,” said Melinda Fitzwater, a cousin of McCain’s who later worked with Carol McCain at the White House. “She had a little baby and small kids. She was a great, unique person.”
On Christmas Eve 1969, while she was driving alone in Philadelphia, Carol McCain’s car skidded and struck a utility pole. Thrown into the snow, she broke both legs, an arm and her pelvis. She was operated on a dozen times, and in the treatment she lost about 5 inches in height.
After John McCain was released in March 1973 and returned to the U.S., he told friends that Carol was not the woman he had married.
Reynolds, working for then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, said she first met the couple in San Francisco at a reception for ex-prisoners. She later introduced them to the Reagans at their home in Pacific Palisades.
“They were just an attractive couple,” Reynolds said. “The Reagans had great admiration and respect for John.”
In 1974, Reagan invited McCain to speak at a governor’s prayer breakfast in Sacramento. The former prisoner of war told the story of a fellow captive who had scratched a prayer on a cell wall. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were reduced to tears. It was “the most moving speech I had ever heard,” Reynolds said.
In the next few years, family and friends said, there was no sign that McCain was unhappy in his marriage. Fitzwater recalled visiting the family on Thanksgivings, and McCain seemed content barbecuing a turkey on his outdoor grill near Jacksonville, Fla.
Navy officers in the squadron McCain commanded in 1977 said they did not know anything was wrong. “When I went to parties at their home, everything seemed fine,” said Mike Akin, a naval flying instructor. “They seemed to be a happily married couple.”
But two years later, while on a trip as a Navy liaison with the Senate, McCain spied Hensley at the Honolulu reception. In a recent television interview with Jay Leno on the “Tonight Show,” Cindy McCain joked about how the Navy captain had pursued her. “He kind of chased me around . . . the hors d’oeuvre table,” she said. “I was trying to get something to eat and I thought, ‘This guy’s kind of weird.’ I was kind of trying to get away from him.”
John McCain was 42; she was 24. During the next nine months, he would fly to Arizona or she would come to the Washington area, where McCain and Carol had a home.
Carol McCain later told friends, including Reynolds and Fitzwater, that she did not know he was seeing anyone else.
John McCain sued for divorce in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where his friend and fellow former POW, George E. “Bud” Day, practiced law and could represent him.
In the petition, he stated that the couple had “cohabited as husband and wife” until Jan. 7, 1980.
His wife did not contest the divorce, and Day said that the couple had reached an agreement in advance on support and division of property. By then she was living in La Mesa, in San Diego County, with the family of Meese, a close Reagan aide and future attorney general.
“We knew John and Carol both since he came back from Hanoi in 1973,” Meese said recently. “They have been friends of ours ever since.
“She was with us for maybe four or five months. Their daughter and our daughter were friends, and they went to school together.”
Carol McCain was distraught at being blindsided by her husband’s intention to end their marriage, said her friends in the Reagan circle.
“They [the Reagans] weren’t happy with him,” Fitzwater said. Carol McCain “was this little, frail person. . . . She was brokenhearted.”
By that time, Nancy Reagan had come to Carol McCain’s aid, hiring her as a press assistant in the 1980 presidential campaign.
When the Reagans moved to Washington, she was named director of the White House Visitors Office.
“Nancy Reagan was crazy about her,” Reynolds said. “But everybody was crazy about Carol McCain. . . . And the Meeses were very generous and helpful and comforting to her.”
Fitzwater said that living in Southern California and working on the Reagan campaign helped Carol McCain move past the loss of her marriage.
“It was perfect for her. She was traveling, and it took her mind off a very, very sad time for her.”
--
richard.serrano@latimes.com
ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com
|
f66165226c4fcb0b1da3e24b8c0229c8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-na-gitmo11-story.html | 9/11 plotters tell judge of legal woes | 9/11 plotters tell judge of legal woes
Facing the death penalty for their roles in the Sept. 11 attacks, self-described mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and an alleged accomplice told a judge Thursday that the military commission process was so dysfunctional that they could not file legal motions in their defense or have pretrial documents translated into their native languages.
In separate hearings, Mohammed and Walid bin Attash and their legal advisors ticked off one example after another of a pretrial system they say is barely operating. “We are not in normal situation. We are in hell,” Mohammed told the military judge, Marine Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann.
Some of the defendants’ claims were confirmed by government prosecutors, a Pentagon official and Kohlmann, who said he would look into them.
Last month, Kohlmann granted requests by Mohammed, a Pakistani, and Attash, a Yemeni, to act as their own lawyers in the case, in which they and three other men face a variety of charges in connection with the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. That means they are entitled to file legal motions and have access to much of the evidence -- like the Justice Department and military prosecutors seeking to convict them -- according to officials from the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, which is overseeing the controversial and unprecedented trials.
Kohlmann acknowledged to both men that he never received motions each of them had written in their detention cells, nor other communications the men wanted the judge to see.
Three letters from Mohammed to his backup legal counsel, written more than a month ago, also were not delivered, according to Mohammed and the three lawyers. Recent court filings and other communications by prosecutors and the judge himself either were never delivered to Mohammed and Attash or were sent in English, not Arabic.
Attash, accused of training some of the hijackers at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, said he received one important six-page filing by prosecutors that had been translated into Arabic -- but not until Thursday morning, nine days after it was filed, as he was walking into the high-security court for his hearing. “I was handcuffed, and I didn’t read it,” he added, prompting the judge to call a recess so that Attash could read it.
Kohlmann appeared taken aback by the assertions and promised to look into them if the two suspects filed court motions requesting that he do so. He said he would consider ordering a mass translation of potentially thousands of court documents.
Several human rights special observers who attended Thursday’s proceedings said there were breakdowns in the system that could take months, if not years, to address. Those problems have already undermined the credibility of the military commission process, they said.
“The whole system is completely imploding,” said observer Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It is astonishing that they cannot get documents, file legal memos or have things translated for them. Today’s hearing shows that these commissions are just not workable and that Judge Kohlmann realizes the headache he is in for.”
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, acknowledged some of the problems and said that Joint Task Force Guantanamo “has implemented a process to ensure that filings and legal mail to and from the court are handled appropriately and efficiently.”
The military’s chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said authorities were working to ensure that the five suspected terrorists get a fair trial and that those who are acting as their own lawyers get the resources and access to documents they need, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize national security.
Kohlmann had ordered the two hearings, and three others over the last two days, to ensure that Mohammed and Attash understood the consequences of representing themselves. At both hearings Thursday, Kohlmann stressed to the accused men that they would fare better if they allowed the government-appointed legal teams to represent them, especially since the lawyers could file motions, track down witnesses and do other things the defendants could not from their cells.
But Mohammed, in one of many back-and-forths with the judge, said the system was so dysfunctional that “it won’t make a big difference if I reject my lawyer.”
Mohammed and Attash said they still wanted to represent themselves, but with some military and civilian lawyers as standby counsel.
A third suspect, Ramzi Binalshibh, refused to attend his hearing Thursday for unspecified reasons. The judge has ordered a mental competency exam for Binalshibh, who is on government-administered psychotropic drugs, to see if he is fit to act as his own lawyer.
Legal advisors for Mohammed and Attash said the problems with the military commissions went far beyond those the men face while acting as their own lawyers.
Navy Capt. Prescott L. Prince and civilian lawyers David Nevin and Scott McKay said, for instance, that the government has decreed that anything Mohammed says or writes is considered classified, essentially prohibiting them from using it in court filings or in investigative efforts aimed at determining whether he is guilty of the terrorist acts for which he has claimed responsibility.
“There is impediment after impediment after impediment,” McKay said.
Throughout the hearings Thursday, Mohammed and Attash remained polite and responsive, often engaging Kohlmann in discussions about their legal rights.
Mohammed, who has said he wants to “martyr” himself, or be put to death for his self-described role as the orchestrator of the attacks, appeared especially interested in determining how he could oversee his defense.
Attash said: “Any attack I undertook against America or even participated or helped in, I am proud of it and am happy about it.”
--
josh.meyer@latimes.com
|
59bc1dc9475d4b8dce7fa53814b9eb33 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-na-reefs11-story.html | Coral species are in hot water | Coral species are in hot water
Nearly one-third of the small animals that make up the most massive and elaborate structures in coral reefs face an elevated risk of extinction from global warming and various local problems, an international group of scientists reported Thursday.
The worldwide assessment of more than 700 species of corals showed that 32.8% were threatened with extinction, especially those that formed large mounds or intricate branches resembling antlers.
Coral reefs provide hiding places and a habitat for 25% of all marine life and are a major source of food for the poor and of tourist revenue in tropical countries.
Some of the threats are global, including elevated ocean temperatures that have stressed corals so much that they are “bleached” bone-white. A massive bleaching brought on by warmer waters in the 1998 El Nino resulted in a vast decline of the world’s reefs.
Corals also face excessive and destructive fishing and polluted runoff that buries them under sediment or bathes them in nutrients that fuel out-of-control growth of algae and bacteria.
Compounding the problem are various diseases that kill corals when they are under stress.
Using criteria established by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the team of scientists determined that a loss of reefs and mounting threats had nudged the animals into the “critically endangered,” “endangered” or “vulnerable” categories, leapfrogging other groups threatened with extinction.
“That makes corals the most threatened animals on Earth,” said Greta Aeby, a coral disease expert at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
Close behind are frogs and related amphibians, which also have been on a steep decline in recent decades because of pollution, loss of habitat and climate change.
The results, released online Thursday by the journal Science, were presented at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, where nearly 3,000 scientists and managers have gathered to learn about the latest scientific discoveries and try to figure out ways to save the world’s reefs.
Kent Carpenter, director of the international union’s Global Marine Species Assessment and lead author of the Science article, emphasized the importance of coral reefs beyond their majesty and beauty to tourists donning snorkels and masks.
“Corals make up the very framework of the coral reef ecosystem,” said Aeby, one of 38 scientists who collaborated on the study. If they disappear, she said, “we can expect to lose the fish and crabs and other critters that depend on these corals.”
Loss of coral reefs could have a profound effect on more than 500 million impoverished fishermen in the tropics who rely on them to feed themselves and their families, said David Obura, a marine biologist and East Africa coordinator for the Coastal Oceans Research and Development-Indian Ocean.
“People rely on coral reefs every day,” said Obura, another coauthor. “In places like the Indian Ocean, we need to work with fishermen and help people decide not to fish in a destructive way.”
The decline of reef-building corals can be blamed primarily on the loss of the two major branching corals in the Caribbean in recent decades.
William F. Precht, manager of damage assessment and restoration for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, said that 95% to 98% of the elkhorn and staghorn corals in the Keys and elsewhere in the region had been lost to disease, toppled by hurricanes or crowded out by thick mats of algae and bacteria.
Both are listed as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act.
But it is the rich diversity of corals in the tropical waters of the West Pacific, a place called the Coral Triangle that includes Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, that presents the potential greatest loss of species.
--
ken.weiss@latimes.com
|
fcf90d5e2ba1267da913059ac24bcc53 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-oe-hedges11-story.html | Stop the new FISA | Stop the new FISA
If the sweeping surveillance law signed by President Bush on Thursday -- giving the U.S. government nearly unchecked authority to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of innocent Americans -- is allowed to stand, we will have eroded one of the most important bulwarks to a free press and an open society.
The new FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance. It allows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The court will not be told specifics about who will be wiretapped, which means the law provides woefully inadequate safeguards to protect innocent people whose communications are caught up in the government’s dragnet surveillance program.
The law, passed under the guise of national security, ostensibly targets people outside the country. There is no question, however, that it will ensnare many communications between Americans and those overseas. Those communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments.
This law will cripple the work of those of us who as reporters communicate regularly with people overseas, especially those in the Middle East. It will intimidate dissidents, human rights activists and courageous officials who seek to expose the lies of our government or governments allied with ours. It will hang like the sword of Damocles over all who dare to defy the official versions of events. It leaves open the possibility of retribution and invites the potential for abuse by those whose concern is not with national security but with the consolidation of their own power.
I have joined an ACLU lawsuit challenging the new law along with other journalists, human rights organizations and defense attorneys who also rely on confidentiality to do their work. I have joined not only because this law takes aim at my work but because I believe it signals a serious erosion of safeguards that make possible our democratic state. Laws and their just application are the only protection we have as citizens. Once the law is changed to permit the impermissible, we have no recourse with which to fight back.
I spent nearly 20 years as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, as well as other news organizations. I covered the conflict in the Middle East for seven years. I have friends and colleagues in Jerusalem, Gaza, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut. I could easily be one of those innocent Americans who are spied on under the government’s new surveillance authority.
The reach of such surveillance has already hampered my work. I was once told about a showdown between a U.S. warship and the Iranian navy that had the potential to escalate into a military conflict. I contacted someone who was on the ship at the time of the alleged incident and who reportedly had photos. His first question was whether my phone and e-mails were being monitored.
What could I say? How could I know? I offered to travel to see him but, frightened of retribution, he refused. I do not know if the man’s story is true. I only know that the fear of surveillance made it impossible for me to determine its veracity. Under this law, all those who hold information that could embarrass and expose the lies of those in power will have similar fears. Confidentiality, and the understanding that as a reporter I will honor this confidentiality, permits a free press to function. Take it away and a free press withers and dies.
I know the cost of terrorism and the consequences of war. I have investigated Al Qaeda’s operation in Europe and have covered numerous conflicts. The monitoring of suspected terrorists, with proper oversight, is a crucial part of our national security. But this law is not about keeping us safe, which can -- and should -- be done in a constitutional manner and with judicial oversight. It is about using terrorism as a pretext to permit wholesale spying and to silence voices that will allow us to maintain an open society.
|
bbe681e462da7e65531306bd77c1d328 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-11-oe-stein11-story.html | The joy of $8 gas | The joy of $8 gas
I love $4 gas. It makes me appreciate freedom. I watch as the dollars spin and think, “You, Triceratops, did not get squished by an asteroid in vain. You got squished for a $60 drive to Vegas.”
So I didn’t go to Wednesday’s MoveOn.org protests against high gas prices, which included one at the most expensive gas station in the city, the 76 in Beverly Hills. MoveOn’s news release explained: “We want to make sure the world knows that Beverly Hills residents are fed up with gas prices and want a president in the White House who will bring the cost of gas down.” MoveOn always understands the problems plaguing Americans, such as the cost of gas in Beverly Hills. If the group succeeds on this issue, I hope it’ll next tackle the onerous two-year contract on the new iPhone and how late heirloom tomatoes arrived this year.
If MoveOn and Barack Obama really were going to bravely confront America with hard, necessary truths, they’d tell us how great $4 gas has been for us. With public transit use nationally at a 50-year high, traffic dropped 2.1% in the first four months of this year across the country. That mileage reduction -- along with people driving smaller cars, and more slowly, to save gas -- could mean that 12,000 fewer people will die in traffic accidents this year, according to a study by professors Michael Morrisey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and David C. Grabowski at Harvard Medical School. Air pollution has been reduced enough, according to UC Davis economics professor J. Paul Leigh, to prevent 2,200 respiratory-related deaths over the last year. Less eating out and more walking and biking could mean a 10% reduction in obesity, according to Charles Courtemanche, an assistant economics professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. And, apparently, higher gas prices also keep econ professors employed.
Yes, it’s easy for me to revel in $4 gas because I’m rich. And because my wife and I own a Mini Cooper and a Prius. And because I work at home. And because some of the mutual funds I own contain a fair amount of Exxon Mobil stock. And because I’m brave enough to ignore the manufacturer’s suggestion to use high-octane gas.
Cheap gas is unfair. Driving creates huge social costs in the form of traffic, health-damaging pollution and global warming that aren’t suffered solely by the person buying the gasoline. Governments usually set up idiotic systems to offset such social costs (emissions trading, ethanol subsidies, taco truck regulations) instead of forcing individuals to pay for their own mess by adding a tax to remedy the imbalance. That kind of tax -- the most fair kind, really -- is called a Pigovian tax, and its use is why gas costs $8 to $10 a gallon in Europe, where they have fewer road deaths even though they drive like complete idiots.
If the U.S. were to slowly jack up gas taxes until we’re in the $8 range, life would be better. We’d not only be safer and have reduced greenhouse-gas emissions, we’d probably be happier too. Studies show that the only thing that consistently increases personal happiness is social interaction; high gas prices have led to real estate prices falling faster in suburbs and exurbs than in cities, so we may soon have more content downtown-dwellers. Those same studies show that the thing that makes people least happy is commuting, and telecommuting is way up this year. We could use the tax revenue to fund public transportation. And we’d go back to the days when driving a car was a way to show people what a rich jerk you were. In other words, we would no longer need SUVs for that.
Sure, $8 gas is unfair to poor people, but so is all of capitalism. Rich people get more of the globe’s resources. No one has a right to cheap gas any more than he has a right to other things needed for a full and productive life, like an iPhone or a weekly newspaper column where you can tick people off.
We spent 50 years using government money to build the freeways that led to the driving-centric, mall-rat lifestyle I grew up with, so it will surely take decades more to restructure our society into something better. And as bummed as I am to pay a lot for gas, it’s a fair price for improving society. I also think government should look into some kind of heavy taxation on Facebook usage.
--
jstein@latimescolumnists.com
|
029422d440640610fa0590055e001e51 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-12-ed-bikes12-story.html | Stop! Yield! | Stop! Yield!
As frequent Los Angeles cyclists well know, there are three things you need if you want to ride a bike in this town: a good helmet, a stout lock and a very good life insurance policy.
If the street wars between drivers and bikers in L.A. are a lot less deadly than the gang wars, they are no less irrational. Bikers, after all, perform a public service by reducing traffic and emissions. Few drivers seem to appreciate that. Talk to an L.A. cyclist and you will hear horror stories about drivers who cut them off, yell at them, throw things and otherwise endanger their lives. Such a conflict nearly proved fatal on the Fourth of July when a driver, allegedly enraged because two bikers speeding downhill on Mandeville Canyon Road were blocking his progress, swerved in front of them and slammed on the brakes. The riders were seriously hurt, and the driver faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon.
Despite the dangers, high gasoline prices are swelling the ranks of local pedal-pushers. Statistics are scarce, but abundant anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of people who bike to work or across town on errands is soaring. Bike retailers are reporting a strong rise in sales, and transit officials say the number of bikers who ride to bus or train stops is up sharply. The increase in two-wheelers can be expected to worsen the strains in a city renowned for its love affair with the automobile.
Though many bikers might find it hard to believe, public officials are trying to adapt. West Hollywood is rightly considering an end to its ban on riding bikes on sidewalks. Los Angeles is updating its bicycle master plan, a torturously long process that might eventually result in more bike lanes. The city already has a progressive law that requires commercial developments bigger than 10,000 square feet to include bike parking and on-site showers for employees who ride to work. And the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has installed bike racks on every bus (some are missing because they were damaged and haven’t been replaced) and added more bike parking at train stations.
Obviously, a lot more is needed: more bike paths and lanes, more “smart growth” policies that incorporate bike-friendliness and more incentive programs by employers to encourage workers to cycle to the office. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that no matter how bike-friendly our government or businesses become, L.A. will remain a rough ride until motorists learn to share the road. Bikers are boosting their health, their pocketbooks and the city’s environment. If it’s a battle for moral authority between drivers and bikers, the bikers have already won. Give them a break.
|
910240ce1c36289d6ed6537333c4fabc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-12-fg-guinness12-story.html | They’ve lowered the bar in Ireland | They’ve lowered the bar in Ireland
The two men drink standing near the back of the long bar at Davy Byrnes, one of the many watering holes in this city that, in the words of writer Samuel Beckett, who once lived upstairs, have been known to house “broken glass and indiscretion.”
In the back, because that’s well away from the “whippets” and “blow-ins” who tend to wander in, armed with neither intellect nor wit, if one distinguishes between the two, settle on the first available stool and ask for a “Boodweiser” from the barman.
Standing, because as the long, merry nights wear on, each of the men must be on his toes, or miss the opportunity to point out a deficiency in the other’s grasp of 13th century history, or drop a deftly delivered pun, or tell a magnificent lie.
“Some of the time I’m telling the truth. You have to figure out for yourself whether I’m having you on or not,” says Roy McCutcheon, a native of Belfast who met Paul Winter here at the pub made famous by James Joyce -- now a civilized “gastropub” with very little broken glass -- one evening three years ago, and on a good many evenings since. “We’re like-minded. We’re very sharp, very quick, we’ve got a great repartee going on.”
“He’s full of it most of the time,” Winter says. “And he’s a fascist.”
“I’m not a fascist. But you’re a Trotskyite.”
If there is a common denominator to these long, cantankerous evenings, it is Guinness, the beer so fundamental to Ireland that one has only to say, “Pour me a pint” to receive, in due course, a wide, ceremoniously poured glass of “the black stuff.”
Bitter and muddy, thick with creamy foam, too meaty for the heat but a blessed lubricant for a foggy night and a tearful chorus of “Carrickfergus,” Guinness is Ireland’s best-selling beer. Sixtysomethings like McCutcheon and Winter, weaned on its thick roasted-barley essence as teenagers, wouldn’t even consider drinking a wispy lager in its place.
But even Guinness, it seems, is not immune to the forces of open markets, suburban sprawl and Ireland’s evolution from an impoverished backwater of emigrants to one of Europe’s economic powerhouses, a country that imports cheap labor now from Eastern Europe.
Even as sales have boomed elsewhere, Guinness has seen its business decline in Ireland over most of the last seven years, a trend that eased only slightly last year with a growth rate of 3.5%.
The problem is, Irish traditions are something many Irish simply no longer have time for.
In Dublin, working and commuting now take up much of the time once spent stopping at the pub for a pint after work. And as the Celtic Tiger begins, like everyone else, to feel the effects of the global credit crunch, with home prices declining and unemployment rising, it doesn’t help that a pint of Guinness costs $7.20.
“I’ve got a hundred-mile round-trip commute every day. So you’re out of the house for 12, 14 hours a day, and by the time you do get home, all you’re fit for is a couple of hours of TV, maybe dinner, and go to bed. It would never, ever cross my mind to go for a pint on the way home,” said Cormac Billings, a 33-year-old investment banker who works in Dublin’s city center but lives in the suburbs.
“Maybe six, seven times a year, you might meet up with your mates for a few pints, but it’s always a hassle to organize,” he said. “People are busy. They’re married, they’re having kids.”
Ireland is still the second-biggest beer-drinking market in the world, after the Czech Republic. But beer consumption has declined 15% since 2001. Rural pubs were closing last year at the rate of more than one a day, victims of high taxes, increasing supermarket sales and a nationwide smoking ban that went into effect in 2004.
Add to that an explosion in demand for wine and high-end coffee here, and Guinness now sells more beer in Nigeria -- “there’s a drop of greatness in every man,” the ads for the extra-robust, 7.5% alcohol foreign extra stout tell Nigeria’s receptive males -- than it does on the Emerald Isle.
The company in May announced a $1-billion modernization program that will close two of its most venerable breweries and eliminate more than half its brewery staff, while transferring most Guinness export production, including beer bound for the U.S., to a large, new state-of-the-art brewery in the Dublin suburbs.
Production at Guinness’ 249-year-old flagship brewery at St. James’s Gate in central Dublin will be shrunk by a third, to focus almost exclusively on beer sold in Ireland and Britain -- for those whose Guinness tastes are so refined they wouldn’t accept beer brewed anywhere else. The facility, Ireland’s biggest tourist attraction, will get a major face-lift.
“We listened to our consumers, and we listened to ourselves. And something like St. James’s Gate is really, really important to people,” said Brian Duffy, chairman of the Irish branch of Diageo, the multinational company that owns Guinness and also distributes Tanqueray gin, Smirnoff vodka and Cuervo tequila.
“Not just in terms of its connection with the beer and the connection with the family, but with Ireland. It is almost regarded as part of our heritage.”
Pub owners say they still sell more Guinness than anything else, but as Ireland has joined the European Union and become a new center for banking and manufacturing, they face a clientele with more choices and broader interests.
“Eastern European products you never heard of, all of a sudden they are on the supermarket shelves,” said Tom Cleary, who owns Kennedy’s Pub in Dublin. “And I suppose the affluence brings about a certain snobbishness. In terms of, ‘We were on holiday and drank this, why can’t we get this beer in Ireland?’
“I’ve had people come to the counter and ask me for a bottle of Czech beer. They think it’s different, it’s new. But with all this affluence, they don’t appreciate what’s in front of them.”
Now, no one’s saying that a Saturday night in Dublin isn’t still an intimidating and unforgettable event, with the sound of raucous laughter, swooning promenades down the street and occasional curbside regurgitations, followed, early Sunday morning, by the clatter of dozens of empty kegs being rolled down the sidewalks and onto waiting trucks.
Young Dubliners who made their first trip to the pub at their father’s side as teenagers, receiving calm instruction in how to finish a pint of Guinness in seven neat swigs, still go when they can, but when has it ever been cool to drink your father’s beer?
“Years ago, everybody drank Guinness,” said David Donnelly, a 36-year-old Dubliner. “But young people don’t drink Guinness. If I was going for a few drinks with me mates, we just drink Budweiser. Guinness is more of an old fellow’s drink.”
It is Guinness’ fate to be so much better poured on draft at an Irish pub -- where kegs are tapped so often, they get renewed daily -- that a discriminating Irishman will drink it almost nowhere else. Sure, Guinness comes in a bottle or a can, its contents indistinguishable from the pub version to most beer drinkers, but not to those who’ve sucked on the black stuff since adolescence.
And there’s plenty of choice now, even at the tap.
Here at Davy Byrnes, so crucial a fixture in Dublin that Leopold Bloom ordered a Gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy there in “Ulysses” -- “Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like the way it curves there” -- things have changed to the degree that one city pub review congratulates it for pouring “the finest pint of Budweiser in town!”
Still, it’s the Guinness that keeps barman Stephen Delany busy much of the night.
He’s pouring to the exacting standards of McCutcheon and Winter, who want it to take as long as it’s supposed to take, which is, officially, 119.5 seconds for the perfect pint. The first half is poured into a glass tilted at 45 degrees, a process that produces a tumult of nitrogen and carbon dioxide that has to be left sitting on the bar to settle. Then, the second part of the pour, up to the brim.
“You must wait until the head rises over the top, and that’s when you start. And if you drink it when it’s first risen, the head will stay with you all the way to the bottom of the glass,” McCutcheon says.
“If you go into a pub in another country, and they just pour the Guinness straightaway . . . ,” Winter says.
“Refuse that,” interjects McCutcheon. “You never rush the Guinness. You let it settle. Tell the barman, ‘Keep it high. No hurry.’ There’s one bar in Dublin where you can pour your own Guinness, but that is a waste of money for people who don’t know what they’re doing.”
“You’re paying, in essence, for a rotten Guinness. But it fools the Americans, because they’re dumb,” Winter says.
“What do they drink in California?” McCutcheon wants to know.
A lot of Mexican beer, they’re told. Dos Equis. Corona.
The answer is delivered with a little note of defiance, daring them to scorn L.A. as much as they obviously do. “Nice and crisp and light. Refreshing when it’s hot.”
McCutcheon looks disgusted. “I would stop while you’re ahead. Stop while you’re ahead.”
“What’s the point?” Winter says. “You know?”
Guinness brewery workers, who are fighting layoffs, say they fear the move to a more automated new brewery will undermine the craftsmanship for which the beer has always been prized.
“It’s going to have a huge impact on the heritage,” said Sean Mackell, head of the brewery workers union. “We see Guinness as an iconic brand that should be produced by people who are committed to it. As opposed to a multinational company contracting things out and not having the same commitment to quality.”
But Diageo officials point out that Guinness already is brewed in nearly 50 countries, its foreign extra stout prepared with top-secret feedstock transported from the mother ship in Dublin, where the basic components are kept under lock and key.
If anything, they and many pub owners say, Guinness’ focus in the last few years on uniform brewing standards, rigid delivery and sales schedules, and scrupulous tap-cleaning regimens at pubs across Ireland have made Guinness better than it used to be.
The campaign to make Guinness as good as it can be, along with heavy marketing, helped last year to turn around the slump in Irish sales. So what if a third of all Guinness is now sold in Africa?
“People keep saying Guinness is in demise. Well, it’s not. We’re a global business, we’re sold in over 150 countries. I’ve seen all those places go up and down, but our general trend has been inextricably upwards, and I expect that to continue,” Duffy said.
“As far as Ireland goes, we continue to be happy with the progress we’re making. We obviously need to connect to new consumers as they come into the market, but we’re not aiming for this to be the fad drink for every new consumer that decides to embrace alcohol.”
At Davy Byrnes, the conversation has moved on to whether John McCain inappropriately placated his Vietnamese captors (“He sang like a canary,” Winter declares); the mass suicide and massacre of Jews in York in 1190; Stalin’s execution of top army officers in the run-up to World War II; and a song by the Waterboys on a similar subject. Someone tries to remember how it goes. An argument ensues over whether the Waterboys ought to be considered an Irish band, or Scottish, or English.
Delany, the barman, looks to be of the opinion that he’s not getting paid enough to keep pouring the Guinness down here, but pour he does.
--
kim.murphy@latimes.com
|
8216812da1da8aa4b92267df73addbac | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-12-fi-indymac12-story.html | Federal regulators seize crippled IndyMac Bank | Federal regulators seize crippled IndyMac Bank
The federal government took control of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank on Friday in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Citing a massive run on deposits, regulators shut its main branch three hours early, leaving customers stunned and upset. One woman leaned on the locked doors, pleading with an employee inside: “Please, please, I want to take out a portion.” All she could do was read a two-page notice taped to the door.
The bank’s 33 branches will be closed over the weekend, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will reopen the bank on Monday as IndyMac Federal Bank, said the Office of Thrift Supervision in Washington. Customers will not be able to bank by phone or Internet over the weekend, regulators said, but can continue to use ATMs, debit cards and checks. Normal branch hours, online banking and phone banking services are to resume Monday.
Federal authorities estimated that the takeover of IndyMac, which had $32 billion in assets, would cost the FDIC $4 billion to $8 billion. Regulators said deposits of up to $100,000 were safe and insured by the FDIC. The agency’s insurance fund has assets of about $52 billion.
IndyMac’s failure had been widely expected in recent days. As the bank was shuttering offices and laying off employees to cope with huge losses from defaulted mortgages made at the height of the housing boom, nervous depositors were pulling out $100 million a day. The bank’s stock price had plummeted to less than $1 as analysts predicted the company’s imminent demise.
The takeover of IndyMac came amid rampant speculation that the federal government would also have to take over lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together stand behind almost half of the nation’s mortgage debt.
Shares of the two mortgage giants have nose-dived this week and fell again Friday, helping to drag down the Dow Jones industrial average 128.48 points, or 1.1%, to close at 11,100.54. Investors and analysts are concerned that the two government-chartered companies need to raise billions of dollars to offset expected losses stemming from mortgage defaults, but will be unable to do so in the private market. Officials in Washington spent most of Friday trying to knock down rumors of a government bailout.
IndyMac, which once employed 10,000, fell prey to a classic run on the bank, and regulators singled out Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) as having helped to fuel massive withdrawals. On June 26, Schumer said in letters to the FDIC, the OTS and two other federal agencies that IndyMac might have “serious problems” with its loan holdings.
“I am concerned that IndyMac’s financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers,” he wrote. The bank “could face a failure if prescriptive measures are not taken quickly.”
That public warning prompted depositors to pull $1.3 billion out of accounts between June 27 and Thursday.
“This institution failed today due to a liquidity crisis,” John M. Reich, director of the OTS, said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “Although this institution was already in distress, the deposit run pushed IndyMac over the edge.”
Schumer said in a statement that the cause of IndyMac’s failure was “poor and loose lending practices” that should have been prevented by more active regulation. Later, a Schumer spokesman said: “Mr. Reich, a political appointee, should be spending less time playing politics and more time doing his job.”
IndyMac is the second-largest financial institution failure in U.S. history, following only Continental Illinois Bank, which had assets of about $40 billion before it was shuttered in 1984. It is the fifth FDIC-insured failure of the year. Reich emphasized that though other financial institutions remained on the agency’s danger list, he believed most of them would be able to work their way back to solvency.
“The IndyMac situation is unique. It does not signal a direction for the industry as a whole,” he said.
IndyMac’s board boasts a number of California luminaries. Among the directors, according to a proxy statement the company filed in March, is Pat Haden, 55, a former star quarterback for USC and the Los Angeles Rams, who has been a partner of Riordan, Lewis & Haden, the investment firm founded by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, since 1987.
Other directors include Lyle E. Gramley, 81, a former governor of the Federal Reserve; Bruce G. Willison, 59, former dean of the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA; and Lydia H. Kennard, 53, former executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, which operates Los Angeles International.
IndyMac had been operating under close regulatory scrutiny since January, when the OTS determined that the company was in ill health. The bank lost $614.8 million in 2007 and $184.2 million during the first quarter of this year, largely as the result of souring home loans.
IndyMac, which posted $342.9 million in profit in 2006, had been a leader in so-called alt-A mortgages, which were made to borrowers with decent credit who often weren’t required to verify their income to get the loan. That year, the company’s stock price peaked at $50 a share, valuing IndyMac at a tidy $3.5 billion.
However, as the real estate market slowed, the company’s loan losses ballooned. In its March report to regulators, the company said that 8.86% of its loans were delinquent, up from 1.51% the year before. By the end of 2007, the company’s shares were selling for $6. They closed at 28 cents Friday.
IndyMac, which has been selling and closing offices, revamped its business to focus solely on so-called conforming loans, which are relatively small-balance mortgages made to people with good credit and that can be immediately resold on the secondary market. Reich said it was unclear whether the moves would have proved sufficient to save the troubled thrift.
“Would the institution have failed without the deposit run?” he said. “We will never know.”
At 3 p.m. Friday, IndyMac shut the doors to its main branch in Pasadena, three hours early, leaving customers angry and surprised. Georgi Arnold of El Monte had come to deposit $230 into her checking account but wasn’t allowed inside. “I am livid,” said Arnold, 32. “I’m glad I closed my savings account already.”
Arnold said she had “a few thousand dollars” in the bank, money she uses for her children, small bills and vacations. “Best believe first thing come Monday I’ll be drawing out all my money and closing my account because this is ridiculous,” she said.
Jagdish Belgaum rushed to the bank after hearing the news, only to be locked out. The 42-year-old South Pasadena resident said he had about five CD accounts totaling just under $100,000.
“Luckily I don’t need the money right away,” said Belgaum, a chief technology officer at a medical management company. “I’m more afraid of the long line on Monday. That’s why I came running.”
IndyMac announced Monday that it was laying off 3,800 employees. FDIC spokesman David Barr said Friday outside IndyMac headquarters that “the bulk of the employees will be needed to run this as a full-service bank.”
But a handful of employees who were leaving the building appeared to be preparing for the worst, lugging boxes of belongings and saying goodbye to one another. One woman carried out a potted plant. Regulators said they hoped to sell the bank within 90 days.
The FDIC has set up a toll-free phone line -- (866) 806-5919 -- and a page on its website -- www.fdic.gov/bank/individual /failed/IndyMac.html -- for bank customers to obtain information.
IndyMac Bank is the main subsidiary of IndyMac Bancorp. It was unclear what would happen to the holding company in light of the seizure.
--
kathy.kristof@latimes.com
--
andrea.chang@latimes.com
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
IndyMac Bank
Headquarters: Pasadena
Chief executive: Michael W. Perry
Founded: 1985 by Angelo R. Mozilo and David Loeb
2007 loss: $614.8 million
Employees: 3,400 (after 3,800 layoffs announced Monday)
|
ee4bc10d428f160b12487a91c652037c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-12-me-keyes12-story.html | Actress famous for a bit part in a classic movie | Actress famous for a bit part in a classic movie
In the oeuvre of actress Evelyn Keyes, the role of Suellen O’Hara was a “bit part,” nothing like the leading roles she played in later films, or her real-life role as wife of directors John Huston and Charles Vidor and jazz musician Artie Shaw.
But by playing Suellen, Scarlett O’Hara’s jilted younger sister in the 1939 film classic “Gone With the Wind,” Keyes earned a place in Hollywood history that no other film could have given her.
“I got to star in my own movies,” Keyes once said, reflecting on her career. “I even had my name above the title in some cases. But what am I known for? My bit part. It’s very funny.”
Keyes, who in later years became a screenwriter and author, died of cancer July 4 at an assisted-living home in Montecito, said Allan Glaser, a producer and executor of Keyes’ estate. She was 91.
“She lived five lives in one,” said Glaser. Well into her 80s, she continued running and writing.
Shortly after she arrived in Los Angeles in 1936, Keyes was discovered in true Hollywood fashion: Someone saw her eating at a restaurant, which ultimately led to her meeting director Cecil B. DeMille, Glaser said. DeMille placed Keyes under personal contract. Producer David O. Selznick cast her as Suellen.
“Gone With the Wind” was only Keyes’ second film, but “she was a good workman; she knew what he was doing,” actress Ann Rutherford, who in the film played another sister, Careen, told The Times. “We met on the set. . . . We did almost all of our scenes together. We picked cotton together.”
Neither of them imagined that the film would become a classic. Critic Leonard Maltin in his “2008 Movie Guide” described the move as “if not the greatest movie ever made, certainly one of the greatest examples of storytelling on film.”
The titles of Keyes’ autobiography and its sequel make references to the movie: “Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister: My Lively Life In and Out of Hollywood” was published in 1977, and “I’ll Think About That Tomorrow” appeared in 1991.
“I wasn’t writing a book about the movies,” Keyes said of her literary work. “I was writing about survival.”
Keyes was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on Nov. 20, 1916, though some sources list later dates. She was raised in Atlanta and worked as a dancer before moving to California.
Her first movie was DeMille’s “The Buccaneer,” in 1938. Later, while under contract with Columbia, she appeared in productions including “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” with Robert Montgomery in 1941, “A Thousand and One Nights” in 1945 and “The Jolson Story” with Larry Parks in 1946. The performance she considered her best was in the 1951 film noir “The Prowler” with Van Heflin. In 1955 she appeared in “The Seven Year Itch” with Marilyn Monroe.
After appearing in nearly 50 films, Keyes left Hollywood in 1955 because “aging is a dirty word in this town,” she said in a 1991 San Francisco Chronicle article.
A certain kind of success eluded her. Other than a few parts, “I mostly did cockamamie roles,” she said. “I was the eternal starlet, the pretty thing the studios schlepped around the country to decorate publicity junkets. To become a big movie star like Joan Crawford, you need to wear blinders and pay single-minded attention to your career.”
Keyes later began a literary career, writing with a voice that was authentic and unpretentious. For three years beginning in 1984 her column, “Keyes to the Town,” appeared in The Times. Her three books include a novel, “I Am a Billboard,” published in 1971.
In her column, she wrote about the film industry, about sexism and racism during her years in Hollywood, about growing older and better, well past her days of the “eternal starlet.”
“I like being older,” she said in a 1999 Los Angeles magazine article. “I did everything, and I have no real regrets.”
Keyes is survived by a nephew, James Luter of Utah; and a niece, Nancy Keyes of California. Memorial donations may sent to Actors and Others for Animals, 11523 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601.
--
jocelyn.stewart@latimes.com
|
e8da73edf141fc8d8efa7c14da592ad8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-12-na-strip12-story.html | Strip-searched girl wins appeal | Strip-searched girl wins appeal
Schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Overturning two other rulings, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said an assistant principal at an Arizona middle school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old by ordering her to be strip-searched. He thought the honor student had prescription-strength ibuprofen; she did not.
The 6-5 ruling by the San Francisco-based court reinstated a lawsuit that a divided three-judge circuit panel threw out last year. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of Savana Redding, who was an eighth-grader at Safford Middle School in southeastern Arizona when the assistant principal ordered her out of math class and into his office to investigate whether she had violated a school policy that prohibited students from bringing medication -- even over-the-counter medication -- to school.
Another student had Savana’s school planner and some ibuprofen pills, school officials had found.
That “frightened” student claimed Savana had given her the pills, the court said.
Savana denied having done so.
After a search of her pockets and backpack yielded nothing incriminatory, Kerry Wilson, the assistant principal, ordered his administrative assistant and a school nurse, both women, to force her to disrobe.
“The officials had Savana peel off each layer of clothing in turn,” wrote Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw for the majority.
The girl stood in her bra and underwear while the two officials searched her clothes. Then she was ordered to partially remove her bra, exposing her breasts, and finally told to shake out the crotch of her underwear.
“Hiding her head so that the adults could not see that she was about to cry, Savana complied and pulled out her underwear, revealing her pelvic area,” Wardlaw wrote. “No ibuprofen was found.”
The search was unjustified, the court said, because officials made no attempt to corroborate the claim by a student who was “cornered” and “seeking to shift blame from herself.”
Forcing Savana to disrobe also was a “disproportionately extreme measure,” the majority said.
“Common sense informs us that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen, an infraction that poses an imminent danger to no one, and which could have been handled by keeping her in the principal’s office until a parent arrived or simply sending her home, was excessively intrusive,” Wardlaw wrote, joined by Judges Harry Pregerson, Raymond C. Fisher, Richard A. Paez, Milan D. Smith Jr. and N. Randy Smith.
The court cited arguments by the National Assn. of Social Workers that strip searches of children “can result in serious emotional damage, including the development of, or increase in, oppositional behavior.”
“And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen,” Wardlaw wrote, noting that one pill has the strength of two over-the-counter Advil and might be commonly used by young women to treat menstrual cramps.
The ruling said that Assistant Principal Wilson was liable for monetary damages but that his aide and the school nurse were not because they were acting under his orders.
Judge Ronald M. Gould, joined by Judge Barry G. Silverman, dissented on the grounds that all the school officials had governmental immunity because the law was not clear at the time of the search.
Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, joined by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and Judge Carlos T. Bea, dissented on the grounds that the search was constitutional.
Hawkins wrote: “School officials deserve the greatest latitude when responding to behavior that threatens the health and safety of students or teachers . . .
“When school officials reasonably believe that a student is carrying a weapon or harmful drugs, it will rarely be unreasonable for them to do what they can to neutralize the danger.”
Although ibuprofen is mild, “that does not mean it is never harmful,” Hawkins wrote.
The ruling affects nine states, including California, that are under the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction.
But California is one of at least seven states that prohibits strip searches of any student for any reason, the court said.
Adam B. Wolf, a lawyer with the ACLU Foundation, which helped represent Savana, said the ruling “sends a clear message to school administrators nationwide that they need to respect certain student privacy and that they can’t take the drastic step of strip-searching a student based on one uncorroborated tip.”
The lawyers for the school district were not available for comment.
--
maura.dolan@latimes.com
|
7a6c33cb497427e99f23c6ab086439e3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-13-me-oysters13-story.html | A warning from the sea | A warning from the sea
For decades, the unwritten motto at shellfish hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest was “Better oysters through science.”
Scientists mated the heartiest, fastest-growing stock to produce plumper, sweeter oysters for slurping raw on the half-shell or frying up to dip in tangy sauces.
They probed the genetic code to select for the most desirable traits of the Pacific oyster, an import from Japan that now weighs in, pound for pound, as the No. 1 aquacultured crop in the world: 4.5 million tons a year (shells included) valued at $3 billion.
They even bred out sexual organs that at certain times of the year can take up more than a third of an oyster’s body weight and give it a soft, mushy texture.
With selective breeding and genetic fingerprinting, they were on their way to developing a super oyster resistant to summer mortality, keeping one step ahead of a warmer, more polluted planet. Or so they thought.
Suddenly, oyster research bogged down as a riotous bloom of bacteria went on a West Coast killing spree, wiping out billions of oyster larvae.
The outbreak first shut down an oyster brood stock program run by Oregon State University in Newport, Ore., in 2005. “All we saw was our larvae were dying,” said fisheries professor Chris Langdon, “and we couldn’t put our finger on why.”
Then the microscopic culprit overran commercial hatcheries in Washington and Oregon, crippling production over the last couple of years and causing a shortage of oyster “seed” needed to replant tideland farms from Southern California to Canada.
“It’s pretty scary,” said Sue Cudd, owner of Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts, Ore. The hatchery, she said, has been drowning in costs and failing to produce sufficient oyster larvae for West Coast shellfish farmers. “We almost decided to close, and people panicked. I realized if I go out of business, I take a lot of people with me.”
Science has identified the culprit, a strain of bacteria called Vibrio tubiashii, which is harmless to humans but fatal to baby oysters. It attacks them in their vulnerable, free-swimming larval stage before they settle to the seafloor, latch onto rocks or other oysters and grow thick shells.
The Vibrio blooms appear to be linked to warmer waters in estuaries and the oxygen-starved “dead zones” that have showed up this decade off the coast of Oregon and Washington, researchers said.
These low-oxygen waters correlate with stronger winds coming from a warming planet.
Scientists note that Vibrio tubiashii has an advantage over other microscopic life in the sea. This bacterium thrives in oxygen-starved dead zones, feasting on decaying plant and animal matter littering the seafloor. And when brought to the surface with water welling up from the deep, it can switch survival strategies to flourish in warm, well-oxygenated waters.
Researchers were not surprised to find this type of bacteria in seawater but were stunned that it had become so dominant over other microbes: It was nearly a pure concentration of this one bacteria, one that happens to be deadly to oyster larvae.
“It seems to be logical that the dead zone is playing a role,” said Ralph Elston, who runs a veterinary medical practice in Sequim, Wash., that offers advice to shellfish farmers. “It’s the perfect bacterial setup, and we get these explosive blooms along the coast.”
Edmund Jones removed a pinch of brown silt and smeared it across a glass slide. Tanks of seawater gurgled in the background. A salty tang hung in the moist air.
Jones, who manages Taylor Shellfish Farms’ hatchery here on Dabob Bay, fiddled with a knob, bringing into focus a dozen or more 9-day-old oyster larvae.
He pointed out a few healthy ones, dark round discs scuttling around, propelled by hair-like cilia. Most didn’t move at all. Light shined through them, revealing empty insides. They hadn’t been feeding. If they weren’t dead already, they were dying.
“When your job is to grow larvae and you see that on the screen,” Jones said, “it’s extremely frustrating to see. Unfortunately, what this tells me is we’ll probably be dumping that tank tomorrow.”
That meant jettisoning 30 million larvae.
Failures of this kind have become so regular that Taylor’s hatchery is producing less than a quarter of its capacity, far short of what is needed to reseed its oyster beds or to sell to other shellfish farmers looking to do the same.
The shortage of oyster seed, or “spat,” will have its greatest effect in several years, when oyster beds left fallow would otherwise be ready for harvest. That may set the stage for shortages and economic upheaval in the West Coast’s $110-million-a-year shellfish industry, said Bill Dewey, a division manager at Taylor Shellfish.
“We don’t have the seed to replace these crops you see here,” Dewey said, standing on a Samish Bay tidal flat in hip-waders, watching a work crew fill baskets with 4- and 5-year-old oysters.
Shellfish growers, Dewey said, often provide “the first indication that there’s a problem out there, because the animals we are farming are telling us that.”
What the dead larvae are saying is that something is wrong with coastal waters, he said. “Whether it’s climate change” or something else, he said, “it’s likely something that man has done to our environment that is creating this problem for us.”
Alan Trimble, a researcher at the University of Washington, has noticed similar problems in the wild. Sampling seawater in Willapa Bay, Wash., he found that the oyster and clam larvae had disappeared in the last two years from waters where bacteria counts had been high.
Hatchery operators inadvertently pump in the bacteria along with seawater they use to bathe their infant oysters and grow the green algae used to feed larvae. The microbes even drift in on the sea breeze, launched into the air by bubbles bursting at the ocean’s surface.
The shutdown of Oregon State’s experimental hatchery prompted university officials to develop a multistage filtering system that blasts seawater with ultraviolet light to kill bacteria, skims the harmful bacteria’s lingering toxins and then reinoculates the cleaned water with a healthful balance of microbes.
The Whiskey Creek Hatchery has adopted the same filtering system, which helped revive half of its larvae production. The hatchery run by Taylor Shellfish, the largest grower in the country, is experimenting with similar techniques to get its production going again.
Growers have sought the help of university researchers and asked Congress for emergency funds to look for solutions.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds the Molluscan Broodstock Program at Oregon State’s hatchery, is exploring microbial warfare.
Gary Richards, a USDA researcher at the University of Delaware, has been screening seawater samples to find a virus, or bacteriophage, that would seek out and destroy Vibrio tubiashii. Marine bacteria often have such natural enemies. An intervention, such as releasing the right “phage,” as they are called, could avoid “an ecological disaster of monumental proportions,” Richards wrote in an e-mail to scientists and hatchery managers.
As filter feeders, shellfish clean seawater of excess algae and nutrients, maintaining healthy coastal waters. When oysters disappear, as they did in the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary’s water can turn murky and foul.
“With the loss of oysters, the water in the Chesapeake became more turbid, restricting light penetration to plants and sea life, and the higher nutrient levels made algal blooms more common,” Richards wrote. “The West Coast needs to avoid this at all cost.”
So scientists like Donal T. Manahan and Dennis Hedgecock at USC, among others, have spent decades hovering over bubbling tanks of oysters to improve on nature. They’ve been selecting stocks with more productive pedigrees that offer the double benefit of cleaning coastal waters and multiplying the bounty of this gastronomic treat.
“Our hybrids do better than wild oysters,” producing two to three times more oyster meat per acre of shellfish beds, Hedgecock said. Yet as the bacterial outbreak reminded them, the first step of any successful breeding program is to make sure oysters don’t die.
The episode has moved disease resistance to the top of the list of characteristics researchers want to tease out of the mollusk’s genetic code, said Langdon, from Oregon State’s hatchery.
“We need to find those oysters that are most resistant to this bacterium,” he said. “This whole problem has created a new target for the selective-breeding program.”
--
ken.weiss@latimes.com
|
2ae53239bf0c13dfe82a2ccae665b992 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-13-na-centrists13-story.html | Some voters see it as win-win | Some voters see it as win-win
For Amy Rick, the 2008 presidential election is a win-win situation. Both Barack Obama and John McCain support an expansion of stem-cell research that she has battled for in vain under President Bush.
“Both are very solid,” said Rick, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. “We are definitely looking forward with optimism to a change in policy in 2009.”
John Isaacs, an arms control advocate, feels the same way, because both candidates have made nuclear nonproliferation a priority. “We’ll have major progress on nuclear issues no matter who is elected,” said Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World.
Stem-cell research and nuclear weapons are just two examples of a surprising but little-noticed aspect of the 2008 campaign: Democrat Obama and Republican McCain agree on a range of issues that have divided the parties under Bush.
On immigration, faith-based social services, expanded government wiretapping, global warming and more, Obama and McCain have arrived at similar stances -- even as they have spent weeks trying to amplify the differences between them on other issues, such as healthcare and taxes.
Even on Iraq, a signature is sue for both candidates, McCain and Obama have edged toward each other.
The result is that in many areas of policy, the general direction of the next White House seems already set, even if the details are not.
The centrist consensus on many issues underscores an important dynamic in the 2008 political climate: At a time of growing frustration with gridlock and partisan bickering in Washington, politicians with a pragmatic, middle-course tack are thriving. In both parties, the more strident, ideological presidential candidates lost in the primaries.
This development also shows how this presidential election differs from the last. Whereas both political parties in 2004 focused on mobilizing their most ardent supporters, this campaign’s battle is focusing on the political middle.
The convergence is in large measure a result of McCain’s record of defying the GOP party line. But Obama too has been tacking to the center lately on a number of fronts, including trade, government wiretapping policy and the death penalty.
“It debunks the common view that Obama is the most liberal Democratic senator,” Isaacs said. “And it debunks the view that McCain is really the third Bush term.”
To be sure, a McCain presidency would look far different than an Obama presidency. The two candidates have starkly different approaches to healthcare, Social Security and Supreme Court nominations, among other issues. But this makes it all the more surprising that in many areas the rivals are more or less aligned.
Initially, the war in Iraq was one of the hot-button disagreements. Obama made his early opposition to the war a cornerstone of his candidacy; McCain’s calling card has been his support for the war and last year’s troop increase. But in the course of the campaign, their differences have narrowed over the choices facing the next president.
McCain has repeatedly opposed setting timetables for withdrawing U.S. forces, but more recently he has said he wants most troops out by 2013 -- the first time he has mentioned a specific date.
Obama has repeatedly said he would withdraw troops within 16 months of taking office, but he has hedged in ways that would give him wide latitude: He says he will listen to military commanders, will react to events on the ground and may “refine” his plan after his upcoming trip to Iraq.
In other areas of policy:
Both McCain and Obama favor combating global warming with a “cap and trade” system. Under this plan, the government would set limits on emissions. Companies and others who emit gases below those limits would be able to sell credits to those unable to meet the targets.
On the future of nuclear power, the candidates are in the same neighborhood. McCain has laid out a plan to build 45 nuclear power plants. Obama has offered more general support, along with the caveat that a nuclear power expansion be coupled with a resolution on how to safely dispose of waste.
Both have parted ways with Bush and advocated stepped-up negotiations with Russia and other countries to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal.
Both twice voted for legislation -- which Bush twice vetoed -- that would have eased federal restrictions on human embryonic stem-cell research.
Obama voted in the Senate on Wednesday for a bill, bitterly opposed by many liberals, to expand the government’s eavesdropping authority and to protect telephone companies that cooperate with the program from being sued. McCain was not present for the vote but has said he supported the bill.
Both embrace the idea of continuing Bush’s faith-based initiative, a program that funnels federal money to religious charities for social services.
Although those issues are not prominent in the campaign debate, the candidates are also converging on the major issue of immigration -- to the surprise and delight of immigrant advocates and businesses who depend on their labor.
“The best news all year is that after competitive presidential primaries in both parties, we end up with nominees on both sides who get it on immigration,” said John Gay, an official with the National Restaurant Assn. who heads a business coalition favoring a legalization plan for undocumented immigrant workers. “That was by no means a certainty when the campaign got started.”
Most of McCain’s rivals for the GOP nomination had criticized the idea of legalization as amnesty, and many campaign ads played on growing concerns about illegal immigrants.
McCain had been an early supporter of a legalization program for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. During the primary, he distanced himself from that plan and said he had learned his lesson, that Americans want the border secured first.
But now McCain has shifted his emphasis again, indicating that as president he would push for broad legislation that tackles all of the country’s immigration troubles, including the legalization question.
Obama speaks more directly to the idea of legalization, and McCain addresses it in subtle terms, but advocates say the position is essentially the same.
“Sen. McCain never really repudiated his [original] position,” said Tamar Jacoby, who heads a business coalition called ImmigrationWorks USA. “Saying you’re going to do it in phases doesn’t mean you’re not going to do it.”
--
janet.hook@latimes.com
--
peter.wallsten@latimes.com
--
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
|
1a9084aaff77137abb6913010cfac4e4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-13-op-sides13-story.html | Who listens to blogging heads? | Who listens to blogging heads?
Daily Kos. Little Green Footballs. Talking Points Memo. Instapundit. Firedoglake. Captain’s Quarters. These are among the thousands of political blogs that are increasingly a factor in U.S. politics. Bloggers and their readers are courted by politicians, as occurred when seven Democratic presidential candidates appeared at the August 2007 convention organized by the readers and posters at Daily Kos, a liberal political blog. Bloggers can also shape the news surrounding election campaigns. It was Huffington Post, a liberal political blog, that first reported Barack Obama’s comment about small-town Americans clinging to “guns and religion.”
Although political blogs have become a familiar presence in politics, we know less about their readers: How many there are, who they are and why they choose their favorite blogs.
In fall 2006, political scientists, including us, representing about 30 universities conducted a survey of 16,000 Americans, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. The survey asked respondents whether they read blogs and, if so, which ones. We analyzed the answers, and the result is the first detailed portrait of political blog readers.
About 34% of the respondents said they read blogs, but only 14% named at least one blog that focuses on politics. Who are these political blog readers?
Compared with those who don’t read political blogs, they are more likely to have a college degree and, obviously, are more interested in politics. They are more likely to identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans, rather than as independents, and are more likely to call themselves liberals or conservatives rather than moderates. Political blog readers are more likely to vote, give money to candidates or simply talk about politics. They live and breathe politics.
It is their political passion that most distinguishes readers of political blogs. In terms of gender, race, age and income, they are not much different from those who do not read blogs.
Political blog readers tend to read just a few blogs. About 40% of them named only one political blog they regularly visit, and 90% said they read four or fewer blogs.
They also tend to visit blogs that share their viewpoint. Think of such blogs as their red meat. Indeed, 94% read only blogs on one side of the ideological spectrum, with 90% of liberals and 90% of conservatives sticking to like-minded blogs. Self-proclaimed “moderates” don’t blog shop either, with 89% exclusively reading either liberal or conservative blogs.
To determine just how polarized blog readers are, we constructed a measure of political ideology by drawing on blog readers’ attitudes toward stem cell research, abortion, the Iraq war, the minimum wage and capital gains tax cuts. Using this measure, we then arrayed respondents from left to right. Here’s what we found.
Readers of liberal blogs were clustered at the far left, and readers of conservative blogs were bunched at the far right. There was little, if any, overlap between them on these issues. The two sides have less in common politically than, say, liberals who watch PBS and conservatives who watch Fox News.
One caveat, however: We don’t know if blogs polarize their readers, or if highly ideological readers gravitate to blogs that reflect their partisanship.
How might political blogs and their readers affect the presidential campaign?
They will not change many voters’ minds because the vast majority of their readers are already members of the choir and hold strong opinions about politics. So don’t expect political blogs to make Democrats vote for John McCain or Republicans embrace Barack Obama. If political blogs change opinions, they will more likely do so indirectly -- by uncovering new information that is then amplified and discussed in media that reach a broader, and less partisan, cross section of the public.
Blogs might affect the presidential campaign in another way: by encouraging their readers to participate in politics.
We don’t mean to vote, because blog readers are already habitual voters and need no extra encouragement from blogs to go to the polls. Instead, blogs may prod their readers to engage in other kinds of political activity, such as giving more to candidates or registering and mobilizing new voters. Because fewer people habitually donate to politicians or mobilize others to vote, blogs have more potential to change these habits. Indeed, some blogs put mobilization over persuasion.
As one contributor to Daily Kos put it, “This is not a site for conservatives and progressives to meet and discuss their differences
It may take a long time to build this kind of infrastructure. But in the short term, political blogs can still motivate enough “netroots” activists to attract the attention of candidates. The 2008 election may tell us just how much blogs helped in electing the winning candidate.
|
ed93443847d77e25a1e85b15d4fd672d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-14-fi-fannie14-story.html | Mortgage giants draw aid package | Mortgage giants draw aid package
Acting to prevent a severe disruption of the mortgage market, the federal government stepped in Sunday with plans for a sweeping aid package designed to bolster confidence in battered home-loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The Bush administration said it would ask Congress to authorize the Treasury Department to lend Fannie and Freddie more money than current limits permit and buy stock in the two companies.
Also Sunday, the Federal Reserve agreed to permit the companies to borrow directly from the central bank, as investment firms were allowed to do after the near-collapse of Bear Stearns Cos. in March. The money would tide Fannie and Freddie over while the administration and Congress rush the emergency measures through.
Both the companies and the government said they did not fear a collapse but that assurances were needed to soothe Wall Street, where the companies’ shares lost nearly half their value last week.
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies,” Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in disclosing the administration’s plan. “Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction.”
The two own or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion in mortgage debt, and the new proposals would allow them to borrow billions of dollars, both to shore up their finances and to expand.
“This is basically a safety net,” said Assistant Treasury Secretary Michelle Davis. “We do not expect to need to execute on either [the increased Treasury lending or the government stock purchase] immediately.”
The government stopped short of an outright takeover of the two companies, which have suffered billions of dollars in losses as rising numbers of Americans default on their mortgages.
Nevertheless, the plan amounted to a blunt acknowledgment that what began as a stock-market sell-off by jittery investors had grown in intensity and begun to threaten the functioning of the mortgage market and health of the broader U.S. economy.
“It is very dramatic and historic,” said Ed Grebeck, chief executive of Tempus Advisors, a debt-strategy firm in Stamford, Conn. “The government must have felt it had no choice because of the situation in the residential property market combined with mortgage defaults of an unprecedented nature.”
The government’s plans are aimed at persuading Wall Street to renew its faith in the operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to reassure holders of the companies’ bonds that the government stands behind the debt and to allow the firms not only to continue running but to expand operations so they can ease the grip of the credit crunch on the nation’s economy.
The plan calls on Congress to increase the companies’ existing $2.25-billion credit lines at Treasury and to allow the department to take the extremely rare step of buying equity stakes, if needed, to bolster the companies’ capital.
The plan also calls for tighter regulation of the mortgage giant by having the Federal Reserve play a role in overseeing them.
The 5-0 vote by the Fed’s Board of Governors to lend money directly to Fannie and Freddie marked the second time this year that the Fed had stepped in to help bolster the nation’s jittery financial system. In March, as Bear Stearns nearly failed, it allowed similar borrowing by investment banks.
Though publicly owned, Fannie and Freddie were chartered by the government and are relied on to grease the wheels of the housing market. They buy mortgages and mortgage-backed securities with money borrowed in the credit markets, and any sign that they can’t get access to funding could throw another monkey wrench into the troubled housing market.
Between them, Fannie and Freddie have about $90 billion in capital as a cushion against future loan losses. By contrast, the two companies lost a combined $11.8 billion in the nine months ended March 31.
But investors fear that U.S. home prices will continue to decline and that the losses on loans the companies either own or guarantee will get much worse over the next year, depleting their remaining capital.
The government took action early Sunday night in advance of a crucial debt sale by Freddie Mac scheduled for today. Originally viewed as a routine refunding of maturing debt, Freddie was expected to sell $3 billion of short-term notes in a litmus test of the two companies’ ability to raise cash for routine operations.
“That’ll pretty much tell you what the global markets think of Fannie and Freddie and the broader U.S. residential real estate situation,” Grebeck said. If debt investors demand that Freddie Mac pay significantly higher interest rates than usual compared with Treasury securities, “that’ll basically establish global-market skepticism.”
The plan is certain to be highly controversial, with critics saying it bails out shareholders of companies that took excessive risks during the housing boom in recent years.
Critics of government intervention say such rescues encourage irresponsible investing -- thus bringing about financial-market bubbles -- because investors believe the government will bail them out at taxpayer expense.
The so-called moral hazard became a big issue after the Fed-engineered rescue of Bear Stearns.
“If the government won’t let anybody fail, where’s the penalty?” said Kingman Penniman, head of KDP Investment Advisors Inc., a bond-research firm in Montpelier, Vt.
Paulson alluded to that issue, saying: “Use of either the line of credit or the equity investment would carry terms and conditions necessary to protect the taxpayer.”
Nearly every government agency that has anything to do with the two companies, as well as the top executives of the firms themselves, issued statements Sunday night praising the Fed and the Treasury actions.
But there was at least one hint that trouble may be brewing on Capitol Hill as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) lambasted the White House’s performance in the current housing crisis.
“The administration’s failure to prevent bad lending practices has caused unprecedented hardship in the form of record foreclosures and market turmoil,” Dodd said. “Now, homeowners across the country and our entire financial system are suffering the consequences.”
Dodd’s remarks were a jarring counterpoint to those made by others involved in the weekend talks leading to the government actions.
Richard F. Syron, Freddie Mac’s chief executive, said he was “heartened” by the Federal Reserve and Treasury actions, saying they “should go a long way toward reassuring world markets that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will continue to support America’s homeowners.”
Similarly, Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel H. Mudd said he appreciated the “expressions of support” for his firm and looked forward to “swift passage of the new legislative proposals” advanced by Treasury.
--
walter.hamilton@latimes.com
peter.gosselin@latimes.com
Hamilton reported from New York, Gosselin from Washington.
Times staff writers Tom Petruno and Maura Reynolds contributed to this report.
|
328c28c275730cf4f4e4e35b0126702e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-14-me-cheat14-story.html | SAT, ACT cheats face no penalty | SAT, ACT cheats face no penalty
A group of students at a Los Angeles high school is suspected of cheating on the ACT college entrance exam by paying a former student, who used fraudulent identification, to take the tests. The testing agency recently began investigating the claims, which could result in cancellation of scores provided to colleges.
But those colleges will not be told why the scores are invalid, nor will the students’ high school be clued in.
In all likelihood, the students will simply retake the test with few consequences, the result of a little-known policy by the ACT and the College Board, which owns the rival SAT, to keep such irregularities confidential. Each year, millions of stressed-out students take the two tests, hoping a good score will secure them a spot at the nation’s top colleges.
But most students know little of what occurs when a score is in dispute. And the policies of the two nonprofit test companies seem to satisfy no one. Some complain that scores are arbitrarily canceled without evidence, while others criticize the companies for giving a free pass to cheaters.
If a score is invalidated, colleges receive a fairly generic alert like this one sent recently to UCLA:
“The ACT cancels scores for a variety of reasons, including illness of the examinee, mis-timing of the test, disturbances or irregularity at the testing site. . . . It is the ACT policy to treat the ACT’s reasoning for canceling a specific score as confidential.”
The agencies say their only concern is the integrity of scores, and that it would be impractical to expose student cheaters or try to exact punishment, such as barring them from retaking the test or noting infractions on transcripts.
“We don’t tell schools or anyone else; we simply cancel the score,” said ACT spokesman Ed Colby. “What we’re trying to do is make sure the scores that we send to colleges are valid. It’s not our intention to go around punishing students who make mistakes or who’ve done something they shouldn’t have done.”
The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT for the College Board, had a similar response.
“The SAT does play a very important role in the college admissions process, and to prohibit somebody from taking the test . . . that might hinder their educational future, seems a bit extreme,” spokesman Tom Ewing said.
But critics assert that such evasions let student cheaters off the hook.
“Their position is thoroughly unaccountable and promotes unethical conduct,” said Michael Josephson, president of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics. “What they’re basically saying is ‘Try it. You have nothing to lose.’ Why not say to someone who robbed a 7-Eleven, ‘Please give back the merchandise or pay for it, but we don’t want you to feel bad about stealing.’ ”
He argued that the stakes are much higher than just invalidated test scores. With students spending hours preparing for the exams and their parents paying for tutoring, the exams remain important factors in college admission, even though some colleges have stopped requiring them.
“If you put up for auction a guaranteed spot into Harvard or UCLA, people would pay tons of money -- that’s how much they’re stealing when they falsely get a place they don’t deserve,” Josephson said.
According to the two companies, cheating on the tests is relatively rare and prompts only about 2,000 investigations on average out of the more than 3 million tests administered each year. Most cheating accusations come from students or exam proctors and typically involve a student copying from another’s exam.
In a recent high-profile case of cheating on Advanced Placement exams at Orange County’s Trabuco Hills High School, students came forward to alert test officials to the use of cellphones and other irregularities. Ten students acknowledged cheating, but the school is catching heat for not providing adequate supervision.
And many students and parents are angry with the ETS and College Board for deciding to cancel the scores of all 385 test takers.
Students can cancel SAT or ACT scores for any reason. If the agency challenges a score, students can retake the test -- usually without charge -- in a more controlled setting, provide information to explain why the original score is accurate, or retake the exam the next time it is given.
Some high schools act on their own to punish students whose scores have been canceled, sometimes with suspensions if they admit to cheating.
But the head of the private Los Angeles school whose students were identified as being under investigation by the ACT said he was unaware of the incident and when he heard about it and contacted the company, officials there would not confirm it. The school is not being identified because there is no proof of wrongdoing by its students.
Colleges also may question students whose scores have been canceled. With 50,000 applications each year, UCLA receives only a handful of SAT or ACT score cancellations, Admissions Director Vu Tran said.
“When we receive notification from the ACT or SAT, the first thing we do is check to see if the student will admit to cheating,” he said. “We give the students all due process. But, of course, if the [agency] was specific and spelled it out, it would be a lot easier.”
Cheating on high school and college campuses is not uncommon. A survey by the Josephson Institute, for example, found that 60% of high schoolers reported cheating on an exam during the preceding year.
Donald L. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor who has studied cheating, said college-bound students perceive that because of the use of proctors and seating arrangements, fraud on the SAT is difficult -- although many say they would try if they thought they could get away with it.
McCabe said the test companies may be reluctant to take action against cheaters because they fear being sued. But Ewing said that was not so.
“We could stand behind whatever investigative results we come up with,” he said. “We’ve had instances of students taking us to court, and we have prevailed. For us, it’s all about the confidentiality.”
Students taking the two tests sign confidentiality agreements and promise not to misbehave, but most are unaware of the testing agencies’ policies -- and most professional tutors are not eager to let them know.
“I’ve known about this for 25 years but did not believe it served anybody’s interest to be told there were no consequences for cheating on tests,” said Paul Kanarek, president of the Princeton Review of Southern California. “It’s not the right ethical message to send.”
For some critics, the issue is not cheating but the imbalance of power between the test agencies and students. Students must put in time and effort to retake tests and those who are cleared of cheating may nevertheless remain suspect.
“The test giver investigates, prosecutes, judges and acts as jury and can withhold test scores,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director at FairTest, a Massachusetts-based group that promotes fair and open testing. “There’s no way to be sure who’s right.” --
carla.rivera@latimes.com
|
b905e97d21c41ffab50127bcc8be7367 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-14-me-speech14-story.html | That’s not a phone headset | That’s not a phone headset
The first time someone snatched the speech processor from behind her son’s ear, Hilda Giron got it back. She had been shopping for groceries and shouted to the cashier to watch 3-year-old Jose while she took off after the young thief and his accomplice.
The boys probably thought they had grabbed a Bluetooth headset, which are in high demand now that California requires drivers to use hands-free cellphones. Luckily, the boys ditched the $6,000 earpiece -- the external part of Jose’s implanted hearing device -- as they fled.
Giron found it in the market parking lot, still intact.
Then a week ago, she and Jose were having lunch at a McDonald’s on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard when two teenagers grabbed the earpiece and ran. This time, the thieves got away.
“He kept asking, ‘Where is it? Where is it?’ ” Giron said in Spanish, repeating words the processor had helped Jose learn to say.
Advocates for the deaf at first welcomed the Bluetooth craze: Deaf people with cochlear implants, they thought, wouldn’t stand out so much if everyone wore little gadgets behind their ears. But some now fear that Bluetooth headsets will become as popular with thieves as iPods -- and that deaf people will become inadvertent targets.
Jose Franco was 2 when he received his cochlear implant.
The electronic device has interior and exterior parts: an interior receiver and an exterior earpiece and transmitter.
The tiny receiver, barely thicker than a credit card, is surgically implanted in the skull. The earpiece contains a battery, a microphone and a computer to process and send signals to the receiver via a bottle-cap-size transmitter.
Magnets connect the transmitter to the receiver.
Regular hearing aids help people with limited hearing by amplifying sounds. Cochlear implants convert sounds into electrical signals that directly stimulate the auditory nerve, bypassing the parts of the inner ear that do not function.
The implant does not restore hearing. But with intensive practice, the brain can learn to interpret the impulses, allowing many deaf people to learn to speak and understand words.
Giron and her husband, Elias Franco, didn’t know anything about cochlear implants when Jose failed the hearing test for newborns that is mandatory in California.
The mother of a daughter 17 years older than Jose, Giron emigrated from Guatemala in 2000. Her hopes for her first U.S.-born child shattered when she learned he was deaf.
“I felt as though heaven and earth just collapsed on each other,” Giron said.
She turned for help to a doctor at California Hospital Medical Center, where Jose was born. She can’t remember the doctor’s name, but said she’ll always remember his kindness.
“Don’t worry,” she remembered him saying. “You’re going to be in good hands.”
The hospital referred Jose to the House Ear Institute, a nonprofit research and treatment center, for more tests. He was fitted with hearing aids at 6 months and referred to the John Tracy Clinic, a nonprofit education center for parents of children with hearing loss.
For about 95% of such children, there is no family history of deafness, said Barbara Hecht, president of the clinic. And there often is no explanation. It comes, she said, “out of the blue.”
Like most parents on first arrival, Giron and Franco were still in shock.
“There’s tremendous grieving going on,” Hecht said. “It’s almost like a death in the family, of the dreams you had for your child. Our job is to put the pieces of the dream back together.”
Franco, who met Giron after emigrating from Guatemala in 2003, took months to accept that his first child could not hear.
“I thought it was a big mistake, a misdiagnosis,” he said through a translator. “Probably we men react differently than mothers do. Even after the exams confirmed it, I had this inner voice telling me he was going to hear, to talk.”
In ways Jose’s parents never imagined, he has.
The clinic, in a leafy enclave near USC, is named after the deaf son of its founder, Louise Tracy, and her husband, actor Spencer Tracy. (John Tracy died last year at age 82.)
Bucking the conventions of the day, Louise Tracy taught John from infancy to interact with the world. The clinic she founded in 1942 began as a support group for mothers who did not want to send their deaf children to state boarding schools.
At her insistence, the clinic does not charge families for its services. Instead, it requires at least one parent to commit to a regimen of individual counseling, family support groups and preschool classes until the child is 6 and ready to enter regular kindergarten.
As much as her family needed the income, Giron gave up a job she loved at a bakery to go to school with Jose.
“Typically, kids pick up a language incidentally,” she said. “With a deaf child, you have to talk with him over and over. He does hear it. His brain is learning how to memorize it.”
After Jose received the implant, Giron learned to talk to him on his “implant side” and to take off the earpiece when he plays on plastic slides so static electricity won’t erase the programming.
When Franco doesn’t have a construction job -- more often the case now with the housing downturn -- he too attends counseling and classes. Among other things, he is learning to be patient.
“Sometimes when you want your child to make progress and it takes longer than you expect, that’s when you feel down,” he said. “But when they do something you didn’t expect them to do, you feel this overwhelming sensation.”
Jose can claim accomplishments that might surprise the hearing world. In class one morning last week, he sang, “The ants go marching one by one,” and flung up his arms for “Hurrah! Hurrah!” And like many of his classmates, he speaks in not one language but two: Spanish and English.
The theft of the processor has not halted his progress. Cochlear implants come with a backup earpiece.
Most insurance plans cover the $40,000 to $60,000 cost of the implant, and for low- income children like Jose, California Family Services and Medi-Cal pick up the tab.
But replacing the backup will be up to Giron and Franco. For now, they fasten the remaining earpiece to a strap, clip the strap to Jose’s T-shirt -- and worry.
“He hates taking it off,” Giron said.
To see how a cochlear implant works, go to www.fda.gov /cdrh/cochlear/index.html.
--
mary.engel@latimes.com
|
cca79db03031fc5c63750c6c0e3fd79c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-14-sp-dodgers14-story.html | Billingsley continues strong run by pitchers | Billingsley continues strong run by pitchers
The Dodgers went into the All-Star break still in search of their identity.
They closed the first half of their season Sunday with a 9-1 victory over the Florida Marlins at Dodger Stadium to move to within a game of first-place Arizona in the National League West, but they remained under .500 at 46-49.
They pounded Andrew Miller for seven runs in the first two innings to prevent a four-game sweep, but the offensive explosion served only as a reminder of what they aren’t doing frequently enough.
“We certainly expected our record to be better,” Manager Joe Torre said, “but we also didn’t expect to be a game out of first place. It’s sort of a mixed bag. In the second half, we have to be more consistent.”
Salvation for the Dodgers has come in the form of pitching. The Dodgers enter the break with a staff earned-run average of 3.63 that is among the best in baseball. Chad Billingsley struck out a career-high 13 batters over seven innings of one-run ball Sunday, improving his record to 9-8 in the type of performance that has long ceased to be thought of as anything out of the ordinary for a Dodgers starter.
“The pitching staff has risen to the occasion,” third base coach Larry Bowa said. “Without them, we’d be 14, 15 games out.”
They’d be out of contention, Bowa said, because of the inconsistency of the hitters.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with ability,” Bowa said. “It has to do with focus.”
The Dodgers rank near the bottom in the league in runs, hits, doubles, home runs and runs batted in.
“We’ve got a lot of things we have to improve on -- driving in runs, scoring runs,” outfielder Matt Kemp said.
The young players aren’t the only ones being blamed.
Torre spoke on Sunday morning with Andruw Jones, who tied a franchise record with five strikeouts the previous night.
Jones, who was 0 for 3 on Sunday, blamed his struggles on returning too quickly from a minor league rehabilitation assignment in an effort to make up for the injury to Juan Pierre and on working on a new upright batting stance. Jones said that on Saturday night, he made the mistake of expecting to see fastballs and, as a result, lunged forward at what turned out to be breaking pitches.
Bowa conceded that losing No. 1 and No. 2 hitters Rafael Furcal and Pierre to the disabled list “kills us.” But he also said that the Dodgers can’t count on them to return.
Opening-day starter Brad Penny remains sidelined and closer Takashi Saito, who had to make a premature exit on Saturday night because of tightness in his elbow, could be added to the DL. He will undergo an MRI exam today.
Jones and Nomar Garciaparra spent a substantial portion of the season hurt and were activated July 4.
The Dodgers’ young players believe they’re close to turning a corner, in part because they’re becoming used to playing under their new manager.
“We’re getting more accustomed to the style Joe wants,” outfielder Andre Ethier said. “It’s not easy changing in a short period.”
Torre said that he’s also learning about his players -- but, more important, the players are learning about themselves. “They’re finding out their capabilities as individuals,” Torre said.
In other words, what they’re capable of doing and what they’re incapable of doing.
Torre and Bowa seemed particularly pleased with the progress made by Ethier, who leads the Dodgers with 11 home runs.
Even the ever-demanding Bowa said he drew optimism from the way the Dodgers pounded Miller. Their first six hitters scored in a three-hit, three-walk inning to give Billingsley a 6-1 cushion. The Dodgers extended their lead to 7-1 in the second, when a double by Garciaparra drove in Kemp, who led off the inning with a double.
Kemp was three for four with two runs, two runs batted in and a walk. Garciaparra and second baseman Luis Maza were two for three with a run.
Russell Martin, the Dodgers’ lone representative at the All-Star game on Tuesday, was 0 for 3 but drew a pair of walks and scored a run.
“It was a rough series for us,” Kemp said, “but we ended on a good note.”
The Dodgers restart their season Friday in Arizona.
--
dylan.hernandez@latimes.com
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
L.A. story
The Angels head into the All-Star break six games ahead of Oakland in the AL West. The Dodgers are 46-49 but only one game behind first-place Arizona in the NL West.
*--* Arizona 47-48 - Dodgers 46-49 1 San Fran. 40-55 7 Colorado 39-57 8 1/2 San Diego 37-58 10 *--*
*--* ANGELS 57-38 - Oakland 51-44 6 Texas 50-46 7 1/2 Seattle 37-58 20 *--*
|
2b1ad390d2e74a25aaaa298b739d96b5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-15-et-quick15.s2-story.html | Kate Hudson added to ‘Nine’ | Kate Hudson added to ‘Nine’
Kate Hudson is the latest addition to the star-studded cast of “Nine,” an adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical. She joins Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz.
The film, about an Italian film director, will be directed by Rob Marshall for producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Production is scheduled to begin Oct. 10. “Nine,” which originally opened on Broadway in 1982 and was revived in 2003, is based on Fellini’s autobiographical film “8 1/2 .”
|
216eabb7c569cea9ac5fa1c1f1be3569 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-15-fi-hiller15-story.html | Publisher of Times resigns amid cuts | Publisher of Times resigns amid cuts
Los Angeles Times Publisher David D. Hiller resigned Monday after a 21-month tenure that encompassed the departures of two Times editors and plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in the newspaper’s history amid a continuing slide in advertising revenue.
Tribune Co. -- which owns The Times and other media assets, including the Chicago Tribune and KTLA-TV Channel 5, as well as the Chicago Cubs baseball team -- named no successor to Hiller.
Although newspapers across the country have been suffering severe revenue declines, The Times’ performance under Hiller has been particularly disappointing. The paper has experienced the steepest drop in cash flow of any in the Tribune chain of 11 daily newspapers. Hiller also acquired a reputation among Tribune brass as an indecisive leader, according to senior Times executives; The Times has been without an advertising manager since February, for example.
Responding to the criticism of his management style, Hiller said, “It’s fair to say that along with our colleagues here, we tried to make the decisions that were best for the paper.”
A statement he e-mailed to Times staff suggested that he was ousted by Tribune Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Zell: “Sam’s the boss and he gets to pick his own quarterback.”
Tribune Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels said he expected to name a new publisher by the end of the summer. In the interim, he said, he would oversee operations at The Times in tandem with Tribune Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Gerry Spector.
Hiller’s departure came the day Times managers began implementing a newsroom cutback of 150 people, part of a paperwide reduction of 250. The newsroom layoffs represent about 17% of the editorial staff at the newspaper and its website.
The cuts were ordered in an effort to husband the newspaper’s cash flow in an environment of declining advertising revenue, but they have triggered a debate -- similar to that raging throughout the newspaper industry -- over how they might affect the newspaper’s ability to serve the community.
“The overall picture of what’s happening to The Times is simply not good,” said George Kieffer, a prominent Los Angeles attorney who has expressed concerns in the past about the effect of cutbacks on the newspaper’s civic role.
“There has never been a time when Greater Los Angeles has been more in need of civic education, the central role of The Times,” he said.
The announcement of Hiller’s departure came the same day as the resignation of Ann Marie Lipinski, 52, as editor of the Chicago Tribune.
Lipinski will be replaced by Gerould W. Kern, 58, a former associate and deputy managing editor at the newspaper who has been vice president of editorial at the company’s Tribune Publishing unit since 2003.
Lipinski said her last day at the newspaper would be Thursday. Her departure comes scarcely a week after the Chicago paper announced deep cuts in its staffing and number of weekly pages. But in a memo to her staff excerpted in the newspaper, she said of her decision to leave after seven years as editor that “it would be inaccurate to attribute it to any one event.”
Hiller, 55, was the third Times publisher named since the newspaper was acquired in 2000 by Chicago-based Tribune. He succeeded Jeffrey M. Johnson, who lost his job after publicly resisting cost-cutting measures ordered by the parent company in October 2006. One month later, Hiller asked Editor Dean Baquet, who had joined with Johnson in opposing the cutbacks, to resign.
Baquet was replaced by James E. O’Shea, a longtime editor at the Chicago Tribune. O’Shea departed in January, also while protesting cuts ordered by corporate management.
By then, ownership of Tribune Co. had changed hands. The company was taken private in December in a debt-heavy $8.2-billion transaction led by Zell, a Chicago entrepreneur. The new management has struggled to maintain cash flow at the company’s newspapers and 23 television stations amid a sharp nationwide slowdown in advertising, a crucial measure given its high leverage: The company’s annual debt payments are close to $1 billion.
The Cubs and their landmark ballpark, Wrigley Field, are expected to fetch more than $1 billion for Tribune when they are sold, probably later this year. A $650-million sale of Newsday, the company’s suburban New York daily newspaper, is pending. Proceeds from both transactions are likely to be used to pare debt.
Hiller took up his post at The Times in October 2006, fresh from a stint as publisher of the corporate flagship Chicago Tribune. Before that he had served Tribune Co. as senior vice president for development and then as head of Tribune Interactive, where he was responsible for the company’s Internet strategy.
A lawyer, Hiller was a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and for two years served at the Justice Department during the Reagan administration, where his colleagues included John G. Roberts Jr., the current chief justice, and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Hiller arrived in Los Angeles with a reputation as a personable and engaging executive with a predilection for singing in public from a repertoire of show tunes -- but with unmistakable orders from Chicago to keep a grip on the bottom line.
Nevertheless, his most prominent turns in the public eye were connected with the entertainment world. Soon after becoming publisher, Hiller expressed interest in singing the national anthem at a Dodgers or Angels game. He got his wish at Dodger Stadium last month, just as rumors of new staff cuts began to swirl about The Times’ newsroom.
“David’s tenure here was marked by unprecedented financial challenges and economic instability,” Editor Russ Stanton said in a statement. “He was extremely supportive of our efforts to restructure our newsrooms for the long term, and he provided us with the resources that led to the enormous growth in readership of latimes.com. I wish him the very best. We look forward to working with his successor to keep the Los Angeles Times an indispensable institution that produces great journalism every day.”
--
michael.hiltzik@latimes.com
|
56cbee9b97d0c24b68afbd358c6eb726 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-15-me-landslide15-story.html | Mud, boulders destroy hatchery | Mud, boulders destroy hatchery
A massive weekend debris flow in the Eastern Sierra, triggered by a monsoon-like storm, destroyed 25 homes and wiped out the entire stock of one of California’s oldest fish hatcheries along U.S. 395, authorities said Monday.
Emergency response crews were clearing boulders and mud from the scene along the south fork of Oak Creek just north of Independence, the seat of sparsely populated Inyo County, about 170 miles north of Los Angeles.
No injuries were reported. The slide, caused by unusually heavy rains Saturday, hit a region that was blackened by a forest fire one year ago. It destroyed the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery’s brood stock of a strain of rainbow trout that had been nurtured since 1916.
The full extent of the damage was not realized until Monday morning when authorities investigated the scene along heavily wooded Oak Creek.
Manager Robert Wakefield surveyed the damage to his historic Eastern Sierra fish hatchery. He shook his head and said, “We are going to work hard to make it better, but this place will never be the same.”
Wakefield said at least 3,000 3-year-old fish were buried by boulders and other debris that washed down from alpine slopes.
“About 15% to 20% of the 40-acre hatchery is covered in mud,” Wakefield said. The flood reconfigured the stream and “destroyed my water supply,” he said.
Andy Herrera, assistant fish hatchery manager, said he was at home watching television about 5:30 p.m. Saturday when “I heard a loud rumbling. I looked out the screen door and saw water and boulders taking apart our spawning houses.”
“We were expecting rain that night, but not acres of mud and boulders,” he said. “Within minutes, the spawning houses were gone and boulders rolled through the master bedroom of my neighbor’s home. There was no one in it except four cats, and two of them were lost.
“At my house,” he added. “There is mud up to the windows.”
A community meeting was scheduled for 5 p.m. today at the Independence Region Hall. Among those expected to answer questions about the local disaster will be representatives from the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross.
On Monday, Oak Creek had turned the color of chocolate, and vultures and ravens were hovering over the dead trout, which weighed 4 to 5 pounds each.
Dozens of trophy trout floated belly-up in what had been a scenic pond shaded by stately elm trees in front of the hatchery’s massive stone walls.
The hatchery -- the second-oldest in California -- is especially important in the state system as an egg producer.
That was only one of the reasons that Bruce Ivey, director of a support group called Friends of Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery, was concerned about the devastation.
“Hatcheries statewide and along the Eastern Sierra are facing problems,” he said.
About 14 miles north on U.S. 395, Fish Springs Hatchery, one of the largest in the region, is scheduled for expansion, provided it can overcome worries about adversely affecting the local aquifer. Eighty miles to the north, Hot Creek State Fish Hatchery has been invaded by zebra mussels.
Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery had been targeted for closure in the past. Now, Ivey fears state authorities may decide it’s not worth refurbishing. “We can’t let that happen.”
--
louis.sahagun@latimes.com
|
e030f5d448f6daecc1b7091a00b9735c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-15-na-onthemedia15-story.html | Has it gotten so difficult to recognize satire? | Has it gotten so difficult to recognize satire?
We’ve already scratched thrift, candor and brevity off the list of virtues in this presidential cycle, so why not eliminate humor too?
That seems to be the fondest wish of a few commentators and legions of Internet blatherers, who spent much of Monday vilifying New Yorker magazine for this week’s cover, which depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as a couple of gun-toting, flag-burning, America-hating terrorists.
It seemed fairly obvious to me, my 8-year-old and, likely, the majority of readers of one of America’s finest magazines that the cover drawing by Barry Blitt was a parody. In other words (for those still struggling with the concept), the joke was not on the Obamas but on the knuckle-walkers who would do them harm by trying to turn a couple of fresh-scrubbed Harvard Law grads into something foreign and scary.
Yet online discussion boards from coast to coast overflowed with anger and despair that the image of the golden young senator from Illinois had somehow been taken in vain.
A grass-roots organizer in Chicago named Mark S. Allen made his complaint to one of the Chicago Tribune’s blogs.
“I will NEVER purchase or read The New Yorker Magazine again!!” mewled Allen. “I found your current cover on the Obamas extremely insulting, hurtful, racist and not worthy of the reward of my continuing to purchase The New Yorker.”
That was mild compared to the shame that Chuck-in-Wichita heaped on the New Yorker via his comment to the Los Angeles Times’ politics blog, Top of the Ticket. Chuck failed “to see the humor in that rag they call a magazine.” Not content to merely boycott the magazine, he pledged “to never even visit New York, let alone live there.”
But it was not only the general public that fumed. Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, running for L.A. County supervisor, woofed on cable TV about the outrage of it all.
Chicago Tribune columnist/blogger Eric Zorn gave notice that he is waiting for the magazine to launch an equal-ink takedown depicting John McCain as “about 150 years old and spouting demented non-sequiturs in the middle of a violent temper tantrum while, in the corner, his wife is passed out next to a bottle of pills.”
Actually, someone who has maintained a little more perspective already obliged. David Horsey, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, riffed on the Blitt illustration with a McCain portrait of his own.
Horsey’s image shows a drooling, wheelchair-bound McCain, singing “Bomb bomb bomb -- bomb bomb Iran,” as wife Cindy pours dozens of pills from a vial and implores her husband, “Take some of my meds to get through the inaugural parade!”
Playing off the New Yorker cartoon, in which an Osama bin Laden portrait adorns the Oval Office, an American flag aflame in the fireplace, Horsey poses the McCains in front of a Dick Cheney portrait, their fire burning a copy of the Constitution.
Lest anyone miss the point, the cartoonist dedicates the piece to all those “irony-challenged literalists who were upset by the New Yorker’s Obama-as-a-Muslim magazine cover.”
That’s coming from a self-described progressive who has put a world of hurt on President Bush but who said in an interview that he sees a disturbing “lack of irony or sense of humor” among some Obama supporters.
Jon Stewart regularly rides roughshod over candidates of both parties but hears nary a whimper. That’s as it should be. The “Daily Show” host is, after all, lampooning a system overflowing with absurdity and irony.
Audiences understand those broadsides as satire but fret like kindergarten teachers when it comes to one image on a printed page. “It’s like they need a flashing light saying, ‘It’s a joke,’ or they lose the capacity to judge,” Horsey said.
And speaking of judgment, how is it that Obamites, who are justifiably furious over threats to civil liberties under the current administration, suddenly want to play censor when the 1st Amendment puts their man even remotely on the hot seat?
If Barry Blitt is anything, it’s brilliantly provocative. The New Yorker artist sent up the furor over gays in the military by playing off a famous end-of-World-War-II photo: Instead of a sailor and a pretty girl in amorous embrace, he drew two male sailors doubled over in a lip-lock.
A few years back, Blitt spoofed the idea of President Bush as a maid -- complete with apron and feather duster -- to the shadow president, a scowling, cigar-smoking Cheney.
In March, no one seemed to mind when Blitt had Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama in the same bed (maybe there is progress?), both in their pajamas and lunging to be the one to answer that proverbial 3 a.m. phone call on some global crisis.
Obama’s supporters are desperately afraid, and not without cause, that his image and record will be distorted.
The Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar took the New Yorker to task for providing an image that plays into all the reactionary stereotypes of “anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism.”
But those who are going to fantasize about the Obamas as jihadists or un-American won’t rely on a simple drawing. They’ll recycle old pictures of the senator in African robes, or rely on some creative YouTube splicing.
The Obama campaign felt it had to reject the New Yorker cartoon as “tasteless and offensive.” The McCain camp quickly reached the same verdict.
Obama was the one man capable of putting the “furor” in its proper context. But he didn’t.
Instead of his terse no comment, he should have played one of his strongest cards -- his cool -- responding something like: “Hey, I thought Michelle looked pretty good in camouflage.”
--
james.rainey@latimes.com
|
f82d3df2424448d6e80450872880096e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-16-et-hume16-story.html | Fox’s Hume reportedly leaving ‘Special Report’ | Fox’s Hume reportedly leaving ‘Special Report’
Brit Hume, one of Fox News’ leading on-air figures, plans to leave his political news program, “Special Report,” at the end of the year and serve as a senior political analyst at the cable channel, according to sources close to the situation.
Hume, who joined Fox News shortly after its inception in 1996, anchors its daily 3 p.m. Pacific time political program, the top-rated cable news show at that hour, and serves as managing editor of the network’s Washington bureau. His contract expires at the end of the year.
Sources familiar with the negotiations said Tuesday that Hume is close to signing a deal with Fox News in which he will play an emeritus role similar to the one that Tom Brokaw plays at NBC News. He will likely work about 100 days a year providing analysis on “Fox News Sunday,” subbing for host Chris Wallace and anchoring special events.
Hume, 65, was unavailable for comment.
Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes has not had any discussions about who would replace Hume on “Special Report” or whether the program will continue, according to network sources who were not authorized to speak on the record because the deal isn’t done.
Hume has long served as the channel’s senior political journalist and its lead anchor in election coverage, and his decision to step back his presence signals a generational shift at Fox News, which has had a remarkably stable talent pool in its 11 years.
Before coming to Fox, Hume worked at ABC News for 23 years.
--
matea.gold@latimes.com
|
06c61f5648cbd713555f9e2ca4c9c74f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-16-fg-briefs16.s2-story.html | 3 Iraqis convicted in Allawi plot | 3 Iraqis convicted in Allawi plot
Three Iraqis were convicted and sentenced to prison for plotting to kill then-Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi during his visit to Germany in 2004.
The Stuttgart state court convicted the three of attempted participation in murder and membership in the terrorist organization Ansar al Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to Al Qaeda.
Ringleader Ata Abdoulaziz Rashid received a 10-year sentence. Codefendants Rafik Mohamad Yousef and Mazen Ali Hussein, also known as Mazen Salah Mohammed, were sentenced to eight and 7 1/2 years, respectively. Prosecutors said the three planned to attack Allawi at a business forum at a bank in downtown Berlin.
|
a69f2c72cfa53b86e8f32eb43e29973f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-16-fi-indymac16-story.html | Confusion at IndyMac fuels customers’ anger | Confusion at IndyMac fuels customers’ anger
Depositors of failed IndyMac Bank endured long waits in the summer heat for a second day Tuesday, with crowds becoming irate at several branches and customers with large accounts complaining of serious problems in getting their money.
Banking experts said the chaotic scenes risked touching off runs on other banks unless federal regulators quickly cashed out insured accounts and gave depositors accurate information about their funds.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Pasadena-based IndyMac late Friday and has assured depositors that accounts with $100,000 held in a single name or $250,000 in a retirement account are safe.
But many customers have said that when they checked their balances online, tens of thousands of dollars appeared to be missing. And when they went to branches in search of answers, they encountered lines hundreds of people deep and unhelpful staff members. On Tuesday, reports of unruly crowds brought police to branches in Encino and Northridge, although there were no arrests or injuries.
Noelle Gabay of Northridge, a budget analyst for the state of California, said FDIC officials acknowledged that she was owed $213,500 but provided her access only to $99,000.
“My trust in the FDIC is gone,” said Gabay, 49. “The question is now, where do we put our money? Do we buy a bigger mattress?”
Bert Ely, a banking consultant in Arlington, Va., whose clients include financial-services trade groups, said the IndyMac situation was “generating anxieties all across the country.”
“They should have been better prepared for this,” he said, adding that regulatory oversight of IndyMac had been lax.
Ely noted that the bank, hobbled by massive defaults on loans made at the height of the real estate market, was not on the FDIC’s list of troubled institutions as of March 31. It was placed on the list in June. However, he said IndyMac’s fall was hastened by public questions from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) last month about the bank’s strength -- comments that apparently helped trigger a $1.3-billion run on deposits.
Schumer has responded to such criticism by saying that IndyMac brought on its own problems by engaging for years in “poor and loose lending practices” that regulators should have prevented.
Longtime bank analyst Frederick Cannon, chief equity strategist for Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said because of the distress at IndyMac, executives at other banks “are working very actively with their depositors to explain how insurance works, and what’s covered.”
John Bovenzi, the FDIC official who is now IndyMac’s chief executive, acknowledged that some online records of accounts and insurance were inaccurate, fueling fear and anger among depositors. “They’ll need to talk to an FDIC claims manager to sort it out,” he said. “Some electronic records may not be complete, and we’ll need to get a look at the documents” that set up the account.
Depositors can get FDIC coverage beyond the usual $100,000 per account by opening joint accounts and trust accounts. The FDIC has said that in addition to fully paying out insured IndyMac deposits, it will immediately pay half of uninsured IndyMac deposits.
Several depositors, though, complained Tuesday that the FDIC was failing to properly calculate interest and accused IndyMac employees of providing erroneous information about deposit insurance.
Todd Bash, a 43-year-old teacher from San Gabriel, was worried about IndyMac’s viability after reading about its woes in the media, so he had gone into his branch in West Covina on July 8 -- three days before regulators seized the bank. He had two certificates of deposit, a savings account and a checking account, totaling more than $180,000.
Bash said he had been ready to pull his funds, but the teller told him that he could add beneficiaries to get extra insurance. He added his mother to one account and his sister to another.
But after IndyMac was seized, an FDIC hotline operator said the extra insurance wasn’t necessarily valid, Bash said. That landed him in line Monday. After eight hours, the bank closed and he went home.
He went on the FDIC website again and used the system’s deposit insurance calculator, which said all of his deposits were fully covered.
Bash returned to the bank Tuesday more confident, but when he finally talked to a teller, she showed him that more than $80,000 was missing from one account. Why? The teller didn’t know. She referred him to an FDIC official in the branch, who also couldn’t tell him what happened, he said.
“One person finally suggested that maybe there was a hold on my account, but when I asked if it was a hold, why wouldn’t they just say there was a hold? . . . Nobody could give me any answers,” he said.
FDIC spokesman David Barr said most of the problems stemmed from trust accounts that have been put on hold until the agency determines that beneficiaries have been properly named. In most cases, those funds will be released in full after the depositor confers in person with the FDIC, he said.
Frozen trust accounts also caused tellers to fail to credit interest payments to some borrowers. “We apologize for that,” Barr said, adding that the FDIC is checking accounts where that may have occurred and will mail missing interest to depositors. “It may take us a few days, but we will get it out.”
He said that in the future the FDIC will ensure that borrowers are better informed that trust accounts may be briefly put on hold, and tellers will be cautioned not to underpay interest.
Such difficulties compounded the tension from long waits in line Tuesday, which were reported at several of IndyMac’s 33 branches despite the FDIC’s addition of 100 tellers to help ease the crunch.
In Encino, as many as 80 people were waiting outside around 8 a.m. when several customers tried to cut in line, LAPD Officer April Harding said. Police told customers to remain calm or face arrest, and order was restored, with private guards standing watch and police acting as backup.
As the morning wore on, customers leaned over a metal railing separating them from a row of guards and yelled complaints. The main point of contention involved a sign-up list that was started late Monday after many customers had given up and left for the day.
“He promised us there would not be a list,” one woman yelled at a security guard. “We don’t know who to believe!”
There was greater order at other branches. There wasn’t even a line at IndyMac’s main branch in Pasadena, which on Monday had been flooded with customers. On Tuesday afternoon, the only people outside were IndyMac employees overseeing an appointment list.
IndyMac is the fifth FDIC-insured institution to fail this year. John M. Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said regulators had hoped to work out its problems in an orderly manner over time.
The FDIC had managed to do that with another troubled California lender, Fremont General Corp. of Santa Monica, whose Brea-based bank subsidiary was a major maker of subprime loans that began going bad in massive numbers.
The FDIC forced Fremont to stop lending in March 2007, saying it was making too many unaffordable loans. Under the scrutiny of the federal agency, the bank gradually found buyers for its holdings and liquidated its operations without a government takeover.
Reich said IndyMac had been actively seeking a major investor to provide capital or a buyer when the run on deposits began. “Although this institution was already in distress, the deposit run pushed IndyMac over the edge,” he said.
Some experts say the FDIC needs to focus on helping depositors regain their funds quickly. Cannon, the bank analyst, said he was surprised to hear FDIC chief Sheila Bair say Monday that she would halt foreclosure proceedings to help some IndyMac mortgage holders stay in their homes.
Bair, he said, “was focusing on modifying loans rather than on the primary role of the FDIC, which is managing the deposits.” Through a spokesman, she declined to comment.
The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading Tuesday in IndyMac Bancorp, the holding company for IndyMac Bank. The stock, which peaked at $50 a share in 2006, was changing hands at 9 cents.
--
andrea.chang@latimes.com
scott.reckard@latimes.com
kathy.kristof@latimes.com
Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein and Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Tips for IndyMac Bank customers
* General IndyMac information number: (800) 998-2900
* For general information on FDIC coverage: (877) 275-3342 or www.fdic.gov
* To schedule appointments to discuss uninsured funds: (866) 806-5919
* Customers also can come to a branch and make an appointment
* Extended hours at branches: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.
|
bb4b1137e98ca727081cc23cb739b2a7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-16-me-bluebird16-story.html | A hole lotta love for the Western bluebird | A hole lotta love for the Western bluebird
Dick Purvis knew that if he was going to bring bluebirds to Orange County, the county would need more holes.
Bluebirds, he explained, require them for nesting, and there aren’t many trees with holes in the county’s developed recreational areas. If you find one, he said, “the ranger will come and cut it down.”
So Purvis, 80, a bird lover since his boyhood in North Georgia, set out to bolster the area’s bluebird population by placing nest boxes in parks and golf courses. And what started as one man’s hobby in 1984 has grown into the 200-member Southern California Bluebird Club, whose efforts last year added more than 5,000 members of the species to the skies of Orange County, making it the state’s most prolific bluebird haven.
At Peters Canyon Regional Park in eastern Orange, Senior Park Ranger Raul Herrera attests to the success of the efforts by the former McDonnell Douglas engineer. The park’s bluebird population, said Herrera, “was just about zero when he started here. He’s brought it back to life.”
Purvis said he first hung nest boxes in Peters Canyon about 15 years ago. Now his half-dozen boxes there hatch 10 to 15 Western bluebirds a year.
Purvis’ efforts have paid off countywide. According to the spring 2008 newsletter of the California Bluebird Recovery Program, an all-volunteer project, Orange County led the state in 2007 with 5,612 fledglings produced from 1,293 nest boxes.
Second was Merced County, with 3,436 bluebirds produced from 688 boxes. Santa Clara, Los Angeles and San Mateo counties rounded out the top five.
Bluebird club members hang nest boxes 12 to 20 feet high, clear of predators, vandals and sprinklers. They check the boxes weekly, counting eggs and chicks and removing dead birds. Of the 200 club members, about 40 are dedicated nest monitors, Purvis says.
Although seeing a chick hatch and take wing is the goal, visiting boxes can be rewarding in itself. Sully Reallon, 80, of Capistrano Beach marveled at how people-friendly the bluebirds are. “I can take that box, pick the mother up, count her eggs, stroke her head, put her back in the box and close the door,” he said. “They don’t mind at all.”
The notion that birds and their eggs can’t be touched by human hands “is a myth,” said Reallon, a retired Caltrans worker.
Ninety percent of club members are retirees, he said.
That worries state program director Dick Blaine, 74, of Cupertino, a retired IBM physicist.
“The big producers,” he said, “are old fogies like us. We have great concern for the future because we’re not getting younger people into the program.”
Although the bluebird project is ideal for students or Scouts hoping to fill a community service requirement, Blaine said, “they don’t persist. They last through the mating season,” then drop out.
Asked why Orange County is so far ahead, he said, “the answer is Dick Purvis.”
Besides being a dedicated leader, Blaine said, Purvis came up with an innovative design for nest boxes that includes a 1 1/2-inch hole, small enough to keep starlings out, and a hinged opening to allow people to reach in. The box is raised in a basket attached to a pole, which members call the Purvis lifter. “With a 6-foot ladder,” the designer explained, “you can’t get them up high enough. This is the only way you can have bluebirds in an urban area.”
So what prompted him to become the bluebird’s best friend in Southern California?
“When I was a boy I lived on a farm,” Purvis recalled. “All the farmers had bluebird boxes.”
One day while picnicking at O’Neill Regional Park in Trabuco Canyon, he said, “I saw a pair of bluebirds in a sycamore tree and thought, ‘Holy cow, we could have that in Orange County!’ ”
He started with 10 boxes at Anaheim’s Featherly Regional Park “and took off from there.” Each year the bluebird population expanded about three miles and Purvis recruited a few members, who in turn recruited more. “It took me 15 years to reach all the way across Orange County,” he said.
Purvis also plays bridge, attends church and visits four grandchildren, but he finds time for bluebirds every day. There’s a good reason: The bluebirds, he says, can always use a few more holes.
--
marc.olson@latimes.com
|
b5e84bccd67863123075edc21fee18a6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-16-me-metrolink16-story.html | Jury spares killer’s life in rail crash | Jury spares killer’s life in rail crash
Ending a legal saga surrounding the deadliest train crash in Metrolink history, a Los Angeles jury decided Tuesday to spare the life of a former Compton laborer convicted of triggering the 2005 wreck that killed 11 people and injured at least 180 others.
Juan Manuel Alvarez, 29, smiled broadly and spoke quietly to a member of his defense team after the verdict was read in a packed downtown courtroom. Under the jury’s verdict, Alvarez will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Alberto Romero -- whose uncle, Leonardo Romero, was killed in the crash -- said he watched Alvarez’s reaction to the verdicts with disgust.
“From the beginning, he’s had a smirk on his face,” Romero said. “He shows no remorse whatsoever. And just as he showed no remorse, there should be no remorse for . . . him in prison.”
Many of the victims’ relatives who attended Tuesday’s verdict said they were relieved that Alvarez would never be released from prison. Some, however, said they believed he deserved the death penalty.
Thomas W. Kielty, one of Alvarez’s two court-appointed attorneys, said his client was still “haunted with remorse” but has tried to stay focused in recent months on the legal issues involved in his trial.
Alvarez’s smile at Tuesday’s verdict was one of relief because he was spared the death penalty, Kielty said, adding, “I would say he’s emotionally overwhelmed.”
Jurors, who had wept days earlier as victims’ relatives testified about their loss, reached their decision after deliberating for less than 3 1/2 hours. The same panel of nine women and three men last month found Alvarez guilty on 11 counts of first-degree murder and one count of arson.
The tragedy unfolded in the early hours of Jan. 26, 2005, when Alvarez parked his sport utility vehicle on railroad tracks near Glendale and fled. A Metrolink passenger train plowed into the vehicle, struck a parked freight train and slammed into an oncoming commuter train.
Prosecutors had argued that Alvarez intended to kill commuters as part of a sick attempt to gain attention from his estranged wife. But defense attorneys described Alvarez’s actions as part of an aborted suicide attempt that never meant to harm anyone else.
Speaking after Tuesday’s verdict, the jury’s foreman said he believed Alvarez had never intended to kill anyone but had meant to cause a spectacular crash.
“He wanted to make a statement. He expected his Jeep would be blown up, obliterated,” said the 27-year-old foreman, who was among three jurors who agreed to speak with reporters but declined to give their names.
The jury foreman explained that the panel convicted Alvarez of first-degree murder using the state’s felony murder rule. Under California law, a person can be charged with first-degree murder if they have committed a serious felony, such as arson, that resulted in someone else’s death, even if they never intended to kill anyone.
Another juror, a 61-year-old retiree, told reporters that there had been “a terrible amount of emotion” during deliberations and “we did argue a lot.” He said he believed that Alvarez had gotten “shortchanged” in life and that the man’s abusive upbringing had taken a psychological toll on him.
A third juror said he suffered sleepless nights after the testimony of victims’ relatives. He acknowledged that he had initially been leaning more toward the death penalty for Alvarez.
“The struggle was more emotional,” said the juror, a 39-year-old who works for the county Department of Health Services. “I feel he needed to pay with death because people did die, but I [felt] I should follow the law and not lead with emotions.”
During the eight-week trial, prosecutors had portrayed Alvarez as a liar and a schemer who was obsessed with getting attention.
They rejected the suggestion that he had been trying to commit suicide.
Prosecutors had urged the jury not to forget the victims and the effect of their deaths on family members.
Defense attorneys stressed that Alvarez was a troubled man who was raised in an abusive home and has struggled throughout his life with drug and mental health problems.
Todd McKeown, whose brother Scott was killed in the crash, said he had been leaning toward the death penalty but respected the jury’s decision. “It’s closure, it’s an answer, it’s a finality to this part of the process,” said McKeown, who attended almost all of the proceedings.
Deputy Dist. Atty. John Monaghan said he was not disappointed with the verdict, and praised the jury’s tenacity. He said the case had been particularly difficult because it “wasn’t clear-cut.” But at least “they did not find that he was simply a misguided person,” Monaghan said.
Kielty said the jury’s decision to spare his client’s life was the right one.
“I think they had some compassion and humanity, and they reasoned that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to kill someone who himself didn’t have an intent to kill,” he said.
Alvarez’s wife, Carmelita, said she was relieved, but “I still don’t believe it’s justice. I think he belongs in a mental institution.”
She added that she would eventually tell the couple’s children, ages 7 and 10, that their father had been unfairly convicted.
Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders is scheduled to sentence Alvarez on Aug. 20.
--
ann.simmons@latimes.com
jack.leonard@latimes.com
|
1b49f4f0aa091ef9fb40a318680e6adc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-16-na-losingfaith16-story.html | Learning the limits of supply, demand | Learning the limits of supply, demand
For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed to be fine for the nation and for its citizens -- certainly better than government meddling.
No longer.
Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society.
“We’re at a hinge point,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who helped craft President Clinton’s market-friendly agenda during the 1990s. “The strong presumption in favor of markets, which has dominated public policy since the late 1970s, has been thrown very much into question.”
Now, to a degree not seen in years, politicians and outside experts are looking with favor at more, not less, government involvement in the economy.
Of course, Americans always grouse during troubled times. And as market advocates are quick to point out, the current run of bad economic breaks has yet to result in the throwing over of free-market principles in favor of some drastically different approach -- such as a government-directed economy.
“There may be a backlash against markets at the moment,” acknowledged Kevin A. Hassett, economic studies director at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and an advisor to presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain. “But the backlash doesn’t seem to be informed by any alternative view of how the world works.”
Yet the sheer volume of setbacks that people have been dealt has sent consumer confidence to some of its lowest levels in half a century, according to Reuters/University of Michigan surveys. A remarkable 84% of Americans are convinced that the nation is on the “wrong track,” according to a recent Gallup poll.
In just the last week, the financial markets have provided ample new evidence that markets are not working smoothly.
Washington had to ride to the rescue of two government-chartered mortgage giants -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which hold or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion in mortgage debt -- after investors all but extinguished the pair’s market value amid fears that falling home prices would push them into insolvency.
Meanwhile, federal regulators seized IndyMac Bancorp, a $32-billion mortgage lender based in Pasadena, in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. And the already battered stock market took another sharp dip.
The fact that experts keep pushing back the date when conditions may improve and the failure thus far of any national leader -- including either of the major-party presidential candidates -- to offer a convincing vision of how America will make its way back to sustained prosperity suggest that the current crisis will probably be very different from other recent economic bad patches.
So may Americans’ reaction to it.
Even the Bush administration, which took office arguing that the Social Security crisis could be solved, in part, by tying some of retirees’ future benefits to Wall Street, has begun advocating more government regulation of financial markets. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are government-chartered but investor-owned, began to teeter last week, the administration quietly went to work on possible government action.
“If the pendulum swung away from government toward much greater confidence in markets during the last generation, the pendulum is clearly swinging back again now,” said Daniel Yergin, whose 1998 book with coauthor Joseph Stanislaw, “The Commanding Heights,” chronicled the worldwide spread of the free-market credo.
“Everything is weighing in at the same time, and that affects how people view markets and government,” Yergin said.
“Nobody in this country really believes in unfettered free markets, and nobody really believes in socialism,” said UC Davis historian Eric Rauchway, but economic crises of the past have produced constituencies favoring the reining in of markets and regulation of the economy -- constituencies that ultimately grew large enough to produce change.
Consider just a few of the things that are pushing people in that direction now:
The price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline has nearly doubled in the last year, while that for a barrel of crude oil has more than doubled, cutting short Americans’ love affair with gas-guzzlers and driving the nation’s trucking, auto and airline industries into deep trouble.
Most mainstream economists assert that these increases are simply the logical outcome of booming global demand meeting limited global supply.
But the price run-ups seem out of whack with demand, which has increased only about 1% worldwide. The mismatch has fueled suspicion among many Americans and their political leaders that the third financial bubble of the decade -- after tech stocks and housing -- is underway, this time in energy.
Both presidential candidates have fingered market speculators, rather than the forces of supply and demand, for helping drive up prices.
At a recent hearing, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) cornered the federal official whose agency regulates the market where oil futures are traded. “How is it that the market isn’t working to the benefit of the consuming public?” the lawmaker demanded.
The agency has launched a number of studies to discover whether speculators are behind the price increases, the official answered.
“Don’t tell me you’re doing studies!” Dingell shot back. “You’ve spent more than a year sitting idly by” while oil prices jumped.
At least half a dozen measures have been introduced in Congress to limit speculation or to tax oil company profits.
Similar anger -- and similar legislative efforts to intervene in the marketplace -- can be seen in housing.
While Americans have been accustomed to some fluctuation in the value of their homes, most expected their houses to rise in value over time. And for much of the last several decades, that’s what happened.
But starting in mid-2004, the upward arc of house prices began to flatten, and by 2007 it was falling -- sharply. Prices, especially along the West and East coasts, have skidded as much as 16% during the last year alone, their steepest decline in two decades. Many analysts predict further slippage.
In large part, the rise in house prices and the recent plunge grew out of an almost unregulated corner of the mortgage market -- the one for riskier loans.
As with fuel, “the message that Americans are getting is that something went wrong with the markets and you got hurt,” said economist Robert E. Litan of the Brookings Institution and the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo.
“With energy, it’s the speculators. With housing, it’s predatory lenders or crummy credit-rating agencies or stupid banks. We’re not ready to throw out markets altogether,” he said, “but we want government to do something about the excess.”
A similar pattern of hopes raised and hopes dashed shows up in global trade and retirement investing.
Americans entered the new century convinced that “we had a new economy built on services and information technology that would let us win globally,” said Harvard economist Robert Z. Lawrence.
“The whole premise of globalization in the year 2000 was that it worked well for us and the other developed countries but that the developing countries would need help,” Lawrence said.
Today, virtually all those optimistic assumptions have been turned on their heads.
“We’ve seen unprecedented growth in the developing countries, while the developed countries are being led into a slowdown by the United States,” Lawrence said.
“We’ve found out that instead of services and information technology, it’s all about oil and other commodities” that are not the nation’s strong suit.
Finally, when it comes to investment, especially for retirement, recent years have brought unsettling disappointments as the stock market has failed to regain and maintain the peaks that it reached in 2000.
An investor who put a dollar in a broad market index fund early in this decade not only would have made no money by today but would have lost a little of his initial amount.
That’s a far cry from the 1990s, when people told pollsters that they expected to make 15% annual gains indefinitely.
Historians watching the nation’s current economic and financial troubles say that just because Americans don’t throw up their hands about markets and rush to an opposite pole, such as socialism, it doesn’t mean that change isn’t underway.
As UC Davis’ Rauchway pointed out, the devastating panics and depressions of the late 19th century eventually resulted in the progressive reforms of the early 20th century and, later, the New Deal of the 1930s.
Today, Americans are not ready to throw out markets altogether, said economist Litan, but “what people may be demanding is New Deal lite.”
--
peter.gosselin@latimes.com
|
f59ca0e85dad3e9fddd7c79533a688b3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-et-knight17-story.html | A bat never out of hell | A bat never out of hell
Given THE success of “Batman Begins” three years ago, adventurous, eclectic director Christopher Nolan could have gone anywhere and done anything with his next film. So why did he elect to return to the mythical city of Gotham, to the confines of a superhero movie and the narrow world of a caped crusader imprisoned by the secret of who he really is?
That sequel, “The Dark Knight,” answers all those questions with a vengeance. To see it is to understand that Nolan and his co-writer brother Jonathan saw a chance to go deeper into familiar characters and mythology, a chance to meditate on darker-than-usual themes that have implications for the way we live now. A chance to disturb us in the ways these kinds of movies rarely do.
With Christian Bale returning in the title role and Heath Ledger giving a shocking, indelible performance as his arch-nemesis the Joker, “The Dark Knight” may be the most hopeless, despairing comic-book movie in memory. It creates a world where being a superhero is at best a double-edged sword and no triumph is likely to be anything but short-lived.
Because these kinds of movies are only as strong as their villains, a good part of the credit for the potency of “The Dark Knight” has to go to the unusual and unusually creepy and sadistic way the Joker was conceptualized by the Nolans and David S. Goyer (who has a story credit) and played by Ledger in what turned out to be his last completed screen role. The Joker’s is a different kind of evil than we’re used to, one that is harder for both Batman and the audience to dismiss than what Jack Nicholson did with the part nearly two decades ago.
“The Dark Knight,” an allusion to the hugely influential Frank Miller graphic novel “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” begins in what should be good times for our hero. While Gotham still struggles with lawlessness, his crime-fighting brand is established, he is secure in his secret identity as playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne and he has a loyal support group in butler Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine), tech wizard Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and police Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman). Plus he is hopeful that his example will get the citizens of Gotham to do the right thing.
Only it isn’t working that way. It’s not the good Batman does but the vigilante nature of his methods (“Batman: Crusader or Menace?” screams a TV news report) that people focus on. Bale’s dead-serious demeanor helps define a character who’s troubled that no one without a mask has stepped up to help and increasingly worried that the act of taking the law into his own hands will further destabilize the situation.
Batman’s best hope for an ally willing to show his face is crusading young Dist. Atty. Harvey Dent, but there are problems even here. Dent is going out with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, stepping in for Katie Holmes), once the love of Bruce Wayne’s life, and he’s played by Aaron Eckhart, a square-jawed actor who specializes in characters you’re never sure you can completely trust.
More than that, “Dark Knight’s” director of photography and longtime Nolan collaborator Wally Pfister has created a bright but tainted Gotham world (Chicago was the main location) where even in daylight the mood of overwhelming bleakness is characterized by the kind of untrustworthiness the sun itself is hopeless against.
Not only Pfister’s cinematography but all of “The Dark Knight’s” production values are first-rate. With cost being no object in a reported $180-million budget and a director of Nolan’s formidable abilities in charge, this is powerful, propulsive filmmaking in which elements that must have taken an eternity to set up stay on screen no longer than they absolutely need to.
Even at 2 hours and 32 minutes, “Dark Knight” moves right along (Lee Smith was the editor, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard collaborated on the driving score). Nolan and Pfister have actually upped the ante by filming six of the film’s action sequences, including the remarkable flipping of an 18-wheel, 40-foot tractor-trailer, with a 65-millimeter Imax camera, meaning that they have an extra sharpness when shrunken to fit into a 35mm print.
One of those shot in Imax was the film’s opening set-piece, a bank robbery pulled off by a gang of men in clown masks, which symbolizes the moral abyss Gotham is falling into. For the bank turns out to be a mob bank, causing a gangland minion to scream as he is shot down, “Criminals used to believe in things like honor, respect.” Replies the Joker, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stranger.”
Yes, it is the Joker who’s behind this caper, and with his disfigured face, his white makeup, kohl-black eyes and smeared red lips, few people are stranger. Always a consummate professional, Ledger threw himself into a role he clearly relished, giving a transfixing performance as a whiny-voiced god of chaos whose hard-core nihilism is bone-chilling.
For it’s what he represents, not what he looks like, that is finally the horror of the Joker. He has no scruples, no morals, no goal except anarchy, no plan except the end of planning. As Alfred patiently explains, “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
While the Joker understands perfectly that a highly moral opponent like Batman is a welcome gift as far as he’s concerned, for Batman the matchup is much more wrenching. Can he live with what he would have to become to effectively fight the Joker and his spawn? Can he accept the unacceptable things that have to be done to be the hero? Can there be an ending to his story, and to this film, that creates a sense of closure, a sense of peace? It’s a very good question, and you’ll have to see “The Dark Knight” if you want to find out.
--
kenneth.turan@latimes.com
--
“The Dark Knight.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace. Running time: 2 hours, 32 minutes. In general release.
|
f599fe367686ec1024528957fe113854 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-fi-citrus17-story.html | Bug in Baja a risk to California citrus trade | Bug in Baja a risk to California citrus trade
A tiny insect that can carry a disease that kills citrus trees has been discovered just blocks south of the border in Tijuana, sending shock waves through the California citrus industry.
The disease, known as citrus greening, has already killed tens of thousands of acres of orange groves in Florida and has the potential to ruin much of California’s $1.2-billion citrus growing business, industry officials said.
Mexican agricultural officials found the Asian citrus psyllid in orange trees growing near homes in the vicinity of the California border.
But the officials are annoyed at the alarm sounded by California citrus farmers, saying there’s no evidence that these bugs have come into contact with the bacterium that causes the disease, also known as huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, or that citrus greening is infecting Mexican citrus groves.
State and federal agriculture officials are surveying San Diego and Orange County citrus ranches and homes, trying to learn whether the pest has jumped the border.
“This has the potential to be incredibly destructive,” said Mike Wootton, senior vice president of Sunkist Growers, the giant California and Arizona citrus marketing cooperative based in Sherman Oaks.
The industry and state officials plan to launch a public awareness campaign today. They want to alert homeowners and commercial landscapers to be on the lookout for the insect and will encourage them to call the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s exotic-pest hotline at (800) 491-1899 if they spot anything suspicious on citrus trees. More information can be found at www.californiacitrusthreat.org.
California supplies about 85% of the nation’s fresh orange crop and nearly all of domestically grown fresh lemons. The Golden State also ships a third of what it grows overseas, a lucrative business that could be threatened if the insect establishes itself here and trading partners block California citrus exports, Wootton said.
Most likely, the bug has already skipped across the border in shipments of cut flowers or oranges surreptitiously brought to California and headed for swap meets, and it’s just a matter of time before it’s discovered, said Beth Grafton-Cardwell, a UC Riverside Extension entomologist.
The psyllid alone won’t do much damage to California orange groves, Grafton-Cardwell said. The situation becomes dangerous when the insect lands on a tree that’s already infected with the germ that causes the disease. The bugs would then spread the bacteria to other trees.
“We might not have the disease in the state or we might have it sitting in some backyard tree that someone brought in from Asia. It could be a time bomb just waiting for a psyllid,” Grafton-Cardwell said.
That’s what has agriculture officials worried.
Since it was discovered in 2005, the disease has rapidly spread to the 32 counties in Florida that grow citrus commercially, said Andrew Meadows of Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s grower trade group.
In Florida, growers have found that a grove’s 5% infection rate can explode to 40% to 80% in just four years. Greening disease is always fatal. The trees can’t be treated and have to be uprooted and burned.
Citrus greening is exceptionally hard to detect during the first several years of infection, said Ted Batkin, president of both the California Citrus Research Board and the California Invasive Pest Coalition. After four to five years, the tree will have yellow leaves and stunted, bitter-tasting fruit.
By the time symptoms appear, feeding psyllids have infected nearby groves.
Mexican officials said the disease had not been detected in any part of Mexico. But Grafton-Cardwell and other U.S. experts believe the bacterium is starting to affect trees in eastern Mexico.
In years past, the psyllid was detected in some fruit-growing regions in central Mexico. But officials said this latest appearance in the state of Baja California Norte is odd because it is not a commercial citrus-producing area.
Mexican authorities suspect that the insects or their larvae were carried to Tijuana by a traveler.
“We don’t even cultivate citrus here,” said Genaro Lopez Bojorquez, the regional head for Mexico’s secretary of agriculture in northern Baja.
--
jerry.hirsch@latimes.com
marla.dickerson @latimes.com
Hirsch reported from Los Angeles and Dickerson from Mexico City. Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.
|
fc37b1171fe94f6039ce40310f616747 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-fi-reality17-story.html | Writers Guild tries to get real | Writers Guild tries to get real
Continuing its attempt to organize scribes who work in reality TV, the Writers Guild of America, West, has launched a campaign targeting the hit Fox TV show “American Idol.”
Calling it “The American Idol Truth Tour,” the guild is aiming squarely at Burbank-based Fremantle Media North America, a major producer of reality programming.
Starting today in Daly City, Calif., about 50 reality TV writers and supporters will stage a series of protests in cities where “American Idol” holds auditions to highlight what they describe as the poor treatment of writers in the reality TV industry.
“Time cards have been filled out often illegally, people are being asked to work through their lunch breaks . . . and work 15- to 20-hour days, frequently seven days a week,” said David Weiss, vice president of the Writers Guild of America, West, at a rally outside the guild’s Los Angeles headquarters.
A Fremantle spokesman declined to comment.
The tour marks the latest tactic by the Writers Guild to extend union benefits to writers in the burgeoning reality TV and game show sector. Guild leaders contend that writers are pivotal to such shows and deserve the same protections as their peers. Producers argue that writers act more as editors and producers and have denied creating sweatshop conditions.
The union has backed high-profile lawsuits against reality show producers, which are pending; led an unsuccessful strike against the producers of “America’s Next Top Model”; and later helped workers file complaints with the state alleging various wage and hour violations, many of which have been settled.
Now the union is targeting one of the biggest players in the business. A subsidiary of London-based Fremantle Media, the company’s prime-time programs include “Million Dollar Password,” “Farmer Wants a Wife” and “America’s Got Talent.”
Late last year, the guild protested outside Fremantle’s offices after unsuccessful efforts to represent writers on the game show “Temptation.” And in April, the guild helped nine former Fremantle employees file more than $250,000 in wage and hour claims with the state.
Whether the latest tactics will work is unclear. But the guild has drawn support from Teamsters Local 399, which aims to represent drivers on “American Idol.”
In a letter to members this week, guild President Patric M. Verrone said the union had for the first time “opened dialogue with some of the major nonunion reality and game show production companies.” The guild, he said, recently signed a deal with another major reality TV producer, Mark Burnett Productions, for the prime-time show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”
--
richard.verrier@latimes.com
|
9d2acfb92e9559258282ce2cd097301b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-gd-rest17-story.html | A taste of Mexico at the beach | A taste of Mexico at the beach
Mexican cooking doesn’t get as much respect as it should in Southern California, at least in terms of formal restaurants. Taco trucks are generally where you find the best Mexican nosh. But now Thomas Ortega -- a veteran of the kitchens of Water Grill, Lucques and Patina -- and his friend Demi Stevens have opened an unusually appealing Mexican restaurant in Redondo Beach.
A trio of metal folk sculptures of musicians stand outside the doors of Ortega120, located right on PCH. Inside is a sprawling bar stocked with a stupendous array of premium tequila (and a flat-screen TV at the very back for anybody who wants to catch a game). The dining room is painted in bright Frida Kahlo colors, the walls hung with whimsical folk art from Mexico -- crucifixes, masks, carvings and Day of the Dead motifs. There’s also an outdoor patio for catching the breeze while snacking on housemade chips and complex, smoky salsa.
The menu is very specific. Guacamole, for example, is made with Hass avocados, red onion, cilantro and lime juice. Chunky and delicious, it’s here and then it’s gone, gone, gone. Ortega also makes a killer version of queso fundido. That’s a molten cheese dip made with Oaxacan cheese, housemade chorizo (when’s the last time you saw housemade chorizo on a Mexican restaurant’s menu?), mushrooms and spinach.
The tortillas are all made right there and you can taste the difference. The shrimp cocktail features meaty Mexican white shrimp in a wonderfully spicy sauce.
This is a chef who sources his ingredients carefully.
He’s also got some modern takes on Mexican classics -- for example, a taco stuffed with sushi-grade ahi tuna, roasted corn, fresh mango and more. If you love tacos, go for the “Tour de Tacos,” a platter of five different street-style (i.e., small) soft tacos -- al pastor, pollo, carne asada, shrimp and carnitas. At $17, given the quality of the ingredients, it’s quite the bargain.
Platos principales (main courses) include a deliriously good lamb shank birria braised in a chile broth and served with garnishes and handmade tortillas. I wouldn’t say no to the carnitas plate either, with pickled red onion and fluffy lime-scented rice. Or the mahi mahi in mole verde.
Just those few dishes are enough to get the idea that Ortega120 is a cut above. For diehard gringos, Ortega has even put a Kobe burger on the menu, with a Mexican twist that includes Ortega chiles and queso asadero, and a pan de leche bun. Smart -- and fun.
Polish off a meal here with an order of freshly made churros (squiggles of fried dough) with a chocolate dipping sauce. Somehow, I think I’ll be back. There’s certainly nowhere near the beach where you can find such heartfelt Mexican cooking.
--
virbila@latimes.com
--
ORTEGA120
WHERE: 1814 S. Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach.
WHEN: Mon.-Thu., 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sun., 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
PRICE: Appetizers, $6 to $14; salads and soups, $4 to $10; tacos (3 per order), $9 to $12; main courses, $10 to $19.50; desserts, $7.
INFO: (310) 792-4120; www.ortega120.com
ON THE WEB: For more photos, go to latimes.com/ortega120
|
1906bb34b89f6443111f690d74699f2b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-le-thursday17.s3-story.html | Hearing, yes; circus, no | Hearing, yes; circus, no
Re “Let the public speak,” editorial, July 15
Thank you for your editorial pointing out the strangeness of the Commerce Department’s most recent actions regarding the hearing on the Foothill South toll road.
The public’s opinions need to be heard. Some will be vociferous, but there’s good reason. Perhaps they’re appalled by the illogic behind the road, or by misleading statements made by the Transportation Corridor Agencies (does anyone except the TCA believe that building the road will improve water quality in the San Mateo Creek watershed?). The TCA has consistently portrayed this as a battle for traffic relief and the public good. But many now see that the TCA’s plan is not a good traffic solution, is financially risky and has undesirable side effects. These points need to be made to the Commerce Department in a well-managed, polite and businesslike hearing.
William Fisher
San Clemente
Having attended the Coastal Commission hearing earlier this year, I am not sure that another public circus (I mean hearing) is the best way to solicit well-reasoned public input on the toll road.
If there really are 10,000 people who want to make their opinions known, it would take about 21 days of nonstop, round-the-clock testimony to give everyone their three minutes of fame. Furthermore, I suspect that a huge percentage of these alleged 10,000 people will be kids on summer vacation -- not commuters who need the roads to earn a living.
I don’t have the luxury of a three-month summer vacation to devote to a meaningless public spectacle.
Meg Waters
Laguna Hills
|
6553f0c56f32a3dfb2d564b9b1c7f492 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-me-gaymarriage17-story.html | Gay rights groups lose a round | Gay rights groups lose a round
A voter initiative to reinstate a ban on same-sex marriage will remain on the November ballot, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Wednesday.
The court issued a brief order rejecting arguments that the initiative, Proposition 8, was an illegal constitutional revision and that voters had been misled when they signed petitions to put it on the ballot. The decision, reached in closed session during the court’s weekly conference, cleared the way for what some observers expect to be a close vote on the marriage measure.
The signatures for the initiative had already been gathered when the California Supreme Court decided 4 to 3 in May to strike down a state ban on same-sex marriage. Same sex couples began marrying in California last month.
Gay rights groups issued a statement Wednesday expressing disappointment with the court’s decision.
“Californians do not want their Constitution to single out people to be treated differently,” said the statement from Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Marriage Equality and the American Civil Liberties Union. “We are confident they will vote no in November to make sure everyone is treated equally under the law.”
Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, said he was confident that the measure would pass.
“If the people have an opportunity to participate in the democratic process, they will vote for marriage as one man and one woman,” said Staver, whose group litigates on behalf of Christian causes.
“Those who push for same-sex marriage are willing to destroy both marriage and democracy to achieve a selfish result,” he said.
Another Christian group, the Alliance Defense Fund, called the court’s decision “appropriate.”
Supporters of same-sex marriage “were desperate to evade the democratic process,” said Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for the fund. “We’re pleased the court did not allow them to silence the people’s voice this November.”
If approved by voters, Proposition 8, called the “California Marriage Protection Act,” would add a provision to the state Constitution that says, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
The Campaign for Children and Families, which opposes same-sex marriage, said it was celebrating the court’s decision.
“This is great news, and not unexpected in light of the homosexual activists’ undemocratic, intolerant and extraordinary attack upon the voters’ right to vote,” said Randy Thomasson, the group’s president. “Fortunately, activist judges are more used to inventing new ‘laws’ out of thin air than striking voter-qualified initiatives from the ballot.”
After Wednesday’s decision, Kevin Norte, a lawyer who helped inspire one of the legal arguments for removing the ballot initiative, sent friends a note asking that in lieu of a wedding gift they donate to a campaign to defeat the initiative.
Kevin and his longtime partner, Don Norte, went to Tiffany’s for wedding rings on the day the court overturned the marriage ban. They plan to exchange vows this week.
“I am getting personal because I will do almost anything to save my marriage,” wrote Norte, a Republican. “Wouldn’t you?
--
maura.dolan@latimes.com
|
76b1ef427cf647c4f222cca0fdbc8850 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-me-ucadmit17-story.html | Action delayed on SAT subject exams | Action delayed on SAT subject exams
University of California regents on Wednesday debated a proposed overhaul of freshman admission standards that would drop the requirement for SAT subject exams and make more students eligible based on class rankings in their high schools.
The proposed changes, which would take effect for students hoping to enroll in fall 2012, are intended to help UC applicants who fall short by a technicality or whose high schools do not offer enough UC-required classes or adequate counseling, its backers say.
“A lot of excellent kids are eliminated from consideration on trifling grounds. This would stop that,” said UC Santa Barbara education professor Michael Brown, chairman of the UC systemwide Academic Senate. Last month, the faculty group approved the changes after years of study and revision.
Now, the regents’ assent is needed but a vote may be delayed for several months to allow new UC President Mark G. Yudof, as well as counselors, alumni and the public, to digest the proposal. Several regents said they were confused by parts of the plan and worried that it could be perceived as lowering standards.
Yudof, in his first regents meeting as president, said he agreed with the plan’s goals and its elimination of subject tests. But he also said it was one of the “most consequential” issues facing the governing board. “Every time you change the admissions standards, you have a little bit of unpredictability. So that’s why we have to study it very carefully,” he said at the board’s meeting at UC Santa Barbara.
Under the proposed changes, UC applicants would still be required to take the main SAT exam or the ACT test with a writing section. But UC applicants would no longer have to take two supplemental subject exams in such areas as history or math. Critics of the subject exams say that they add little useful information to applications and that missing the tests is a major reason applicants with otherwise good grades and SAT scores are ineligible for UC.
The plan would also change other ways students become eligible for UC admission and are guaranteed a spot at one of its nine undergraduate campuses, even if not always at the students’ first choice. And it would add a new category of applicants: students with slightly lower grades than other applicants, but whose resumes and essays would at least be reviewed for possible admission.
Proponents say they expect the changes to help many low-income, minority, rural and inner-city students whose schools may not offer enough college prep and honors classes. UC officials have said students from more affluent, suburban communities are often disproportionately represented in the freshman class.
Under current policies, students are evaluated separately by each campus to which they apply. But if they are turned down and still deemed eligible for the UC system, they are guaranteed a spot at campuses that have room, often Riverside and Merced.
Students generally become eligible for the university through one of two pathways. They can complete a set of 15 required college prep classes and earn a combination of grades and SAT scores on a sliding index that puts them in the top 12.5% of high school graduates statewide. (A 3.0 GPA is the minimum, although students get a boost with honors classes.) Or they can earn grades that put them in the top 4% of their high school.
The plan would tighten up the statewide guarantee by reducing it to the top 9% of all high school graduates. It would broaden the local high school path by offering admission to those in the top 9% of their school’s graduating class, but officials say there is significant overlap between those groups.
A category of applicants, called Entitled to Review, would be created for students who have slightly lower grades and may be a bit late in finishing requirements. They would have to complete 11 of the 15 required classes by the end of 11th grade, finish all 15 by graduation and earn a minimum GPA of 2.8 without the grade boosts UC gives for honors classes. UC campuses would read their applications but not ensure them a seat in the class, even at Riverside or Merced.
Mark Rashid, chairman of the faculty panel that wrote the plan, said thousands of excellent students remain invisible because they missed one class or test. “There are students being disenfranchised unfairly,” said Rashid, a UC Davis engineering professor.
Some regents expressed skepticism.
Regent George Marcus said he worried that the public would see the change as lowering the entrance bar and that it could trigger resentment that UC would “take a seat away from seniors who followed the rules.” Others warned of unintended consequences, such as signaling students to relax about taking required high school courses.
Brown insisted that the plan was “not dumbing down standards, it is raising them.” He also said the proposal was not an attempt to get around Proposition 209, which forbids consideration of race in the state’s public university admissions. “There is nothing in the proposal that mandates or even suggests the university use race or sex in the selection process,” he said. “But the university continues to have a mandate to fairly and appropriately represent the citizens of the state of California.”
An earlier version of the proposal would have eliminated some admissions guarantees to eligible students, but that idea was killed by faculty leaders who said they feared a political firestorm could result.
Students had a mixed view of dropping the subject exams.
Mia Jessup, who will be a freshman at Dartmouth College in the fall, applied to 16 colleges, most of which required two subject tests. She said it was unfair that her class had to take the subject tests for UC, but suggested that eliminating them might help future applicants.
“Perhaps it will lessen the load and could make them do better on the SAT or ACT as opposed to the smaller tests,” said Jessup, a graduate of San Clemente High School.
Amanda Rosenthal, 17, of Pacific Palisades said she thought the subject tests were a fairer way of comparing students than the main SAT exam.
The subject test “reflects all the knowledge accumulated throughout the year, rather than a student’s test-taking ability,” said Rosenthal, who will be a senior at the Marlborough School this fall and has taken three subject tests.
--
larry.gordon@latimes.com
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
|
f7b9934988af7e2f1a87ad59e2b491ed | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-me-walk17-story.html | Walk of Fame fix won’t be easy stroll | Walk of Fame fix won’t be easy stroll
It took a year’s study and installation of a “test strip” on Hollywood’s busiest corner to figure out how best to stabilize the buckling bronze stars and pink-and-black terrazzo that line Hollywood’s aging Walk of Fame.
Now, officials of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are trying to determine just how to pay for the estimated $4.1-million repair job.
MTA officials said Wednesday that their agency will take the lead in lining up funding from Los Angeles, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the Hollywood Historic Trust as well as other entities -- including itself.
The transit agency will set up a Walk of Fame Restoration Committee, which will be asked to also seek financing from corporations, local businesses and individual contributors, according to a report delivered to members of an MTA planning committee.
The report noted that “the current condition of the sidewalks has become unsightly and potentially dangerous to the many thousands of pedestrians who frequent the area.”
The Walk of Fame section on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard between Highland Avenue and Orange Drive was listed as a top priority for repairs. That sidewalk, in front of a Metro Red Line terminal entrance and the Kodak Theatre and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, is heavily used by subway riders and tourists.
The corner of Hollywood and Highland is where sidewalk buckling forced officials to rip out a 60-foot stretch of terrazzo walkway on the eve of the 2007 Academy Awards for their $80,000 test strip. In all, 132 terrazzo squares -- 16 containing bronze stars honoring celebrities -- were dug out.
The old 3-inch-thick sidewalk was replaced with a concrete base up to 8 inches thick.
At the same time, the nonprofit Hollywood Trust upped the price of new stars by more than 40% -- to $25,000 per celebrity -- to pay for future Walk of Fame maintenance.
To many, including the late honorary mayor of Hollywood, Johnny Grant, it was clear at the time what was causing the buckling: the Metro Red Line subway.
“The MTA has been stalling me for years,” said Grant, who died earlier this year. “We think there’s earth movement with the subway under there.”
Hollywood activists have suggested that a subterranean stream running through the area may have caused “voids” in grouting when the MTA was building the subway beneath the boulevard.
A 1994 Times investigation revealed that grouting was not included along the subway’s boulevard stretch, as a money-saving construction measure. Later, when the boulevard sank 9 inches, grout was ordered pumped in. But equipment failure interfered with that project, the investigation discovered.
The MTA has long blamed solar energy for the Walk of Fame damage. Wednesday’s report again cited “the inadequacy of the original Walk’s terrazzo design and its inability to resist thermal expansion caused by prolonged exposure to the sun.”
Transit officials’ role in the proposed repairs was requested in April by MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky, who last year acknowledged, “We have a problem . . . you could break an ankle walking there.”
--
bob.pool@latimes.com
|
f5a0d7b6b0c48e4a7417e5906293a67f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-17-oe-matsusaka17-story.html | Where does it all go? | Where does it all go?
California state government spent $145 billion last fiscal year, $41 billion more than four years ago when Gov. Gray Davis got recalled by voters. With all that new spending -- a whopping 40% increase -- we ought to be in a golden age of government with abundant public services for all.
So why does it seem like the quality and quantity of government is not all that different from 2004? How many of us feel like we are getting 40% more public services, 40% better schools, roads, parks and so on?
The Legislature and governor, grappling with another huge budget deficit, are suggesting raising taxes, so it seems opportune to ask what we got from the last $41 billion.
Some of it went to cover increases in the cost of living, and state spending naturally grows with the size of the population. But even adjusting for inflation and population growth, state spending is up almost 20% compared with four years ago, a big enough bump that ordinary Californians should be able to notice it. The state’s financial statements describe where the money went -- the big gainers were education ($13 billion), transportation ($10 billion) and health ($10 billion) -- but not why these billions don’t create even a blip on our day-to-day radar.
One possibility is that we simply do not notice all of the valuable services we receive. A national 2007 survey by William G. Howell at the University of Chicago and Martin R. West at Brown University found that respondents underestimated spending in their school district by 60%; on average, they believed spending was $4,231 per student when in fact it was $10,377. They also found that Americans underestimated teacher salaries by 30%. How many Californians know that public school teachers in the state earn an average of $59,000 a year, essentially tied with Connecticut for the highest average pay in the country? Likewise, perhaps we don’t notice the repaired roads or new buses and trains that take us to work.
On the other hand, maybe these billions of dollars just do not translate into services that are valuable to us.
Is paying the highest teacher salaries in the country delivering a better education for our children? Are roads and transit being built near where we live? Do big raises for prison guards promote rehabilitation and lead to more humane prisons? If funds are being directed to satisfy powerful special interests -- teachers, builders, prison guards -- rather than everyday people, the spending might not result in tangibly improved services for the typical Californian.
The reason this matters right now is that the state is at a budget juncture. Almost by accident, without any significant changes to the tax code, state revenue grew more than 30% over the last four years, so the Legislature and governor were able to fuel the state’s spending growth without burdening the taxpayers.
But those days of revenue windfalls appear to be over. To bring the budget into balance, the state now has to reduce the rate of spending growth or raise taxes.
The governor has floated the idea of higher sales taxes, and the Legislature wants to increase the income tax on high-earners -- but the state already seems to be pushing the boundary on taxes.
California’s statewide sales tax of 7.25% is already the highest in the nation. Income taxes are also high, with the 10.3% rate on the top income bracket the highest in the nation. The highly progressive nature of the state’s income tax schedule -- the top 10% of earners supply more than 70% of income tax revenue, according to one estimate -- already results in excessive revenue volatility. It also raises questions about how much redistribution of wealth is fair: Should the top 10% foot the bill for basic services enjoyed by all Californians?
Legislators, pundits and interest groups warn of dire consequences if state spending is slowed or cut. But if most Californians haven’t detected a significant change from the last $41 billion, including 40% more on schools, will they notice if some of that spending disappears?
Voters are criticized for wanting more services yet being unwilling to pay higher taxes. That is unfair; Californians have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to fund valuable programs. But if spending can go up 40% and most of us can’t discern any difference, can we blame voters for being hesitant to put even more tax money in the hands of the state?
|
97799f3373a9aec719c0fdddd0f324fc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-18-et-cause18-story.html | It’s true: Firth likes ABBA | It’s true: Firth likes ABBA
LONDON -- There was a time in Colin Firth’s youth when he regarded the music of ABBA with the same sort of disdain he saved for, say, reading a Jane Austen novel.
Austen?
“Wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole,” he said. “It seemed girl stuff.”
And ABBA, the musical inspiration for his latest movie, “Mamma Mia!”?
“You wouldn’t be attracting the opposite sex by wearing an ABBA T-shirt,” he said, adding: “I was a Hendrix man.”
But at 47, Firth -- a star of the new movie version of the worldwide stage smash -- has found that one of life’s most exhilarating experiences is shedding preconceived notions about culture and entertainment.
To call him a Jane Austen fan these days would be an understatement: His decision to play Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 BBC version of “Pride and Prejudice” made him a Janeite pin-up, the wet shirt scene forever held on pause. And now, with his role as Harry Bright in “Mamma Mia!” -- which opens today nationwide -- the quintessential English actor has taken a fresh look at the band that he and his high-school mates in southern England once ridiculed and disdained.
The actor has been on the road for weeks promoting “Mamma Mia!,” traveling everywhere from Greece to Amsterdam.
The stop in London, for the recent premiere there, was one of the most rewarding, reuniting the cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters and producers Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson.
Unshaven and casually dressed on the morning after that premiere, Firth sipped cappuccino at a members-only club near his home in a quiet outer London neighborhood. He explained how his cultural roots actually were planted deep in American soil and then somehow grew to include a Swedish disco band that sang in English.
“I think it’s time we all came out,” he said. “I think you either like ABBA or you’re lying.”
Firth is relaxed in a comfortable chair in a modern space more cafe than Mayfair club, overlooking a wide quiet road of fashionable shops and strolling pedestrians. (It’s one of the few places in London where it’s hard to find a passing cab.) The actor’s brother-in-law has a shop up the way, selling green furniture and household accessories. (The business plan was inspired by Al Gore’s efforts to stop global warming.)
Firth and his interviewer have the place to themselves except for the noisy barista working the espresso machine and stacking crockery on the bar. The bright light of a sunny early morning in London floods in through banks of tall windows.
Firth brings to his new role not only an astonishing range of film and television experience but also a certain kind of intellectual masculinity, honed by years of reading William Faulkner and D.H. Lawrence and listening to American folk songs, along with a variety of English underground music and experimental jazz .
The son of an American history teacher who specialized in 1960s folk music and the civil rights movement, pop was never played in his boyhood home. “I came from a class and a generation of English people -- it wasn’t conscious snobbery, it’s just that pop was really for other people,” he said. “We were listening instead to Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez.
“The ‘60s had a big effect on me. I grew up with a fascination for America and a passion for America.”
By the 1970s, he was listening to music that made him seem cool. “I was looking for the most obscure music I could find -- Soft Machine, Little Feat. Also Hendrix.”
Relaxed but reserved, his conversation is at first guarded but then eases into that English version of intimacy -- self-depreciating humor, dry and complex, like a good gin.
Like Austen, he understands how well irony mixes with a healthy dose of wit.
“There are so many reference points in ABBA’s songs,” he said. “You remember the first time you got beat up in the disco, ‘Dancing Queen’ was probably playing. You’d get an ABBA song stuck in your head and would hear it over and over while taking exams or when your girlfriend was dumping you.”
And as the decades went by -- and Firth’s acting career flourished, making movies such as “Valmont,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” “The English Patient” and, recently, “When Did You Last See Your Father?” -- ABBA’s music would pop up. The music seemed to have invaded the consciousness like a sonic kudzu vine.
“I’d listen to Little Feat, but not to the extent that people were listening to ABBA nearly 40 years later. It was quite extraordinary.”
Last year he received a call from director Phyllida Lloyd and producer Benny Andersson to ask if he would join the “Mamma Mia!” cast.
The idea both intrigued and terrified Firth.
For starters, he’d had never sung outside his own shower.
“I tried to persuade them that I couldn’t sing,” Firth said. “Stellan and Pierce had the same experience. None of us had any faith in our ability to sing.
“I didn’t care about the dancing. I’m not really a dancer. You get what you’re given on that one.”
The casting crew told him, “We’re sure you can sing well enough.”
Firth came to think of the men in the film as “the token amateurs, if you like. Just there to make everyone feel included.
“The whole thing has the feel of an exuberant hen night, or stag night,” he said. “Otherwise buttoned-up people letting their hair down for the evening.”
He started singing ABBA songs everywhere -- in the car, in the kitchen. (He lives in London and Italy with his wife and two children.)
“Certain people wanted to move out of my house at that time,” he joked.
--
tina.daunt@latimes.com
|
0d5f3edadbff2ce672f13bc441ffdf67 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-18-fi-bratz18-story.html | Bratz falls to its rival in court | Bratz falls to its rival in court
In the battle of the doll makers, the house that Barbie built won a sweeping court victory Thursday, accessories and all.
A federal jury found that a Mattel Inc. designer created the lucrative Bratz doll concept while he worked at Mattel under an exclusivity contract.
It was a scathing defeat for MGA Entertainment Inc., which introduced the dolls -- known for big heads, pouty lips and bare-midriff outfits -- in 2001.
The jury found that Van Nuys-based MGA, which was a minor player in the toy world pre-Bratz, aided the designer’s breach of the Mattel contract.
And in a personal blow to MGA’s colorful chief executive, Isaac Larian, the jury decided that he specifically played a role in the contract breach.
“I was very disappointed,” Larian said. He blamed the verdict, in part, on the seven-page form the jury had to fill out, calling it “very, very confusing.”
The decision in U.S. District Court in Riverside opens the door for Mattel to claim damages or even an ownership stake in the doll, with annual sales estimated at $500 million by Mattel and as high as $2 billion by industry analysts.
The next phase of the trial, which begins Wednesday with the same 10-person jury, will determine how much Mattel could reap from its victory.
MGA is expected to claim that the final versions of the dolls were different from the drawings and other materials the jury considered.
The next phase could be averted if the two sides reach a settlement. Mattel lawyer John Quinn wouldn’t comment on that possibility. After the bitter copyright infringement battle, Larian said he wasn’t inclined to talk with Mattel.
“I need to sleep good at night,” he said. “I can’t be in bed with them.”
Mattel Chief Executive Robert A. Eckert issued a statement saying, “Regardless of the amount of damages awarded . . . this important principle has been confirmed by the jury: What MGA did was wrong.”
Quinn wouldn’t say how much the company would ask for, but that “the damages here are very, very substantial,” based on sales of the Bratz line.
MGA is a privately owned company and hasn’t disclosed its earnings. Judge Stephen Larson said the company would be required to show how much it has made from Bratz.
The verdict couldn’t have come at a better time for Mattel, which in the first quarter of the year lost $46.6 million. Its Barbie sales fell 12% in the U.S.
The jury in the Bratz trial agreed in Mattel’s favor on every point except for the origination date of four groups of drawings said to be among the first done by designer Carter Bryant. On those, the jury couldn’t come to the unanimous decision needed in federal civil trials.
Bryant and MGA contended during the trial that the Bratz concept was created in 1998 when he wasn’t covered by the contract that gave Mattel ownership of his designs and banned him from working for a competing firm.
Much evidence was introduced during the trial that Bryant developed the doll while at Mattel, including building a mock-up out of a discarded Barbie body and Ken boots.
Bryant, who made more than $30 million in royalties from Bratz, wasn’t included in the verdict. Shortly before the trial began on May 27, he settled with Mattel. The terms of that settlement were sealed.
Shares of El Segundo-based Mattel rose as much as 7% in after-hours trading.
--
david.colker@latimes.com
|
97590fc92bc99dcecf228fcbd04627d3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-18-me-endangered18-story.html | Endangered species get new aid | Endangered species get new aid
The California Supreme Court gave new protection to the state’s endangered species Thursday, ruling unanimously that developers, loggers and other commercial interests may be required to compensate for unforeseen wildlife losses.
The ruling, which affects both public works and private development, threw out a long-term logging plan approved by the state for 200,000 acres in Humboldt County, a plan that lower courts put on hold several years ago.
The state high court said the Department of Forestry had approved an “unidentifiable” plan that was still a work in progress and then delegated its completion to the logging company.
Justice Carlos R. Moreno, writing for the court, called the Forestry Department’s action illegal and an abrogation of its duties.
The California Department of Forestry “failed to proceed according to law,” Moreno wrote.
The decision grew out of lawsuits that followed the historic Headwaters Agreement, a 1996 pact between Pacific Lumber Co. and the state and federal governments. It was designed to resolve litigation and disputes over the logging of old-growth forests.
The battle between loggers and environmentalists centered on land that had been in timber production for 120 years and was home to the marbled murrelet, an endangered bird. After Pacific Lumber was acquired by Maxxam Inc. in 1996, Pacific began cutting down old-growth redwoods at a faster rate to offset Maxxam’s debt. The deforestation led to litigation and huge protests.
The pact required Pacific Lumber to sell part of its land to the government for conservation and to obtain environmental permits.
Thursday’s ruling ends a long-running battle over those permits but is not expected to unravel the pact. The decision established rules that the state must follow in approving large-scale logging plans or any major development that might endanger wildlife facing extinction.
Environmentalists and labor groups praised the ruling, saying it would help make the state more vigilant before granting permits for environmentally sensitive work.
The decision will help ensure that “landowners fully account for their impacts and the agencies today don’t give away the store and bind the hands of future management requirements,” said Paul Mason, deputy director of Sierra Club California.
The court said permits allowing companies to kill endangered and threatened species during the course of development should not make the industry immune from having to take future measures to compensate for unexpected wildlife losses.
Although companies need not compensate for species killed in natural disasters out of the industry’s control, they must mitigate for wildlife losses when the company’s conduct contributed to them or when a natural disaster makes the commercial activity more threatening to endangered wildlife, the court said.
“When natural disasters change baseline conditions, then logging activities that previously would not have had a significant impact on endangered species may now have such an impact,” Moreno wrote.
Industry critics expressed fears that the ruling could deter companies from entering into voluntary conservation plans.
Paul Weiland, a land-use lawyer who represented the building industry in the case, said developers might be reluctant to sign an agreement that requires them to compensate for unforeseen losses of wildlife above and beyond what they have been required to spend for mitigation to get the permit.
Permits for the taking of endangered species can be in effect for several decades. Pacific’s endangered species permit was for 50 years.
“The question is, who should bear that risk,” Weiland said. “People are willing to take on a permit when they feel they understand the risk, but when the risk is unknowable, people are less inclined to do it.”
Jonathan Weissglass, who represented the labor industry in the case, said the ruling would prevent agencies from signing off on uncompleted logging plans.
“If agencies were able to get away with what they did here, it would be a complete disaster,” he said.
Scott Greacon, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, a Humboldt County-based forestry conservation group, agreed.
“Clearly any sustained yield plan will have to reside in a single document,” he said.
But he said the protection of endangered species was an even more important element of the ruling.
“The ruling means the state Department of Fish and Game can’t tie its own hands and prevent itself from imposing mitigation in future years if circumstances change and require those measures to protect species,” Greacon said.
--
maura.dolan@latimes.com
|
3b6d03c9084b90ef42fc0d931ffe90c3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-18-me-stafford18-story.html | Singer a favorite of World War II GIs | Singer a favorite of World War II GIs
Jo Stafford, a singer who was a favorite of GIs during World War II and whose recordings made the pop music charts dozens of times in the 1950s, died Sunday of congestive heart failure at her home in Century City. She was 90.
According to her son, Tim Weston, she had been in ill health since October and had been hospitalized several times since 2002.
Stafford had a long career but enjoyed most of her success from the late 1930s to the early ‘60s. Her skills were apparent from the beginning, when she sang as a teenager in a vocal trio with her two older sisters, Pauline and Christine.
“Mom graduated from high school on a Friday and was doing soundtracks at RKO on Monday,” her son said.
Qualities that were present at that time became the foundation of her vocal style: her impressive technical skills, flawless intonation and cool but expressive tone. Whether Stafford was singing romantic numbers such as “You Belong To Me” -- a No. 1 hit in 1952 -- or making duets with Frankie Laine on the lighthearted, comedic “Hambone” (a No. 5 hit the same year), her performances were superb displays of crystal-clear musicality combined with an insightful understanding of lyrics.
Those skills were particularly useful early in her career, first when she was singing lead in the trio with her sisters, then during her work with the Pied Pipers. Initially an octet, with seven male singers and Stafford, it was pared to a quartet when the group began working with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1939.
Stafford’s solo career began with an inextricable link to the war. A favorite of American soldiers, she was told by a veteran of the Pacific that “the Japanese used to play your records on loudspeakers across from our foxholes so that we’d get homesick and surrender.” Not surprisingly, servicemen affectionately referred to her as “GI Jo.”
Stafford and her second husband, pianist/composer Paul Weston, were viewed by most of their contemporaries as musical class acts who brought clarity, focus and sophistication to the most lighthearted pop music. Which made their transformation into Jonathan and Darlene Edwards -- a duo that was the surprising last highlight of Stafford’s career -- such a remarkable accomplishment.
The premise was simple enough: They would do imitations of a minimally skilled duet of singer and piano player -- the sort who can frequently be heard in no-cover-charge cocktail lounges everywhere. But as interpreted by Stafford’s pliable voice, the songs came out just a little sharp in one spot, a bit flat in another, with the rhythm slipping from beat to beat.
Did Stafford find it difficult to sing in such ear-jarring fashion? “Well, Jo Stafford might have found it difficult,” she told the Chicago Tribune in 1988, “but Darlene had no problem at all.”
It worked so well, in fact, that the duo’s recording of “Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris” won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album of 1960. It was the only Grammy that Stafford would win.
Jo Elizabeth Stafford was born Nov. 12, 1917, in the San Joaquin Valley town of Coalinga. Her parents, Grover Cleveland Stafford and Anna York Stafford, moved the family to Long Beach, where she graduated from high school after having five years of classical voice training. Besides her singing, she was, according to her son, a very good pianist.
After working for the Dorsey Orchestra from 1939 to 1942, Stafford began her solo career as one of the first acts on the new Capitol Records label. She moved to Columbia Records in 1950 and back to Capitol in 1961. Although she was active for a relatively brief time as a solo artist, she sold more than 25 million records.
Once she had decided to end her singing career in the mid-1960s, however, Stafford seemed little tempted to return.
Asked at the time whether she might consider the sort of comeback that had worked for such contemporaries as Rosemary Clooney and Patti Page, her response was concise and to the point. She no longer sang, she said, “for the same reason that Lana Turner is not posing in bathing suits anymore.”
Stafford did make a few appearances after the 1960s, among them a revival of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in the late ‘70s for which she sang inimitable lounge versions of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.”
Stafford’s first marriage -- to Pied Pipers singer John Huddleston -- ended in divorce. She married Weston in 1952; they had two children, Tim, a musician and record producer, and Amy, a singer. Her husband died in 1996.
She is survived by her children; four grandchildren; and her younger sister, Betty Jane. Services will be private.
Instead of flowers, donations may be made to the Share Inc charity.
|
aca1dac00e3951ff3644562f00f6a749 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-19-et-skarsgard19-story.html | He’s armed and ready for success | He’s armed and ready for success
Waiting in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton, the lanky, laid-back Alexander Skarsgard bears little resemblance to the stoic, super-efficient U.S. Marine he plays in HBO’s miniseries “Generation Kill,” airing on Sundays. In his loose-fitting clothes, sandy blond pageboy and one-day stubble, the reported five-time Sexiest Man in Sweden honoree looks more likely to hit the beach than the enemy.
Perhaps the authenticity he brings to his role as real-life Sgt. Bradley Colbert comes in part from his stint in his homeland’s military but, he says, “It’s . . . Sweden. We shoot flowers. I mean, we haven’t been in a war in almost 200 years. I was training for something I knew would never happen. Who’s going to invade Sweden?”
If Skarsgard’s name rings a bell, it should: His father, Stellan, is one of Sweden’s most famous actors (“Ronin” and “Mamma Mia!” among about 100 others).
Starting himself as a child actor, Alex took a break from the craft for schooling and military service. When he returned to the screen at 20, he amassed nearly 30 credits in 10 years. But he admits his steely performance as Colbert, nicknamed “Iceman” for his cool under fire, was his greatest challenge so far.
“Colbert’s such a confident guy, he knows that he’s good. I had to bring that into the [audition] room; if I didn’t feel that, how were they supposed to feel that?” Skarsgard says. “So I convinced myself I could do it. But then when I got the part, I got terrified. Suddenly, I was sitting there with 400 pages of script and the book and reading all these long monologues and the language was so difficult, all these words I didn’t understand: ‘Oscar Mike,’ ‘RTO,’ what is this?”
For Colbert in particular, Skarsgard says he carries a “tremendous amount of respect. I wanted him to be proud of the project. But I also realized I had to make ‘Brad Colbert’ in the show my own,” he says. “I was extremely flattered when [Colbert] said he liked it. That meant so much to me.”
It’s heady stuff, making a painstakingly accurate drama about events so current the smoke is still rising from the barrel. “I hope that people will realize that hundreds of thousands of men and women are over there and this is what they go through on a daily basis,” Skarsgard says. “The good stuff and the bad stuff, the collateral damage and just the . . . feeling of being shot at.”
Now that he’s back from seven months of camo in the desert, Skarsgard will don Dolce & Gabbana as a suave, 1,000-year-old Viking vampire for Alan Ball’s upcoming HBO series, “True Blood.”
In theaters next year are the animated fantasy “Metropia” and the British comedy “Beyond the Pole,” about “two morons walking to the North Pole.” Skarsgard liked the script but the biggest draw was shooting in Greenland:
“I wanted to experience silence. I’ve never experienced that. In my country, there’s the wind in the trees, you hear animals, birds somewhere. It’s so . . . amazing how compact the silence was. It’s like your ears are going to start bleeding, almost. It’s so intense.”
Whenever possible, Skarsgard indulges in his (usually) doomed love for the Chicago Cubs of Stockholm soccer, Hammarby IF, which won its first title in 104 years in 2001.
“It’s like a curse, being born a Hammarby supporter. Now that we’re pretty good, it’s not right. ‘Really? Is this happening?’ ” says the Sexiest of Swedes, soon to be known in the States. “But I could get used to the sweet smell of success.”
|
63b808c623d640dbad2285a82b0fab9b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-19-le-saturday19-story.html | Governor, listen to Maria | Governor, listen to Maria
Re “Governor’s cuts stymie first lady’s idea,” July 14
Since 1954, the San Fernando Valley Assn. for the Retarded Inc. (New Horizons) has been serving people with developmental disabilities. We are heartened that the first lady of California realizes the importance of agencies, such as New Horizons, which ensure that people with mental retardation, autism, epilepsy and cerebral palsy are able to help themselves be a proud part of our community.
The governor’s proposed cuts will gravely impact the ability of New Horizons to provide services that allow our people to be independent. It will take away jobs for the disabled. We urge the governor, the Legislature and the people of California to not balance the state’s problems on the backs of California’s most fragile citizens.
Cynthia Kawa
Executive Director
New Horizons
North Hills
|
4a5a3a74ff363bc1bb0b57092be646b9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-19-me-foot19-story.html | It’s the heavy heel of the law | It’s the heavy heel of the law
About a half dozen employees waited for customers to trickle in on a searing weekday afternoon at Ching Lau’s foot massage spa -- a long, open room lined with armchairs and stools from which masseuses knead pressure points across people’s soles.
The second-floor storefront near an Asian grocer in Rowland Heights is part of a wave of foot massage businesses that has saturated ethnic-Chinese neighborhoods in Los Angeles County over the last three years.
The popularity of foot massage has risen as cutthroat competition has sent prices downward. But now, business owners are dealing with a new problem: a crackdown by county and state officials who have ruled that they need licenses from the state Board of Barbering and Cosmetology.
A few weeks ago, investigators arrived at Lau’s business, closed its doors and asked that everyone produce certification.
“It was so unfair,” said Lau, who owns several other parlors and recently formed a foot massage business association. “They grabbed people without any explanation and cited two masseuses.”
Authorities have raided about a dozen foot massage parlors in recent months, from San Gabriel to Rowland Heights, charging operators and masseuses with fines of up to $1,000.
The scrutiny has roiled business owners and employees in an industry that has increasingly become a refuge for poor immigrants from China -- many of whom consider the relaxed environs and better pay a superior option to working at a restaurant.
The action has prompted complaints from some in the Chinese American community that the state is unfairly targeting immigrant business owners and their employees.
An attorney representing a new association of foot massage parlor owners has argued that the industry employs more than 1,000 people -- many of the poorest Chinese emigres hoping to establish a foothold in the United States.
But investigators said it’s the parlors that have to clean up their act, adding that they are concerned about the conditions they’ve seen.
Many masseuses aren’t making minimum wage, said Terri McLaughlin, a business license investigator for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department who has spent recent months focused on enforcing the state law.
“There’s no [workers’] compensation,” she said. “There’s a whole realm of problems.”
McLaughlin said she has tried to explain the law to operators before citing them for violating the code but has found that some of the workers are not aware of their rights.
The Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, which deals mostly with manicurists and hairstylists, determined last year that the young industry fell under its purview because of a law that encompasses the beautification and cleansing of the feet. Many foot massage businesses soak customers’ feet in warm water and herbs before administering a massage.
Many foot massage operators abide by individual city rules that often require that masseuses complete several hundred hours of schooling and that a certified health professional -- such as an acupuncturist or massage therapist -- be on-site.
State officials are moving forward with the enforcement even though they acknowledge the jurisdictional issues are still unclear.
“It’s a gray area right now,” said Jim Jacobs, a supervising inspector for the state board. “Our legal [department] is looking at it. Either they’re going to say it’s not our jurisdiction, or there’s going to have to be a new statute written.”
Foot massage has been popular in Asia for decades, but has only recently arrived in the United States. The practice, said to be thousands of years old, is based on the belief that different nerve endings in the foot correspond with the body’s internal organs.
Masseuses target these pressure points to energize the organs. There are no studies proving that foot massage benefits overall health, but many customers swear by it.
Lau and others believe the state is cracking down out of concern that illicit sexual activities are occurring at the parlors -- something owners strongly deny.
“They think foot massage must be something to do with sex,” Lau said. “They don’t understand how popular this is in Asia. It’s part of Chinese culture.”
(Though she finds it curious that some businesses have private rooms with massage tables, McLaughlin said the suspicion of illicit sexual activity was not the driving force behind the enforcement.)
Business owners say that they should not have to face enforcement until lawmakers establish a separate set of rules for foot massage.
What’s worse, they argue, is that the schooling required for a Board of Barbering and Cosmetology license does not include any instruction on foot massage, but mostly hair and nail work.
Lau could stand to lose the most from the changes. The former gold setter from Hong Kong has built a foot massage empire of sorts with eight parlors in Los Angeles County and two apiece in Nevada and San Jose.
He recently opened a flagship spa in the same building complex as the San Gabriel Hilton, featuring a beauty salon, facial treatments and VIP foot massage rooms.
Lau was unpopular among his rivals for landing on the scene two years ago, offering foot rubs for $15 an hour. The standard price had been twice as much.
Yet he persuaded 19 other foot massage operators to join him last month to form the association.
Lau’s first move was hiring Daniel Deng, a prominent local attorney. Deng is arranging meetings with Assemblyman Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park), who has shown interest in establishing new guidelines.
Deng and Lau hope the association will encourage other foot massage operators to band together and establish standards that can boost their leverage the same way the acupuncture and Chinese restaurant industries have tried to do.
“They need to educate before they enforce,” Deng said. “These are legitimate businesses.”
Caught in the middle are some of the workers, who see foot massage as a path to a better life.
Jack Xia is a former marketing manager from Shandong province in China who now works at one of Lau’s establishments in Rowland Heights. The 44-year-old father of one hopes to secure a green card and bring his wife and 13-year-old son to the U.S.
“I used to work at a restaurant, but it was too hard,” said Xia through a Chinese interpreter.
“I’m doing this for my family. I miss them very much.”
--
david.pierson@latimes.com
|
b6c85c407b1c25f890e493333e4054fa | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-19-na-cruelty19-story.html | Animal cruelty law is rejected | Animal cruelty law is rejected
In a setback for the animal rights movement, a U.S. appeals court Friday struck down on free-speech grounds a federal law that made it a crime to sell videos of dogfighting and other acts of animal cruelty.
All 50 states have laws against the abuse of animals, the appeals court said, but “a depiction of animal cruelty” is protected by the 1st Amendment.
The ruling overturns a Virginia man’s 2005 conviction, the nation’s first under the law. Robert J. Stevens of Pittsville, Va., advertised and sold two videos of pit bulls fighting each other and a third showing the pit bulls attacking hogs and wild boars.
He sold the videos to federal agents in Pittsburgh, and was convicted and given three years in prison.
In Friday’s decision, the appeals court in Philadelphia, by a 10-3 vote, said it was not prepared to “recognize a new category of speech that is unprotected by the 1st Amendment.”
Acts of cruelty to animals “warrant strong legal sanctions,” the appeals court said, but it ruled unconstitutional the effort to criminalize for-profit depictions of animal cruelty.
Congress passed the law in 1999 in hopes of eradicating the trade in animal cruelty videos. Because the videos rarely showed people who could be identified, state prosecutors often could not prove where the videos were made.
The law also was designed to stop so-called crush videos. According to a congressional report cited by the court, these are “depictions of women inflicting torture [on animals] with their bare feet or while wearing high-heeled shoes.”
The law itself spoke broadly. It called for up to five years in prison for anyone who “creates, sells or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty” for the purpose of making money. This includes the showing of a “living animal” being “maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.”
The key issue for the appeals court was whether animal cruelty could be considered as akin legally to the sexual abuse of children.
Usually, videos and photographs are protected as free speech, even if they show illegal or abhorrent conduct. But in 1982, the Supreme Court made an exception for child pornography, ruling that sexual depictions of children could be prosecuted as a crime despite the 1st Amendment. This was the only way to wipe out such abuse of children, the high court said.
Government lawyers said the animal cruelty law should be upheld on the same basis. It was needed to stop the abuse of animals for profit, they said.
The appeals court disagreed. “Preventing cruelty to animals, although an exceedingly worthy goal, simply does not implicate interests of the same magnitude as protecting children from physical and psychological harm,” wrote Judge Brooks Smith of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
The three dissenters said the law should have been upheld to help in “protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty.”
Separately, the law has been challenged in Florida by a company that broadcasts cockfights from Puerto Rico over the Internet.
The Justice Department had no reaction Friday to the ruling. Normally, however, the government appeals to the Supreme Court when a federal law is struck down as unconstitutional.
In May, the high court repeated its view that the government has broad power to prosecute those who traffic in child pornography. The justices rejected a free-speech challenge to a stronger anti-pornography law that targets online predators. That measure makes it a crime to offer or solicit child sex images via a computer, even if no money or actual pornography is involved. The court upheld the law in a 7-2 decision.
--
david.savage@latimes.com
|
2d59247469fc5f1ddd85a76b7a844060 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-20-ca-lindsaylohan20-story.html | It’s bigger than both of them | It’s bigger than both of them
During HER 10 years as a famous person, Lindsay Lohan has worn a dizzying number of public masks.
She began as a beloved Disney tween queen and a much-praised box-office lure. That unraveled soon enough, as she became another wounded, doomed celebrity girl careening through the tabloid world: Lohan the despondent daughter of reckless parents, the on-the-set monster destroying her career and holding up expensive productions, the luckless dater whose boyfriends and hookups trash-talked her and did her no good, the cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled road menace who seemed rehab resistant.
But lately, there’s been another twist in the Lohan saga that the mainstream gossip media -- her unofficial biographers -- have been feeding to their readers in regular doses. US Weekly, OK!, Star, the New York Post’s Page Six, Life & Style and all of the other cogs in the celebrity news machine have been regularly publishing reports about her relationship with DJ .
Which from all happy and seemingly sober appearances -- they kiss, they hug, they hold hands, they shop for groceries -- is a romantic one.
Neither Lohan nor Ronson has spoken to the media about their relationship, and not surprisingly, Lohan’s publicist would not comment for this story nor make Lohan herself available, writing in an e-mail that Lohan “wants to keep her private life private.” (Ronson likewise did not respond to a request for comment made through her website.)
Yet the celebrity magazines have kept the stories coming. Mainstream editors used to be squeamish to the point of erasure when it came to unconfirmed same-sex relationships. Unless a star was willing to say, “Yep, I’m gay,” as so famously did on the cover of Time in 1997 -- and as a trickle of others have too in years since -- print publications (including this one) have generally employed their own form of don’t ask/don’t tell when covering gay or bisexual celebrities who have not come out via press release or some other explicit declaration.
While many celebrities themselves have stopped hiding their same-sex relationships, the media have not until Lohan followed suit. , an openly gay columnist for the , who himself has never engaged in that kind of self-censorship, has noticed a change. As Musto sees it, we’ve reached a moment in which the Lohan-Ronson pairing can simply be reported as a fact because people have, you know, eyes.
“Traditionally, the media has been as interested in closeting celebrities as the celebrities themselves have been,” Musto said. “I’ve read things in gossip columns that would never go there in the past and realized, ‘Wow, they’re going there now.’ They don’t consider gay a dirty thing anymore. And it’s very cool.”
Jared Shapiro, the editor of Life & Style, said that the Lohan-Ronson story has indeed presented a unique set of issues for celebrity magazines. “Why is this couple different than every other couple?” Shapiro asked rhetorically recently on the telephone. “We know they’re not friends -- we know they’re in love, we know they’re dating.
“Major movie star! Gay, question mark? Bisexual, question mark? Um.” For Shapiro, those questions are just the first stop, and his magazine devoted its cover this week to them, asking, “Is Lindsay Gay?”
Before that, Shapiro said, the magazine had chosen to “follow their step-by-step,” which is fairly easy because the couple are out so often. In a sense stories about the doings of “LoRo,” as they’ve been called, are just standard celeb-gossip fare. And yet, Shapiro said, there is undeniably a larger issue looming over each story.
He returned to the rhetorical to ponder the question: “At what point do we editorialize and say why we think this is important?”
None of the other weekly magazines or gossip columns seems to have reached that point of what-does-it-all-mean analysis, either. Each has used the same template for this relationship as they do week after week for, say, “Eva and Tony” or “Nicole and Keith”: “Lindsay Lohan Turns 22 With Samantha Ronson at Her Side” read the headline of a from this month. On the cover of its July 14 issue, “Lindsay & Samantha: Inside Their Hot Romance” to its readers; and on its Love Notes page on June 30, US asserted that “those close to the pair call it love” under the headline “Lindsay & Samantha: This Is for Real.”
Nothing is official
Still, THE facts can’t be pushed aside: There has been no official acknowledgment from Team Lohan -- or Team Ronson, for that matter -- that the relationship is Sapphic. So to discuss it looks a lot like outing, which is, to paraphrase , “publicizing homosexual behavior without the person’s (or people’s) consent.”
No less an authority than Bonnie Fuller, the former editor of US and Star and numerous other publications, who is both credited and blasted for creating the current gossip world we live in, said in a telephone interview, “I don’t think we’ve ever been in the business of outing celebrities at celebrity news weeklies.”
Hmm. Perhaps, then, it’s more complicated than calling the Lohan-Ronson coverage an evolved form of outing. Maybe, with fame culture and its now-rote privacy invasions having brought us to a state of flux about what secrets a celebrity is entitled to, long-held anti-outing stances are crumbling.
There are other, more subtle factors at work in the case of Lohan, of course. This is, in tabloid terms, an over-covered (former, one hopes) disaster who has entered into a same-sex relationship. After all the dirt they’ve dished on her, why would the gossip mill back off now? There’s also the reality that the mainstream celebrity media must compete furiously to survive, and Lohan and Ronson are dating in a public way, with much photographic evidence. It would be surprising if they did not scuttle the old rules to be able to document this latest Lohan chapter.
And there’s yet another open question: Do editors assume that their readers are, at this point in history, largely accepting of -- and possibly even interested in -- gay relationships? (At least when it’s two women?)
It would be nice to ask some of the romance’s other leading storytellers these questions, but the editors of US, People and Page Six all declined to comment for this article through PR representatives.
Perez Hilton, whose website perezhilton.com regularly exposes perceived inconsistencies and hypocrisies in famous people and institutions, has also found himself wondering about this subject. “I’ve been fascinated by the reluctance of anyone in the mainstream media to talk on the record about the issue,” Hilton said in an interview. “Most of these big media organizations -- still to this day -- have an unwritten policy against, quote, ‘outing’ people.
“What’s especially interesting to me is that the publication that first jumped on the Lindsay-and-Samantha relationship bandwagon . . . is People magazine! And People magazine, of all the celebrity weeklies, is the tamest, the most celebrity-friendly and the most by-the-book. I’m fascinated by why they’re doing it. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s just surprising to me.”
So why won’t People -- or US or Page Six -- say why Lohan and Ronson’s relationship is different than other same-sex celebrity relationships that they ignore? “Maybe because they have no good explanation for it,” Hilton said.
Both Hilton and Musto have a far easier time keeping track of their editorial standards because they both do believe in outing. Musto, who was the first person to report -- in tandem with Page Six -- that DeGeneres and Anne Heche were dating, has been writing about closeted gay celebrities for many years. “It might seem shocking, but there were days when Ellen and Rosie [O’Donnell] and Boy George and George Michael were not out, and I was running pieces about them being gay,” he said.
It wasn’t always easy. “I did get vilified in the old days,” Musto said, sounding wistful. “Like I was considered a lunatic.”
The day after her birthday party at Teddy’s at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Lohan called radio show and said she’d like to spend the next year “being with the person that I care about,” among other gender-neutral phrasings that Seacrest -- uncharacteristically -- didn’t ask her to elaborate on. Is Lohan getting closer to more specific nouns and pronouns, particularly if one of the celebrity magazines will pay her a big check to do so, as has been rumored?
‘A breath of fresh air’
Life & Style’s Shapiro said that whatever happens going forward, covering Lohan-Ronson has been a relief. “This relationship, I will be honest with you, is a breath of fresh air for Lindsay Lohan coverage,” he said. “None of us want to be writing about the train wreck that Lindsay Lohan was. We don’t want to see her back in rehab, that doesn’t do anyone any good. We love that she’s with Sam Ronson and that she’s happy -- Lindsay looks better than ever.”
And perhaps that perceived happiness -- on Lohan’s part, perhaps, but more important among the celebrity editors and reporters who cover her -- offers another clue about why this story has unfolded as openly as it has. “People want to get emotionally involved in this stuff, that’s why they buy the magazines and read this stuff -- they want to be taken away,” Shapiro said. “When it’s Lindsay and Sam, it’s like, ‘Oh, they found each other.’ ”
--
kate.aurthur@latimes.com
|
a3c1c7efdc7e92a0d88b74cf7adc60a4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-20-op-lotke20-story.html | Downsized to death | Downsized to death
Last week, consumers were worried about salmonella in their fresh tomatoes. Before that, it was E. coli in their spinach. Something is wrong. Eating a salad is not supposed to be a high-risk activity
But the problem isn’t so much farmers. It’s ideology. Historian Rick Perlstein, author of “Nixonland,” calls it “E. coli conservatism” -- government shrinks and shrinks until people get sick.
“Government is not the solution to our problem,” President Reagan famously declared in his inaugural address in 1981. “Government is the problem.”
Many conservatives have gone far beyond that. Their traditional embrace of small government has been replaced with outright disdain for it. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, doesn’t just want to shrink government. To use his words, he wants government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Once in power, E. coli conservatives shrink government by hamstringing it. They weaken rules that protect people, slash the budgets of consumer agencies and appoint industry friends to oversight commissions. The result: Some government regulatory agencies that we trust to protect us have shrunk to insignificance or serve private industry rather than consumers.
The Food and Drug Administration’s seeming ineptness in finding the source of a salmonella outbreak, which has poisoned more than 1,200 people in 42 states, is case in point. What’s especially troubling is that even before this episode, the Government Accountability Office had officially designated “federal oversight of food safety as a high-risk area.”
The FDA first thought that tomatoes -- either grown in Florida or imported from Mexico -- were the culprit. After weeks of trying to trace the source of the salmonella, with domestic farmers bulldozing crops they weren’t allowed to sell and taking a $100-million hit, the agency on Thursday ruled out tomatoes. It’s now on the trail of jalapeno peppers.
What’s clear, though, is that imports of agricultural products have increased by 78% since 1973, but inspections of those products have decreased by 78% over the same period, according to the Coalition for a Stronger FDA, whose membership includes former chiefs of the Department of Health and Human Services, of which the FDA is a part. That’s a problem because the FDA itself says pesticide violations or infectious disease occur three times more often in imported foods than in domestic foods. In 1991, there were 1.5 inspections for each $1 million worth of imported agriculture commodities; in 2006 there were only 0.4.
In a 2007 interview in USA Today, William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner, admitted that food safety had become a crap shoot: “The FDA has so few resources, all it can do is target high-risk things, give a pass to everything else and hope it is OK.
The agency’s decline started when Reagan was president. FDA food inspections plummeted from 29,355 in 1980 to 7,668 in 1989. They stayed flat during Bill Clinton’s years in the White House, then jumped past 11,000 after 9/11, amid fears that the nation’s food was vulnerable to terrorist attack. Food inspections have now, however, fallen to levels below that number.
But E. coli conservatism is not limited to the food supply. Before the salmonella outbreak, there were major recalls of pet food (contaminated by melamine) and toys (lead paint). The agency that’s supposed to protect us from toxic toys is the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a job made tougher because its resources have been cut. The commission’s 2007 budget was half its 1974 budget in real dollars. Staffing is in free fall, dropping from 978 in 1980 to 420 in 2007. The testing labs have not been modernized since 1975, and the 2008 budget request removed the reduction of childhood drowning deaths as a strategic goal because of “resource limitations.” The agency’s entire toy-testing department last year consisted of one man who dropped toys on his office floor to see if they broke.
People cannot test toys for lead on their own. That’s why Congress created the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1972 “to protect the public against unreasonable risks of injury associated with consumer products” by giving the agency the authority to set safety standards, require labeling, order recalls, ban dangerous products and collect death and injury data. People count on it to do its job.
In the era of globalization, the job is more important than ever. When the commission was created, toys were primarily manufactured in the U.S. under American-set safety standards. Now they are mostly imported from low-wage producers in countries not subject to U.S. rules. The Toy Industry Assn. estimates that 80% of the toys that Americans buy are made in China. Last year, more than 20 million of them were recalled because of lead paint or other hazards. The U.S. banned the use of lead paint 30 years ago.
After the 2006 election, the new Democratic Congress recognized the dangers and offered additional resources. The commission chair, Nancy Nord, resisted. The appointee of President Bush, said fears about not protecting consumers were overstated and that modest oversight plus commercial self-interest were sufficient to achieve the agency’s goals.
There are many other examples of E. coli conservatism at work. In 2000-2001, energy deregulation in California opened the door for Enron and similar companies to artificially limit the supply of electricity to the state, driving up prices and creating rolling blackouts. Financial deregulation helped create the housing bubble by allowing companies to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford the payments. The surging commodities markets and the swooning stock markets are in part caused by rule changes, made in the name of deregulation, that make it easier to speculate on price swings. It was recently learned that the three main credit-rating agencies -- Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings -- failed to rein in conflicts of interest in their ratings practices. Among the problems: Companies issuing securities were paying the ratings agencies for their rating.
Enough. Instead of talking about the size of government, we should be debating how to make our government more effective. How many more people have to get sick before the government reclaims its mission to serve the people?
|
5378fd9a4ce9332ad57414e78dd74f84 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-20-sp-mma20-story.html | Emelianenko shows he’s the real deal | Emelianenko shows he’s the real deal
Red and white lights created a rose-colored glow inside the Honda Center in Anaheim, a fog machine sent wafts of vapor through the arena and a distinctly Orange County crowd filled every available seat.
There was nothing artificial about Affliction’s first fight card, however.
The apparel company-turned-mixed martial arts producer turned up the volume as Saturday night wore on, and so did the sellout crowd of 13,988 during the final three bouts.
In the main event, former PRIDE Fighting Championships heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko (28-1) needed only 36 seconds to dispose of Tim Sylvia (24-5) in a match scheduled for five rounds. Emelianenko, a Russian making his second appearance in the United States, landed four lightning-quick lefts before dropping Sylvia with a rapid combination. He then pounced on Sylvia, rolled him over with his back on Emelianenko’s chest and locked in on a rear naked chokehold, forcing Sylvia to tap out as blood trickled from his nose.
“I was hoping I would end the fight then,” Emelianenko said through an interpreter. “I was prepared to fight standing up, but I knew I had a better chance to end it on the ground.”
It was Emelianenko’s second straight first-round submission against a much larger opponent. He beat 7-foot-2, 352-pound Hong-Man Choi with an arm bar in December.
“He got off first and I had so many things going through my mind,” Sylvia said. “He landed the big punch, got on me and got the submission.”
Affliction, which has built a niche among MMA followers, ventured into the fight business with a production that seemed part rock concert and part fashion show. Affliction was competing with MMA heavyweight UFC, which put together a card in Las Vegas on five weeks’ notice and televised it simultaneously on the basic cable channel Spike TV.
Among those in attendance at the Honda Center were former UFC light-heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz, former heavyweight champion Randy Couture, former pro wrestler Bill Goldberg and real estate tycoon Donald Trump, an investor in the event who sat next to Ortiz’s girlfriend, former adult film star Jenna Jameson.
The show had some early glitches, particularly with the oversized boxing ring Affliction chose to use. On three occasions, fighters fell through the ropes, forcing the referee to halt the action so they could get back in the ring. Several fighters also appeared out of shape, leading to slow-paced action that elicited booing.
The action heated up during the heavyweight undercard bouts, with Andrei Arlovski and Ben Rothwell engaged in a slugfest for two rounds. Arlovski, who is from Belarus, unleashed a battery of punches late in the second round, followed by a knee to Rothwell’s jaw, drawing blood from his nose and ear. At 1:13 of the third round, Arlovski (13-5) dropped Rothwell (29-6) for good, landing a straight right followed by a right hook.
In another heavyweight bout that was scheduled for three rounds, Josh Barnett (23-5) of Seattle beat Pedro Rizzo (16-8) of Brazil, inflicting two right hammer fists before referee Herb Dean stopped the bout at 1:44 of the second.
--
dan.arritt@latimes.com
|
b9d325e77324f0e76aeb195943d5b926 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-21-et-book21-story.html | Villain’s savory; sleuth needs spice | Villain’s savory; sleuth needs spice
Mysteries and thrillers are two distinct forms of the crime fiction genre. The former revolve around the investigation of a crime by a professional or amateur sleuth; thrillers usually pit a hero against a villain whose diabolical plot is uncovered as the story progresses. Thrillers are particularly distinguished by their sense of urgency, placing the reader in the middle of the action, sometimes alongside the perpetrator.
Sometimes mysteries and thrillers get their literary DNA scrambled and give rise to memorable hybrids like Thomas Harris’ “The Silence of the Lambs” or Michael Connelly’s “The Poet.” But more often than not, these genre busters can be so plodding and manipulative that slam-dunking them into the trash is the biggest thrill they will ever give. So I cracked open Nigel McCrery’s “Still Waters” with some trepidation, not sure how the novel would balance its mystery and thriller elements.
The early pages seemed promising. The prologue, a brief vignette set at a children’s tea party in World War II England, was chilling enough to keep me reading, but it was followed by a first chapter that not only identifies the killer, an elderly woman named Violet, but lays out her very precise method of dispatching victims.
Despite my fears of too few thrills ahead, I decided to give “Still Waters” a few more pages and was intrigued by the chocolate-tasting sound -- yes, you read that right -- of Det. Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie’s mobile phone.
Whether they are rare-Scotch drinkers, closeted dinosaurs or nursery-rhyme characters, detectives these days seem required to have some noteworthy quirk to attract readers’ attention. And the Essex Constabulary detective that McCrery creates has a doozy -- a rare neurological condition in which sounds cause him to experience tastes. The condition, known as synesthesia, reportedly has been shared in various mis-wirings of the nervous system by people as diverse as Vladimir Nabokov and Duke Ellington.
And it’s ruined Lapslie’s career, making it impossible for him to sit among noisy colleagues at the office. It’s also collapsed his personal life, estranging him from his family because the sound of his children’s laughter evoked the unwanted, overwhelming taste of vanilla. Even a favorite Beatles song “suddenly flooded his mouth with rotting meat. Life was just a rollercoaster of unexpected sensations.”
Even more unexpected for Lapslie is the unwanted call he receives to return to work despite being on indefinite leave because of his disability. The case he’s asked to investigate is of a woman whose desiccated body is unearthed during the investigation of an auto accident. The case’s connection to Lapslie strikes him as strange: A police computer has linked a characteristic of the body -- fingertips cut off with shears -- to a case he can’t remember investigating. And once the victim is identified as Violet Chambers, the woman introduced in the novel’s early pages, “Still Waters” becomes less of a whodunit for Lapslie than a why-dunit for readers.
McCrery’s bold step in both revealing and obscuring Violet so early in the book allows ample space to develop her character and manipulate the reader’s discomfort as she observes potential victims leaving a bingo parlor: "[S]uddenly [her] senses came alert. . . . She could smell the lavender perfume, lovingly dabbed on from bottles bought twenty years beforehand. She could feel their rough, hand-knitted cardigans and scarves. . . . [She] noted which streets they went down, which directions they left in, who leant on a cane for support and who didn’t, who left in company and who left alone. These were her natural prey.”
Violet Chambers is the dark side of Miss Marple -- aged, seemingly benign, unnoticed but noticing with a deadly purpose.
As her obsessions and history are revealed, she becomes as repulsive and engaging a killer as any encountered in recent memory.
The challenge for McCrery is to create equally compelling characters in the team hunting her, and this is where “Still Waters” falls short. Where rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling’s naivete in “Silence of the Lambs” makes her a perfect foil for the villains, and crime reporter Jack McEvoy’s obsession with finding the Edgar Allan Poe-spouting serial killer of cops in “The Poet” gives the story its urgency, DCI Lapslie’s drive to solve the case is dissipated, not enhanced, by his synesthesia.
Although Emma Bradbury, Lapslie’s detective sergeant, has some interesting hints at a complex life, and diligent pathologist Dr. Jane Catherall is unlike her “Silent Witness” or “CSI” counterparts, it is Lapslie who must carry most of the heroic burden in the novel.
And although we may feel sympathy for him, or find him fascinating as a neurological case study, there needs to be more at stake for him personally in apprehending Violet to make their showdown memorable. Instead, it’s anticlimactic compared to Violet’s chilling search for her victims.
And the interweaving of a mysterious subplot involving a shady government agency intent on thwarting the investigation doesn’t ring true enough to make Lapslie’s transformation from reluctant investigator to maverick cop convincing.
The tactile senses of hunter and hunted make for some wonderful literary parallels and the well-drawn Essex locales and shifts between Lapslie’s and Violet’s point of view speak to McCrery’s skill as creator of several successful BBC crime series (most notably the aforementioned “Silent Witness”). Yet, “Still Waters” is ultimately more satisfying for the thrilling journey of its villain than its sleuths, a condition I hope is corrected in future installments of this promising series.
--
Paula L. Woods is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and author of the Charlotte Justice mystery series.
|
8e3dcdb60338f40266901801efed30b6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-21-fi-nielsen21-story.html | Tracking embedded ads | Tracking embedded ads
On the fourth floor of an office building in this green Connecticut town, Sarah Martin goes to work every day as a television watcher.
She doesn’t mind watching “Ellen” and “Lost.” She hates the days she has to sit through “American Chopper.”
Unfortunately, she can’t fast-forward.
Martin’s job is to count when brand names such as Coca-Cola or Cadillac or Yamaha appear in TV shows -- on a soda can, whizzing past in a street scene, flashing on a billboard in the background, anywhere within the camera’s range. She works for research firm Nielsen, which provides the information to advertisers who want to keep tabs on where competitors’ products are popping up in TV shows.
They are popping up quite a bit these days: Martin said when she started her job a year and a half ago, she’d count an average of 10 brands in a prime-time network show. Now, it’s closer to 50. Viewers of the logo-laden “American Chopper” on Discovery Channel might be exposed to brands as many as 1,000 times per show.
“I used to watch TV all the time,” she said. “Now I go home and do other things,” such as reading books.
Martin is part of a small army of people employed by research firms and advertisers to track product placement, one of the fastest-growing segments of the advertising industry. Advertisers spent $2.9 billion in 2007 to place their products in TV shows and movies, up 33.7% from the year before, according to media research firm PQ Media. This year spending is projected to hit $3.6 billion, not including “barter” arrangements -- in which a company gives away products to be used in shows, rather than paying for them to be placed there.
Firms for a long time have been measuring the frequency of traditional print and broadcast advertising. As a result, advertisers know who is spending what, and where.
But product placement has traditionally been a back-door industry, arranged by prop masters on TV shows and movies rather than by professional agencies. This has made it much more difficult to monitor who is placing products, and how often and where they appear.
Some, such as the Federal Communications Commission, are concerned that it is too difficult to discern when product placements occur. Last month, the FCC said it would consider new rules to better inform viewers when brands appear on shows in exchange for money. Such disclosures currently run during the credits, but the agency plans to examine whether product placement notices should be written in bigger print and displayed for a longer period.
Advertisers, on the other hand, are eager to know whether their money to plug their products is being well spent. Did viewers notice that the car the villain was driving was an Audi? Did a character holding a box of Wheaties really make people want to buy it? Did it make a difference how many times cups of Coca-Cola appeared on “American Idol”?
Several companies are now vying to become the place where advertisers look for those answers.
In April, Nielsen spent $225 million to acquire IAG Research, one of the biggest companies to measure the effectiveness of advertising and product placement. Nielsen is in the process of figuring out ways to combine parts of IAG with Nielsen Product Placement Service, the division that employs Martin and about 15 other “coders” to count when products appear in shows. IAG says that when combined with Nielsen, it will provide the first comprehensive service for tracking product placement.
The merger comes at a time when the Internet has upended the business of measuring advertising through its technical ability to count when viewers see an ad and respond to it. Advertisers now expect a high degree of specificity in knowing the effectiveness of their ads. That has put pressure on traditional forms of old media -- such as TV -- to improve their ability to measure how consumers respond to advertising, including product placement.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t sell it,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at NBC Universal, which uses data from IAG to show advertisers whether consumers respond to their placements.
IAG comes up with its product placement ratings by asking 2.5 million people to fill out surveys online after watching their favorite shows, said co-Chief Executive Alan Gould. The surveys ask whether viewers remember the brand, think more positively about it or want to purchase it, and whether the placement disrupted their viewing experience. Gould says clients have included Toyota, Ford, Verizon and American Express.
“The marketplace for branded entertainment is going to continue to grow,” he said. “And to fuel that marketplace, buyers and sellers will need an independent data source.”
Others are trying different approaches to measure the effectiveness of brand placement. Frank Zazza, the product promoter who was responsible for promoting the placing of Reese’s Pieces in “E.T.” and putting Junior Mints in Cosmo Kramer’s hands in “Seinfeld,” now runs a firm called ITVX that seeks to measure viewer recall of product placement.
His system takes into account as many as 60 different factors, Zazza said, such as whether a product appears in the foreground or background, whether a viewer is aware that a brand is on screen, and whether the show’s commercials are coordinated with the product placements.
As advertisers and producers become more sophisticated at seeding products into programming, “it becomes more complicated to measure,” he said.
Most advertising and media buying agencies have their own ways to measure the success of product placements, but few are willing to discuss their methodology.
That means it might take a long time for companies to adopt standards set by Nielsen -- or by anyone else, for that matter. If advertisers adopt a standard of measurement for product placement, then they would lose their ability to negotiate what they pay, said Devery Holmes, president of product placement firm NMA Entertainment & Marketing.
“Even if a reasonable methodology were developed by a creditable company like Nielsen,” she said, “it is very likely that brand media buyers would not endorse it publicly.” That’s because a single measurement standard could lead to set pricing, which would make it hard for advertisers to negotiate rates.
Still, Nielsen is determined to establish its place in product placement measurement just as it holds sway in TV ratings. “If we do our jobs correctly, we will become the dominant way in which the industry measures product placement,” Gould said. He pointed out that if advertisers are the only ones measuring brands in shows, “it would be the people creating the stuff also grading themselves.”
The grind of counting all those products and brands isn’t about to let up, regardless of whether Nielsen establishes itself as the big gorilla in the business. Technological advances aside, it’s still a job that can be done only by humans.
“I didn’t wear glasses before I started here,” said Lauren Goerig, 24, a coder who works in Nielsen’s Shelton facility.
On her desk, crowded with Post-it notes and cans of Red Bull, a computer was playing the CBS drama “Criminal Minds.” She quickly tapped on the keyboard when a poster for the Museum of Natural History flashed on the screen. A couple of scenes later, she’s clicking again when Special Agent Emily Prentiss says to her colleague, Derek Morgan, “Remember the time when we got on board and they hadn’t chilled the Cristal?,” catching a reference to the trendy champagne.
The job has a way of rubbing off even in her off-work hours.
“When I watch shows at home, I’ll say, ‘He’s driving a GMC truck,’ ” she said. “My boyfriend just shakes his head.”
--
alana.semuels@latimes.com
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Subtle messages
U.S. spending on paid product placement (in millions)
* 2002: $523
* 2003: $698
* 2004: $1,008
* 2005: $1,499
* 2006: $2,167
* 2007: $2,897
Source: PQ Media Branded Entertainment Forecast 2008-12
|
8a79aea325d0aceb9014825a27355267 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-21-he-tommyjohn21-story.html | Youthful fling with surgery | Youthful fling with surgery
There’s good news and bad news about “Tommy John surgery,” a technique used to replace a damaged elbow ligament often suffered by athletes, mostly baseball players. The surgery has a high success rate -- 83% -- with most people going back to previous levels of activity, a new study has found. However, more and more young athletes are having the surgery, leaving some experts concerned about the possible ill effects of overtraining.
“This is not a case of inadequate care,” says Dr. E. Lyle Cain Jr., fellowship director at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala. Cain was lead author of the study released two weeks ago at the annual meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine in Orlando, Fla. “I think many young athletes assume that the more they train and participate, the better they’ll become. The reality is that the body has to have a certain amount of time off.”
Tommy John surgery, or ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, refers to the replacement of a damaged elbow ligament with a tendon from elsewhere in the body -- usually the forearm, according to Cain. The ligament, he says, provides stability when doing any throwing motion, but can fray, stretch or tear from overuse or without warning from one sudden movement. People with the injury usually experience a sharp pain while throwing, and for baseball players the injury can result in slower pitches and less control of the ball.
During surgery, the replacement ligament is woven through holes drilled in the humerus, a bone that runs from the elbow to the shoulder, and the ulna, a bone in the forearm. Cain says that healing usually takes about three to four months, but that complete recovery takes longer. The procedure was named for former Dodgers pitcher Tommy John, the first pro athlete to have successful surgery. It was performed in 1974 by Dr. Frank Jobe, who pioneered the procedure.
A slew of ballplayers have had the surgery, including Jose Canseco, Mariano Rivera, Josh Johnson and Jon Lieber.
The study tracked 743 people who had the surgery from 1988 to 2006 as patients of Dr. James R. Andrews, senior author of the study and founder of the institute. Their progress was followed for a minimum of two years. The majority (94.5%) were baseball players (high school to major league); the rest were involved in a variety of sports, including track and football. Some 83% were able to return to their previous level of competition or higher.
But Cain says that beginning in 2000, he and other physicians noticed a trend toward younger athletes needing the surgery. They backtracked surgical cases, discovering that from 1991 to 1996 about 12% of patients were 18 and younger, but by 2005, that number had risen to 30%. “If you look back 10 or 15 years ago, most [young] baseball players were multi-sport athletes,” Cain says.
“Over the last 10 years, people have become very specialized in sports. The body never has the recovery period it needs.” Many youth sports now are year-round, leaving little time off.
Cain advises that younger athletes not spend too much time in one sport, and cross-train to use different joints and muscle groups. If they do home in on one sport, Cain says it’s important to take a three- to four-month break.
“With our success rate of surgery,” he says, “some athletes and parents are numb to the idea of having surgery. Some athletes will even tell you it’s almost a badge of courage that they had reconstructive surgery done, that it’s a sign of being a good baseball player. Successful surgery,” he adds, “is important, but it’s also important to prevent these injuries at high school age or younger.”
--
jeannine.stein@latimes.com
|
9a958ae031db30b735ebf997664688fe | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-21-me-bikes21-story.html | Seeking a road to peace | Seeking a road to peace
It was big news when prosecutors filed criminal charges against a motorist who allegedly slammed on his brakes in front of two experienced cyclists July 4 on Mandeville Canyon Road, sending both to the hospital with serious injuries.
What didn’t make headlines was another Mandeville Canyon incident that day. Resident Lisa Block was finishing a morning walk on the narrow, winding road when she realized a clump of cyclists were coming up the hill straight at her.
“A guy heading right for me couldn’t move over because there were at least two other bikers to his left,” Block said. “I had to dive off the street and jump into the bushes.”
Though the cyclists were not acting maliciously, she said, the experience rattled her.
These days, many Angelenos are rattled as more cyclists hit the streets to combat high fuel prices, stay fit or help the environment. Riders on two wheels say drivers run them off the road, threaten bodily harm and unleash expletives, if not fists. Motorists counter that cyclists rip off car mirrors, zoom through stop signs and hurl expletives of their own -- often drenched in spit.
With the city of Los Angeles in the early stages of formulating a bike plan, and with motorist-vs.-cyclist road rage on the rise, politicians, engineers, residents and cycling enthusiasts have begun what all agree is a long-overdue conversation about how best to coexist on the city’s highways and byways.
“It’s a citywide issue of people sharing the road, whether on foot, a bicycle, a Vespa or in our cars,” said Jeanne Field, a Mandeville Canyon resident. “Manners have just gone out the window.”
Sprawling, smoggy and gridlocked, car-centric Los Angeles hardly pops to mind as a locale where cycling would thrive. But Bicycling magazine recently lauded the nation’s second-largest city as “a future best city” for biking.
The city has hired Alta Planning and Design, a transportation planning consultant based in San Rafael, Calif., to update its outmoded bicycle plan and attempt to create a safe, cohesive network from its more than 350 miles of bike routes, lanes and paths. Another goal is to identify a list of on-street bikeways, bike parking facilities and education programs that the city could develop over the next two decades.
“Los Angeles is a very challenging environment to ride in, given the condition of roadways, the storm grates that will eat your wheels, the lack of formal bike lanes or bike paths, and just a lack of respect and a lack of awareness from motorists about the rights of bicyclists,” said Matt Benjamin, an Alta transportation planner who says he bicycles “everywhere.”
--
More bicyclists
Reliable data on bicycle ridership in Los Angeles don’t exist, but signs of an uptick abound. Bicycle manufacturers and shops say they have seen spikes in business in recent months, and cycling advocacy groups say more riders have taken to the road. Demand has soared for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s Metro bike lockers, which rent for $25 a year at many Metro Rail and Metro Orange Line stations, said Jennifer Klausner, the coalition’s executive director.
Spurred on by riders outraged by the Mandeville Canyon incident, Councilman Bill Rosendahl on July 11 introduced a Cyclists’ Bill of Rights to the City Council. The council unanimously supported the motion, which now heads to the transportation committee. Prepared by the Bike Writers Collective, an amalgam of enthusiasts and cycling bloggers, the bill of rights asserts that cyclists are the “indicator species” of a healthy community, represent solutions for environmental woes and traffic congestion, and have the right “to travel safely and free of fear” on public streets.
Separately, the bicycle coalition has proposed a pilot “share the road” program for Councilman Eric Garcetti’s district, which includes Hollywood, East Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Glassell Park. A key element would be “sharrows,” pavement markings that look like two chevrons with a bicycle. They would alert drivers that bicycles might be sharing the lane and show cyclists where they should place themselves -- toward the center of the lane -- to avoid being “doored” by an oblivious driver in a parked car. Garcetti’s office said Vermont and Fountain avenues are likely locations.
It might surprise some stressed-out, multitasking drivers to learn that the California Vehicle Code gives bicyclists more or less the same rights and rules as drivers of vehicles. Among other provisions, the code states that cyclists moving slower than the normal speed of traffic should ride as close as possible to the right-hand curb or edge of a roadway, but there are exceptions: When overtaking and passing another bicycle or vehicle heading in the same direction, when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or when necessary to avoid hazards, objects, vehicles or pedestrians.
After the uproar over the July 4 incident, Rosendahl first planned a town hall meeting to discuss the matter. With tensions escalating, he instead assembled, last Monday evening, an invitation-only task force of cyclists, residents and transportation officials to explore how best to ease the conflicts.
Although much of the discussion centered on Mandeville Canyon, “I do think the aggression that motorists are showing toward cyclists is common all over town,” said Klausner of the county bicycle coalition.
“We are the illegitimate bastard child of the transportation industry,” said Brad House, a member of the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee, who said he spoke only for himself. “Nobody wants us. In Europe, motorists are very respectful of cyclists. In this country, they want us off the road.”
He said he learned that firsthand when a driver pulled up behind him one day. House was in the center of a lane, intending to go straight.
“He yelled, ‘Get off the road or I’m going to hit you!’ ” House said. When the light turned green, House said, he pedaled forward and the driver “full-throttled his car into my bike,” totaling it. House said a highway patrolman wrote up the incident as an accident.
--
Sense of vulnerability
One longtime Mandeville resident said motorists’ hostility grows out of “the rudeness of the extreme faction” of cyclists. “The extreme ones have a very entitled-seeming way they carry themselves on the bike,” said Desmond McDonald, a mountain biker whose wife’s car mirror was recently broken off by an angry road cyclist. “This is arrogance coupled with . . . some sort of assault, whether hitting of the car physically, spitting on a woman’s car or calling her [a name].”
Many veteran riders acknowledge that cyclists occasionally break traffic rules or engage in name-calling when drivers yell, honk impatiently or come close to sideswiping them, but they contend that they react out of a sense of vulnerability.
Bruce J. Steele, an attorney who lives in Redondo Beach, confessed to having occasionally sworn at impatient or careless drivers, but added that “I try not to because we’re not going to win against a car.” Earlier this year, one of Steele’s friends was riding down an access road from the top of Palos Verdes Drive into a park. The 63-year-old man slammed head-on into an approaching maintenance truck that was obscured by heavy foliage. The resulting spinal cord injury paralyzed him from the waist down. He later suffered a stroke and died.
Easing the tension will require a number of steps.
“One certainly is education,” Steele said. “We need to understand we have to use public streets responsibly, but together.”
--
martha.groves@latimes.com
|
de293781287e39749555183ca80b1acf | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-21-na-highway21-story.html | U.S. highway trust fund veers toward crisis | U.S. highway trust fund veers toward crisis
Soaring gasoline prices are hurting Uncle Sam in the wallet too.
As motorists cut back on their driving and buy more fuel-efficient cars, the government is taking in less money from the federal gasoline tax.
The result: The principal source of funding for highway projects will soon hit a big financial pothole. The federal highway trust fund could be in the red by $3.2 billion or more next year.
The fund, set to finance about $40 billion in transportation projects next year, is increasingly strained. And the problem has taken on greater urgency as lawmakers face a backlog of projects to maintain the nation’s aging interstate highway system and ease traffic congestion.
“The situation has only been exacerbated by rising fuel prices, which are causing motorists to drive less and resulting in less revenue for transportation improvements,” said David Bauer, senior vice president for government relations at the American Road and Transportation Builders Assn.
California risks losing $930 million, or about a third of its federal highway allotment, Caltrans Director Will Kempton said in a letter to the state’s congressional delegation. Kempton warned that unless Washington acted to address the shortfall, projects could be delayed, reduced or canceled.
In the short run, lawmakers are scrambling to figure out how to close the gap. Federal highway spending nationwide could be cut by a third beginning Oct. 1, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Assn.
“The condition of the highway trust fund has been deteriorating for years, but skyrocketing gas prices have made an already dire situation worse,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), head of the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee. “We are now less than a year away from a bankrupt trust fund, which would leave critical construction projects in peril.”
In the long run, lawmakers must figure out whether the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax, which helped bring in money when fuel-hungry SUVs were hot, is still a viable way to fund transportation projects amid heightened concern about gasoline prices, U.S. dependence on foreign oil and global warming.
The federal gasoline tax is tied to every gallon sold, not every dollar spent, so federal gas tax revenue goes up only if consumption increases. This year, consumption is projected to drop for the first time since 1991.
Vehicle miles traveled on the nation’s roads are trending downward for the first time since the oil shocks of the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to the Cambridge Energy Research Associates consulting firm.
Highway trust fund receipts were down more than $2 billion through May compared with the same period a year ago, a Treasury Department report said.
The shortfall was projected at $3.2 billion this year, but it is expected to be higher when the White House budget office issues a revised estimate this month. The shortfall was a major reason that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s proposal for a gas tax holiday to ease the public’s pain at the pump faced bipartisan congressional resistance.
At the same time, California officials project a decline in revenue from the state’s 18-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax -- about $62 million less for transportation projects in 2008-09 from the record high of $2.842 billion in 2006-07.
But the state is expected to take in an additional $455 million in the new fiscal year because of a sales tax on gasoline that brings in more money as prices rise.
The federal highway trust fund faced problems even before the run-up in gas prices because of higher costs for asphalt, concrete and steel.
But its condition has been “exacerbated by the high price of fuel and people changing their driving habits,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America.
Lawmakers from both parties are eager to find a way to fund politically popular transportation projects. But one possible solution -- an increase in the gas tax, which was last raised in 1993 -- is considered unrealistic in an election year.
A proposal to shift $8 billion from the general fund to the highway trust fund has considerable support in the Senate. But it faces opposition from a number of Republicans who say it would trade one problem for another by deepening the federal budget deficit.
Reps. Jerry Lewis of Redlands and Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the top Republicans on the House Appropriations and Budget committees, respectively, said in a statement that the transfer “would do nothing to solve the fundamental problems with the trust fund, leading the way for further massive spending down the road when the funding runs out again.”
President Bush proposed shifting cash from mass transit to highways, which ran into opposition in Congress because commuters are increasingly turning to bus and rail lines because gas costs too much.
But Murray said: “Without a fix soon, we could face having to cut all federal highway funds by a third simply to keep the trust fund solvent. That is the last thing we should be doing when infrastructure needs are up, construction jobs are down and Americans are struggling through tough economic times.”
--
richard.simon@latimes.com
|
a13ce42c45cdbfb9d8d7fccac356845d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-22-fi-breast22-story.html | Court tosses FCC fine | Court tosses FCC fine
Janet Jackson’s brief, provocative dance during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show lasted long enough to trigger more than half a million formal complaints to regulators, tougher indecency rules, dramatically higher maximum fines and video delays on many live programs.
But an appeals court panel ruled Monday that the flash of Jackson’s right breast for 9/16ths of a second was too quick to warrant the $550,000 fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission against CBS Corp. for airing it.
The ruling was another blow to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin’s tough indecency policies, which broadcasters have fought aggressively in the courts.
Last year, a different appellate panel struck down the FCC’s near zero-tolerance policy on some expletives, even when they are isolated and impromptu, instituted in the wake of the Jackson incident. The Bush administration appealed and the Supreme Court will hear the case on so-called fleeting expletives this fall.
The decision Monday by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to put an unscripted flash of nudity in the same legal category as a fleeting expletive raises the already high stakes of the Supreme Court decision. That ruling will be crucial because the FCC’s indecency rules have been in legal limbo for more than two years, forcing thousands of complaints to pile up.
“I continue to believe that this incident was inappropriate, and this only highlights the importance of the Supreme Court’s consideration of our indecency rules this fall,” Martin said of the Jackson episode, adding he was “surprised” by the ruling and “disappointed for families and parents.”
But broadcasters and free-speech advocates praised the court decision. “It’s slapping the FCC in the face . . . and they deserve to be slapped in the face because they are violating the 1st Amendment,” said Paul Levinson, chairman of Fordham University’s department of communications and media studies.
In a statement, CBS said the ruling was “an important win for the entire broadcasting industry because it recognizes that there are rare instances, particularly during live programming, when it may not be possible to block unfortunate fleeting material, despite best efforts.”
The three-judge panel ruled that the FCC acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in departing from a decades-old policy that said brief nudity did not violate rules designed to keep children from seeing indecent material broadcast between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The judges said the FCC had rejected similar fleeting nudity complaints before, including after the TV broadcast of “Schindler’s List” in 2000.
The panel also agreed with CBS that it was not liable because Jackson and Justin Timberlake, who pulled off part of her costume to reveal her breast at the end of their performance, were independent contractors, not network employees.
“The airing of scripted indecency or indecent material in prerecorded programming would likely show recklessness, or may even constitute evidence of actual knowledge or intent,” the judges wrote. “But when unscripted indecent material occurs during a live or spontaneous broadcast, as it did here, the FCC should show that the broadcaster was, at minimum, reckless in causing the indecent material to be transmitted over public airwaves.”
The FCC argued that CBS was reckless in allowing the incident to occur. But the judges sided with CBS, which said the incident was unscripted and that the network had tried to prevent it by having “numerous script reviews and revisions,” “several wardrobe checks” and a five-second audio delay. CBS said video delay technology was not available at the time, but was engineered afterward.
The Jackson incident, which Timberlake described as a “wardrobe malfunction,” outraged many viewers, who flooded the FCC with more than 540,000 complaints. Then-FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell called it a “classless, crass and deplorable stunt,” and the agency unanimously levied the maximum $27,500 fine against 20 network-owned stations for airing it. The uproar led Congress to increase indecency fines to $325,000 per station for an incident.
Many of the complaints came from Parents Television Council members. Tim Winter, the watchdog group’s president, said Monday’s court decision was “utterly absurd” and disputed that fleeting words and images are not offensive.
“Ask a parent how many fleeting profanities are OK during the course of a day with their child. The answer is zero. The same thing with nudity,” he said. “How much fleeting nudity is OK during the Super Bowl? The answer is zero.”
--
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
|
14546716de8f8dacc76b5bd72db89053 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-22-fi-condoprice22-story.html | Condo sells for $2,848 (per foot) | Condo sells for $2,848 (per foot)
The top two floors of a Century City residential tower still under construction have been sold for a record $47 million to Candy Spelling, the widow of TV mogul Aaron Spelling.
A $47-million price tag may seem like an enormous sum, but this is all about downshifting in the fast lane.
After all, the 62-year-old heiress with a reputation for embracing opulence will be moving out of Los Angeles County’s largest home -- a 123-room, 56,500-square-foot mansion on six acres in the Holmby Hills neighborhood off Sunset Boulevard.
Her new home will be less than a third the size of the old one -- just 16,500 square feet -- but with a killer 360-degree view spanning the horizon from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Catalina Island. The condominium building called the Century is going up next door to the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars and will be completed in late 2009.
“She will be moving into it, though it won’t be up for a year or so,” said Spelling’s attorney, Stephen Goldberg, who confirmed the sale Monday.
At a time when headlines are focusing on plummeting home prices, foreclosures and bad loans, the sale highlighted the vast differences in the region’s housing markets.
There are still wealthy buyers keeping the very top end in play -- often at ever higher prices. The price of $2,848 per square foot paid by Spelling at the Century is a record for a Los Angeles condo. The old record of $2,700 was set in February -- at the same building.
It is hard to compare the new and old. Spelling’s current home has 11 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms, and then there’s the one-lane bowling alley, the gift-wrapping room, a screening room and a doll museum. But what’s in store for her new digs is still a question that may tantalize the curious.
Building developer Related Cos. of New York said Spelling would work with her own architects and designers to customize her space on the 41st and 42nd floors. But a few of the details have been negotiated.
The lower floor will have a living room with two working fireplaces, a dining room for 25 guests, and staff quarters. The top floor will house the bedrooms including a 4,000-square-foot master suite, a massage room, an exercise room, a conservatory complete with rose garden, and a swimming pool and deck.
Builders have yet to start construction of the top of the building, so they were able to make structural adjustments to accommodate the indoor pool that opens onto a balcony, said David Wine, vice chairman of Related Cos.
New Yorkers might not blink at such a condo price in a city where a 6,300-square-feet unit in the former Plaza Hotel just sold for $24.4 million -- $1,000-per-square-foot more than the Spelling deal.
Luxury-unit buyers in Los Angeles are even pickier than those in New York and expect their units to be elaborately personalized, said Wine, whose company has built several luxury projects on the East Coast including the Time Warner Center in New York.
“A buyer at the Century is a person of considerable net worth who values their lifestyle and their time,” he said.
High-end homes on Los Angeles County’s Westside are generally valued at $4 million to $6 million, but they aren’t trading much right now for at least two reasons: there are few distressed sellers, and owners are waiting for downward pressures on prices to stop, said Beverly Hills real estate agent Drew Mandile of Sotheby’s. But houses appealing to someone with the resources of Candy Spelling are virtually impossible to find.
“The problem with the $40-million house is that there aren’t any,” said Mandile, who was not involved in the Spelling transaction. Putting together a custom home on that scale takes three to four years of concentrated effort, and people who finish the task rarely part with their homes. “The pain of building a $40-million house is the reason you don’t want to sell it,” Mandile said.
Spelling may be a case in point. Her current residence, which she and her husband called “The Manor,” was built from 1986 to 1990 and quickly became a source of fascination to observers.
It was, depending on one’s perspective, either an architectural wonder or an obnoxious affront to the neighborhood. At the time, everyone seemed to have an opinion.
Aaron Spelling died there in 2006, and his widow is nearly ready to scale back and move on, her attorney said.
“The Manor is an awfully big property for one person,” Goldberg said. Candy Spelling “is always getting feelers” from potential buyers, he said, including one who promised “nine figures and change plus a jet. Now she will have to start listening to the offers.”
Spelling’s agreement puts the total price tag for units sold so far at the Century at $200 million, according to Related. The company has built several other residential projects in Los Angeles and was tapped to develop the $3-billion Grand Avenue project downtown, next to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Work on the long-promised residential, retail and hotel complex downtown has been delayed until next year, and some observers have expressed doubt it ever will begin. How the Century fares, Wine said, “will affect people’s perception of us in L.A.”
The Century is rising on the site of the former St. Regis Hotel, a Century City landmark next to the Hyatt Regency. The 30-story hotel was completed in 1984 and hosted many famous guests, including former President Reagan. Related Cos. shuttered the property in 2005 after spending $123 million to buy it.
Spelling’s unit in the new building might not generate as many opinions as her house did, but her attorney vowed that her condo would be memorable too.
“The Manor is truly a one-of-a kind residence, but I believe she will be able to take this apartment and make it just as unique and just as special,” Goldberg said. “It will be the most spectacular penthouse in the state of California and maybe anywhere.”
--
roger.vincent@latimes.com
Times staff writer Ann Brenoff contributed to this report.
--
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Wait, how much?
A two-story condo in Century City for $47 million? What else can you get in the local real estate market for about that price?
* An 18,000-square-foot waterfront home on Newport Bay in Newport Beach. Includes 10 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms and underground parking. Asking: $38.5 million
* An eight-bedroom, 11-bath home on 1.2 acres in Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills. Has a swimming pool, ocean view and wine cellar. Asking: $45 million
* A three-story estate on 4.2 acres in Beverly Hills. Includes nine bedrooms, 18 bathrooms, a swimming pool, hot tub and tennis court. Asking: $49 million
Source: Times research
|
5270d463f99e46e5a73d06f03fbeb83d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-22-me-sponsor22-story.html | Hollywood, brought to you by ... | Hollywood, brought to you by ...
Why is a Scandinavian vodka being enshrined on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?
It’s not a tasteless homage to stars who drink too much. It’s just the latest corporate attempt to buy some good buzz.
Today, Absolut Vodka becomes a “Friend” of the walk, shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a star-like plaque embedded in Hollywood Boulevard.
For some, the partnership is further proof that no attraction or event in the U.S. is impervious to the phenomenon of corporate sponsorship. After all, the National Park Service has corporate sponsors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has corporate sponsors. Paul McCartney’s concert tour had sponsors. (Who said money can’t buy you love?)
About $16.8 billion will be spent on corporate sponsorships in the U.S. this year, up 50% from 2004, according to the IEG Sponsorship Report.
“I think [former honorary mayor of Hollywood] Johnny Grant would roll over in his grave to hear that a commercial entity was doing something to play with the concept of being immortalized,” said Eli Portnoy, a Los Angeles brand strategist.
But the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce needs cash for a $4.2-million walk refurbishment, and in the marketing world, it’s not enough to plop down a sponsor’s name on a brochure anymore. Companies are demanding more return on their investments, which means that sponsorship comes with strings attached, said Jim Andrews, editorial director of the sponsorship report.
“At this time, with the economy and all, you need the right type of program in order to recruit major corporations,” said Leron Gubler, president of the Hollywood Chamber. “We have taken great pains in planning to make sure it doesn’t compromise the identity of the walk.”
It’s unclear just how different the Absolut plaque, near the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, will be from nearby stars for Antonio Banderas, Matthew Broderick and Jackie Chan.
Chamber officials wouldn’t provide a sneak preview, but Gubler described the plaque as a 3-foot square set in terrazzo and brass featuring an Absolut bottle, text citing Absolut as a “Friend of the Walk of Fame,” and icons such as a film projector and microphone that appear on other stars.
Last month, Gubler said, the chamber rejected a design that looked too much like the stars for celebrities. He said the plaque cannot be confused with a star because it is on private property and is “set back a distance from the Walk of Fame.”
Absolut, however, is singing a different tune, referring to the plaque as an “honorary star” in a press release. Public relations manager Sarah Bessette said it will be “right there in front of the Kodak Theatre, near the others.”
Absolut is gearing up a flashy marketing campaign to introduce its new vodka, Absolut LA, which it describes as a “progressive mix of new age flavors” such as blueberry, acai and pomegranate. “Flavored vodka as a concept has become a little bit stale,” said Tim Murphy, Absolut’s vice president of marketing.
The Swedish company stumbled into the limelight in April when another advertisement from its “In an Absolut World” campaign showed the Mexican border extending northward to roughly where it was before the Mexican-American War.
The newest campaign might help Absolut get ahead of the many vodka companies scrambling for attention as they roll out new flavors of vodka, said Brian Quinton, editor at large for Promo Magazine.
Until, that is, the chamber persuades other sponsors to plop down some cash for their very own slice of sidewalk.
--
alana.semuels@latimes.com
|
a66fc246683c83c2c31c4f34c0ea20d8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-22-me-walk22-story.html | Walk of Fame going to have a little work done | Walk of Fame going to have a little work done
Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve is about to get another shot at Hollywood stardom.
That was the name of the lead character played by actor Willard Waterman in the hit 1950s radio comedy “The Great Gildersleeve.”
The show went off the air in 1957 and Waterman died in 1995. Since then, Waterman’s commemorative plaque with its bronze depiction of a microphone has slowly faded from the Hollywood Walk of Fame too.
Chunks of the pink terrazzo inside the outline of the bronze star have come out. One of the star’s five points has disappeared. An asphalt patch fills the hole.
Today, though, Waterman’s battered and broken sidewalk marker will be designated one of 778 bronze stars to be replaced as part of a wholesale Walk of Fame makeover.
Hollywood leaders, transit officials and Los Angeles representatives are mapping plans for a major restoration of the 50-year-old black-and-pink terrazzo sidewalk along its entire 2 1/2 -mile length.
In the meantime, officials have issued a report card on the condition of all 2,365 stars on the walk, giving each a letter grade from A to F.
Walkway honorees whose stars were graded F were Waterman and Richard Boleslawski, Joan Collins, Ellen Drew, Paul Douglas, Peter Frampton, Andrew L. Stone, Dick Van Patten, Frank Crumit and Bobby Sherwood.
Fifty celebrities’ stars received D grades, including Art Linkletter, Ida Lupino, George “Gabby” Hayes, Virginia Mayo, James Arness, Bud Abbott, Walter Matthau, Edgar Bergen, Melvyn Douglas, Jean Hersholt, Vin Scully, Burt Lancaster and Gloria DeHaven.
“We get calls from celebrities and their families also asking when their star will be repaired,” said Ana Martinez-Holler, a chamber of commerce executive who has helped oversee the Walk of Fame. “Producer Mace Neufeld’s family called about his star in front of the Pig ‘N Whistle, and we fixed it. But Peter Frampton’s office calls often and his star can’t be fixed until the overall repairs are made.”
Officials are forming a “Friends of the Walk of Fame” group in hopes of raising about half the estimated $4.2-million cost of the upcoming repair job. Financing from public agencies will be sought for the rest.
Details of what is expected to be a two-year repair project will be outlined at 11 a.m. atop the most heavily damaged portion of the walkway -- the area in front of the Kodak Theatre and the entrance to the Metro Red Line subway at the Hollywood & Highland Center. Ninety-one stars and blank terrazzo squares there need replacing.
At the same time, Hollywood leaders will toast their first donation: several hundred thousand dollars from the makers of Absolut Vodka.
“What needs to be repaired is more than just what is around the subway,” says Leron Gubler, president and chief executive of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “But the problem in front of the subway entrance was the impetus for this.”
The wide terrazzo walkway lining the Hollywood & Highland Center is one of the newest sections of the famed celebrity sidewalk. But since its installation it has suffered continuous buckling. Some blame underground settling caused by “voids” left by the subway construction.
But Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials have blamed heat expansion of the black terrazzo, caused by sunlight. A study of a 60-foot stretch of the walkway near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue last year recommended replacing the walk’s 3-inch-thick base with one 8 inches thick. Additional expansion joints between the walkway slabs were also suggested.
Although the MTA indicated last week that it planned to take the lead in the Walk of Fame restoration, Gubler said Monday that his organization will oversee the creation of the “Friends” funding group. The city will be in charge of the overall repair project, he said.
Gubler said an assessment team organized last year by Los Angeles’ Bureau of Engineering inspected the entire Walk of Fame. All 2,365 stars were graded on the basis of their physical condition. Then the estimated cost of repairs was tallied.
“The city has said from the start there has to be a private match” to public money spent on the restoration, Gubler said.
“Our goal is to have it repaired in two years for the official 50th anniversary of the dedication of the first 1,500 stars. Some of the original 50-year-old stars are in better shape than the new ones.”
The Walk of Fame was proposed in 1953. The first demonstration stars were installed Aug. 15, 1958, at Hollywood and Highland, with actor Preston Foster’s the first to be unveiled. The walkway was formally dedicated Nov. 23, 1960.
Curbside ficus tree roots are blamed for causing some of the walkway’s squares to buckle and crack. Heavy trucks driving over the sidewalk into driveways have also damaged some sections, Gubler said.
In all, about 25% of the walkway’s stars are so badly damaged that they must be replaced, he said.
Martinez-Holler said stars in the vicinity of the new W Hotel at Hollywood and Vine that were removed for the W Hotel construction will be replaced by developers when the project comes to an end. She said that three stars have been stolen over the years.
“Gregory Peck’s was taken from over by the Music Box. James Stewart’s and Kirk Douglas’ were found in a drug dealer’s backyard in South Gate.”
The restoration project will result in the replacement of 2,155 blank terrazzo squares along with the 778 stars. The city assessment calls for new bronze and terrazzo for those with C, D and F grades.
According to city engineering workers, stars with a C grade needed repair or replacement but were not considered a safety hazard for pedestrians. Those with a D “had the potential” of being a safety problem. Those earning an F were judged to be “a tripping hazard.”
For its fundraising drive kickoff contribution, Hollywood officials say the vodka firm will receive an honorary star on private property at the Hollywood & Highland Center adjacent to the Walk of Fame.
Its base has been poured thick enough to prevent future cracking of terrazzo, they promise.
--
bob.pool@latimes.com
|
ebd1e298243507f299788c88ff64a06e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-22-na-hamdan22-story.html | Evidence on terror suspect barred | Evidence on terror suspect barred
The military judge overseeing the first war crimes trial against a terrorism suspect at Guantanamo Bay agreed Monday to bar some evidence against Osama bin Laden’s former driver because it was obtained in “highly coercive environments and conditions.”
On the trial’s opening day, Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred denied defense appeals to exclude other statements Salim Ahmed Hamdan made during interrogation by U.S. agents in Afghanistan as well as during his more than six years’ imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The judge said he would withhold judgment on a May 2003 interrogation until the defense had time to review 600 pages of detention records, which the government did not turn over until Sunday -- the night before trial.
The exclusion of evidence Allred considered coerced could set a standard for admissibility in other war crimes cases due before the tribunal in the coming months, including that of the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind.
“The interests of justice are not served by admitting these statements because of the highly coercive environments and conditions under which they were made,” Allred said of statements Hamdan made while held by U.S. forces in the Afghan outposts of Panjshir and Bagram.
During his imprisonment at Bagram, Hamdan was reportedly beaten, deprived of sleep and informed by other prisoners and guards that at least one suspect had been beaten so badly that he died.
Allred’s ruling to suppress coerced testimony could make it difficult for other tribunal judges to ignore similar claims, such as in the case against confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others who face the death penalty.
Mohammed is one of two Guantanamo prisoners known to have been waterboarded while in CIA custody abroad. The technique, which creates the sensation of drowning, has been deemed tantamount to torture by many U.S. allies, legal scholars and human rights advocates.
Hamdan, a Yemeni who earned $200 a month driving Bin Laden in Afghanistan, was captured in November 2001. He is charged with conspiracy and material support for terrorism, and faces up to life imprisonment if convicted by the jury -- actually, a military commission made up of six senior officers and an alternate.
Allred had been asked by Hamdan’s defense team to suppress numerous statements the defendant made under questioning after his capture near Kandahar, including two videotaped interrogations. The judge said he would allow the videos to be played for the commissioners when testimony gets underway later this week. But he agreed to exclude other statements made before Hamdan’s May 2002 transfer from Afghanistan field prisons to the Guantanamo detention center for terrorism suspects.
Aside from withholding judgment on the May 2003 interrogation pending the defense review, the judge said interrogation results would be allowed into evidence only if the interrogators who conducted the sessions were available for cross-examination. Much of the evidence the government wanted to introduce was drawn from interrogations in which the notes and records of those involved were destroyed.
The tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, said he hadn’t decided whether to appeal the ruling.
“We need to evaluate . . . to what extent it has an impact on our ability to fully portray his criminality in this case, but also what it might set out for future cases,” Morris told the Associated Press.
Hamdan’s trial is expected to take about three weeks. He has indicated at times that he may boycott the proceedings, and has made conflicting statements as to what degree he will allow his Navy lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, to represent him in his absence.
Hamdan testified during pretrial hearings last week that he was subjected to sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and sexual humiliation during interrogations at Guantanamo. Allred largely rejected motions to dismiss statements made during interrogations there, saying the techniques employed by detention officials could be “rationally related to good order and discipline.”
Officers of the Joint Task Force that runs the prison and interrogation network at Guantanamo said Hamdan was deprived of “comfort items” such as personal hygiene products as punishment for violating camp rules.
Hamdan is the first of nearly 800 men brought to Guantanamo over the last 6 1/2 years to face trial in the first U.S.-administered war crimes cases since World War II. About 265 remain at the sprawling compound of maximum-security prisons, open-air cells and a barracks-like facility for a few dozen of the most cooperative prisoners. Most of the others have been repatriated.
War crimes charges have been sworn out against 21 Guantanamo prisoners over the last 18 months. Of those prisoners, 11 have been arraigned. All but two, Hamdan and Canadian Omar Khadr, have indicated they will refuse to attend their trials as a show of contempt for a process they say is inherently stacked against them.
Thirteen potential jurors were brought to Guantanamo over the weekend. During questioning, several indicated that they carried emotional scars from the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed or endangered friends and colleagues. The Pentagon was one of the targets.
The six jurors and one alternate were sworn in Monday. At least two potential jurors appeared to have been excluded because of their raw feelings associated with Sept. 11.
--
carol.williams@latimes.com
|
5c894501095839d12db31091977985d6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-23-fg-warcrime23-story.html | Dr. David, war crimes case fugitive | Dr. David, war crimes case fugitive
He grew a bushy white beard and called himself Doctor David. He peddled meditation and alternative healing, sold amulets on a website and made the rounds on the lecture circuit.
Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader regarded as one of the world’s most notorious fugitive war-crimes suspects, built a life on the lam that was public, if disguised, and seemingly unfettered by fears of detection.
The true identity of the bespectacled, white-haired man, who looked a bit the unkempt Santa Claus, was unknown to his landlords, neighbors, the man who designed his website and the editor of the magazine he wrote for.
Using the name Dragan David Dabic, Karadzic was practicing medicine in a private clinic, authorities said, and writing a column for Healthy Life, a small magazine that publishes every other month.
“He happily, freely walked around the city,” Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor, said Tuesday.
After eluding capture for 13 years, Karadzic was arrested by Serbian security forces in the Belgrade suburb where he had made his home, snatched as he rode a public bus. One day after officials announced he was in custody, Karadzic awaited probable extradition to the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
The 63-year-old Karadzic has been indicted on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and other atrocities stemming from a campaign to repress Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs as Bosnia-Herzegovina attempted to break away from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
His alleged crimes include overseeing the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, the largest atrocity in post-World War II Europe. Men acting under his orders are believed to have set up detention camps where women were imprisoned and raped and men were beaten and starved.
Karadzic and his wartime army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, were the last major Balkan war crimes suspects evading justice. Karadzic’s capture appears to have resulted from a shifting political will on the part of Belgrade’s new pro-Western government, which is eager to rehabilitate Serbia’s standing in Europe and the world.
“He’s proud of everything he’s done,” Karadzic’s lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, told The Times after visiting his client in jail. “He allows that war crimes were committed, but he had nothing to do with that.”
Finding Karadzic, it seems, was not that difficult. He was hiding in plain sight.
Goran Kojic, who runs Healthy Life, said he was shocked to learn the truth.
“At first I thought it was a joke,” he said of the moment he was told that Dabic was in fact Karadzic. “And then I realized it was serious when all these journalists started showing up at my door.”
Looking back, Kojic said, there were a couple of things that should have raised serious suspicions.
When Dabic presented himself as a doctor, a New Age psychiatrist, and submitted a four-part series on Christian Orthodox meditation, Kojic asked to see his diploma. Dabic claimed that his ex-wife had kept it and left the country.
Then Kojic typed “Dragan David Dabic” into an Internet search engine and nothing came up.
He began publishing the series anyway, but told its author that instead of signing it as a doctor, he would have to sign it, “David Dabic, Spiritual Researcher.”
Kojic and the man calling himself Dabic attended seminars together and Kojic on occasion gave him a ride home.
“It was a brilliant camouflage,” Kojic said Tuesday in his cramped office, noting the contrast between Dabic’s Bohemian appearance and Karadzic’s trademark bouffant hairdo and tailored business suits. “He left a calm impression of a cultured man who was funny, eloquent. You’d want him to be your friend.”
Karadzic was also running a website, which he called Human Quantum Energy. On it he was offering treatment for impotence and depression and hawking metal amulets as protection against radiation and other ills.
For most of his years in hiding, Karadzic was sustained by donations from wealthy Serbian businessmen and expatriates. It was generally thought he was hiding in monasteries, caves or other remote locations in southern Serbia, Bosnia or his native Montenegro. There were as many rumored sightings as for Elvis, and four years ago he published a novel clandestinely.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops periodically swooped into his wartime village of Pale, near the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, in elaborate raids that netted nothing.
At least for the last couple of years, Karadzic was living in New Belgrade, a sprawling suburb of the Serbian capital full of anonymous high-rise apartment blocks, an easy place to lose oneself. He lived on a street named for a cosmonaut, near a building where fellow fugitive Mladic was known to have been residing at one point.
Rasim Ljajic, Serbia’s senior official in charge of cooperation with The Hague, said authorities were tracking the network of supporters and relatives who helped Karadzic hide and live. They pinpointed his whereabouts and agents intercepted him on Bus No. 73 as it traveled from his neighborhood to another northern suburb, Batajnica. He was alone, Ljajic said, minus the entourage that had once accompanied the Bosnian Serb leader.
He did not resist. He was blindfolded and taken away.
Ljajic said Karadzic was arrested Monday in an operation that lasted for several hours. Vujacic, Karadzic’s attorney, contended that his client was taken into custody Friday and held over the weekend before the news was announced.
More crucial to the arrest than police work or intelligence was the decision to go after Karadzic, after many years in which there was little official interest in stirring the anger that his seizure would unleash.
Serbia early this month installed a new, pro-Western government with Boris Tadic as president. Although Tadic was reelected as Serbia’s president in February, he now for the first time has an ally as prime minister -- Mirko Cvetkovic has replaced Vojislav Kostunica, a nationalist who refused to cooperate with The Hague.
With the new government came changes in key security posts. Sasa Vukadinovic, a Tadic ally, took over as head of the secret service last week.
Arresting and turning over Karadzic is seen as a key step if Serbia is ever to be invited to join the European Union, a goal that most Serbs aspire to because of economic benefits and freer travel and commerce. The Netherlands and Belgium, especially, had pledged to block Serbia’s integration as long as Karadzic and Mladic remained loose.
Still, capturing Karadzic, regarded as a hero by many Serbian nationalists, is a risky move for Tadic. He will have to weather the outrage that is already boiling in some segments of Serbian society.
On Tuesday, young nationalists for the second day staged small but noisy demonstrations in downtown Belgrade. They briefly went on a window-shattering rampage, and police fired tear gas to disperse them.
“Serbia will have to see some benefits,” said Obrad Kesic, a Serbian American analyst with Global Consultants. “If this goes unrecognized, it could have a bad effect on the stability of the government.”
Paddy Ashdown, who served as the European Union’s high representative for Bosnia from 2002 until 2006, joined numerous world leaders in praising the capture of Karadzic.
“The reality was that he was hidden by the Serbs and until the Serbs cooperated he couldn’t be caught, and I think it’s significant the Serbs have done what they should have done 13 years ago and delivered him up to justice,” Ashdown said.
“And it’s significant that he has been caught by the Serbs, because they can now begin to put the past behind them and move forward.”
--
wilkinson@latimes.com
Special correspondent Zoran Cirjakovic contributed to this report.
|
34ffc2424bf88af3f08dcd55ba215b57 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-23-fi-bankearns23-story.html | 2 banks post billions in losses | 2 banks post billions in losses
Wachovia Corp. and Washington Mutual Inc. posted billions of dollars in mortgage losses Tuesday, far more than analysts had forecast, but their stocks rose as investors apparently concluded that the home-lending sector could work through its deep troubles.
Despite a staggering $8.9-billion second-quarter loss -- more than it has ever earned in a full year -- Wachovia shares rocketed $3.61, or 27%, to $16.79. Shares of Washington Mutual rose 34 cents, or 6.2%, to $5.82 before it reported a $3.3-billion loss after the close of trading.
Wachovia and Washington Mutual are both major players in retail banking and mortgages. Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia, the fourth-largest U.S. bank, ran into trouble after its 2006 acquisition of Oakland-based Golden West Financial Corp., whose World Savings was a major adjustable-rate lender. Seattle-based Washington Mutual grew to become the nation’s largest savings and loan by acquiring a series of California thrifts.
Their results illustrate how rising home-loan delinquencies, first seen among high-risk subprime mortgages, have migrated to nontraditional loans made to people with good credit scores. These adjustable-rate mortgages with low initial rates were often made without verifying borrowers’ earnings.
The main contributor to Wachovia’s losses was its now discontinued specialty of “option ARM” loans that allowed borrowers to pay so little that their balances rose. In the second quarter, Wachovia set aside $5.6 billion for loan losses, including $3.3 billion on option ARMs
Washington Mutual said it too was experiencing surging losses on option ARMs -- even as problems with subprime loans are “flattening out” and home-equity delinquencies “are showing signs of flattening,” as company President Steve Rotella put it.
Wachovia’s $8.9-billion loss, the equivalent of $4.20 a share, contrasted with net income of $2.3 billion, or $1.23 a share, in the second quarter of 2007. The bank slashed its dividend to 5 cents from 37.5 cents, the second reduction in the payout this year, and said it would eliminate 10,750 jobs.
Wachovia has $122 billion of option ARMs on its books. Of those, 58% are in California, where falling home prices and rising loan balances have devastated a key measure of the creditworthiness of mortgages.
In the Central Valley, where Wachovia has $10.2 billion in option ARMs outstanding, the ratio of the unpaid loan amounts to the value of the underlying homes was 109% in May, up from 72% when the loans were made. In the Inland Empire, home to $11.3 billion of the loans, the so-called loan-to-value ratio was 99%, Wachovia said.
Wachovia shares initially fell 12% on the earnings report but recovered after new Chief Executive Robert Steel said the company didn’t plan to sell stock to raise capital. Also boosting the shares was a positive analyst report that lifted banking stocks in general.
Financial stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which were down early on Wachovia’s results, ended the day up 6.6%, lifting the overall stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 135 points, or 1.3%.
Steel, who replaced the ousted Ken Thompson at Wachovia this month, said it was “the best course for our shareholders over the long term” to further cut the dividend. He said that the bank would sell “selected non-core assets” and that it expected to cut expenses for the second half of this year by $490 million and reduce 2009 spending by $1.5 billion.
Wachovia said it would slow its expansion in California, Nevada and Arizona. In 2006, the bank said it planned to open 30 to 50 branches a year in California alone. The projected additions next year in all three states will now total 25 30 branches, spokeswoman Aimee Worsley said.
Washington Mutual’s loss of $3.33 billion, or $6.58 a share, compared with net income of $830 million, or 92 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. The results included a reduction of $3.24 a share related to $7.2 billion in capital that WaMu raised from private investors in April.
WaMu set aside $5.9 billion to cover future losses, compared with $2.2 billion of current loans that it wrote off as uncollectable.
“It’s a big loss for the quarter,” Rotella said in an interview. “But that loss is driven by a large reserve that will help us deal with losses in the future.” And as a result of the private equity investment, “our capital actually went up,” he added.
--
scott.reckard@latimes.com
|
5bcf6e3777e3f5687bfebebe34d89a48 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-23-fo-calcook23-story.html | Pickle paradise | Pickle paradise
WHERE have all the pickles gone?
It wasn’t so long ago that every well-dressed American dinner table was bejeweled with an assortment of them -- emerald green tomatoes, ruby red beets and opalescent pearl onions, as well as less glamorous (though certainly no less delicious) okra, mushrooms and watermelon rind. The pickle tray was a standard part of a Sunday supper.
Nowadays, almost the only pickle you’ll find is cucumber. And while there’s nothing wrong with your basic bread-and-butter, half-sour or dill, there are so many other possibilities to explore.
What about radishes, for example, pickled pink, with a refreshing sweet-tart bite to match their crisp texture? Or tangy peppers, yellow turmeric-stained zucchini or even surprisingly savory pickled grapes?
These are more than mere curiosities. They are perfect for the way we eat in the summertime. A bite of crisp tart pickle is as cooling as an evening breeze.
Their acidity cuts right through the smoke and richness of grilled meat, just as their sweetness and spiciness balance and complement it. Do you doubt it? Think about ketchup, which, when broken down to its basics, is really nothing more than a pureed pickle of ripe tomatoes.
Pickles also make great antipasti. Like olives (technically, yet another kind of pickle), their punchy flavors prime the palate for the bigger dishes to come.
But while many traditional pickles take weeks of aging to mellow and mature, there are very good pickles you can make in a single day.
You don’t need fancy equipment or advanced cooking skills. If you can slice a vegetable and boil water, you can make a pickle.
The only gadget I used was a Japanese tsukemono-ki, a plastic pickle press that is available at Asian markets for around $20. It’s a simple contraption: Put the salted vegetables in the bottom, then put on the lid and screw down the plate to press the vegetables flat against the bottom, expressing their moisture.
Using this seems to keep the finished pickles crisper, but even though a pickle press is a handy tool, it is by no means a necessity.
First, a little definition: A pickle is a fruit or a vegetable that is preserved through acidity. Because most harmful bacteria have a hard time surviving in a low-pH environment, pickling was an important part of preserving the harvest in the days before refrigeration.
There are two main ways of making a pickle. The first is by salting the food to draw out its moisture, which is rich in sugars that are fermented by naturally occurring bacteria to create lactic acid (the same acid that preserves so many of our favorite foods, including yogurt, cheeses and salumi).
This is how pickles as diverse as sauerkraut and olives are made. The flavors created are complex, but the time required is long -- weeks or even months.
A simpler form of pickle can be made simply by soaking food in an acid liquid, in most cases, a flavored vinegar mixture. All that’s necessary is to first soften the fruit or vegetable. This can be done either by blanching it briefly in boiling water or by salting it for an hour or two.
The latter has the added benefit of slightly dehydrating the fruit or vegetable, which allows it to absorb more of the moisture from the vinegar mixture, saturating it with flavor. As you might expect, this technique allows plenty of room for the creative cook to mess around.
Vinegar choices
THOUGH ordinary, white distilled vinegar can be used for most pickles, you can get a different effect by substituting apple cider or Asian rice vinegar. Similarly, don’t feel bound to the common pickling spices of mustard, peppercorns, dill and their brethren. Try using cloves, allspice or cinnamon, fresh ginger or dried chiles.
The two ingredients you’ll want to include in some measure are a little salt to bring out the flavor of the vegetable, and some sugar to soften the harsh edges of the vinegar.
Though the flavoring of these brines is up to you, be careful that you have at least as much vinegar as other liquids (and note that apple cider does not have the same acidity as apple cider vinegar). Because commercial vinegar’s standard acidity is 5%, that’ll ensure that the finished brine is at least a safe 2.5%.
However you flavor the pickle, there is likely to be a bit of a learning curve when you start experimenting. Soon, though, you’ll develop a palate for tasting pickles early. What may initially seem a little dull and one-dimensional can develop into something very delicious as herbs and spices contribute their flavor and the pickle mellows and deepens.
The first couple of times you experiment, don’t go overboard with the spicing. Give the pickles a day to develop and see how you like them before adjusting the recipe for the next attempt.
A good way to start pickling is by trying some reliable recipes from favorite cookbooks.
One classic on pickles, jams and jellies is “Fine Preserving,” by Catherine Plagemann. Originally published in the 1960s, it was largely forgotten until it was reissued in the 1980s with annotation by none other than M.F.K. Fisher.
Though the idea of pickled grapes sounds unusual, Fisher said it was one of her favorite recipes in the book. Intrigued, I had to give it a try. It’s spectacular. The addition of just the tablespoon of minced onion lends a surprising savory dimension to the brine. (Oddly, Fisher says she left out the onion when she made it. . . . Maybe she is fallible after all.)
Zucchini easy
MY NEXT attempt was just as successful. If you’ve ever eaten a hamburger at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco (or at Benicia’s Union Hotel before that), you may well have tried the chartreuse zucchini pickles that come as a standard accompaniment.
And if you’ve tried them, you may well have asked the waitress to bring out a second helping. They couldn’t be easier to make, and doing them yourself means never having to beg again.
Emboldened by these successes, I tried a couple of pickles of my own invention. I love torshi, the Middle Eastern turnip pickles, and I wondered whether you couldn’t get the same texture from a radish, but with a slightly different flavor.
Turns out, radish pickles are every bit as crisp, but with a subtle spice underneath.
I tried these a number of different ways -- with white vinegar and rice vinegar, spiced with cloves and flavored with peppercorns and mustard seed -- before settling on this version, which will now become a standard part of my appetizer repertoire. They are absolutely delicious served with sliced salumi.
Finally, I wondered whether you couldn’t pickle Japanese shishito peppers -- commercial pickled peppers are usually dull, and small wax peppers can be hard to find, even at farmers markets.
Hallelujah, it’s a snap, one of the easiest pickles I made. Simply cut a couple of slits in each pepper to allow the heat and the brine to penetrate, blanch them in boiling water for about a minute, then cover them with warm vinegar spiced with dried chiles, oregano and onion. The pickles -- crisp, sweet and tart -- will be ready to eat in eight hours or so.
All of these pickles can be canned, if you like, following the standard instructions. But they’ll keep their texture and flavor for weeks simply stored in the refrigerator.
Of course, delicious as they are, it’s doubtful they’ll be around anywhere near that long.
--
russ.parsons@latimes.com
--
Begin text of infobox
Zuni Cafe zucchini pickles
Total time: 20 minutes, plus marinating and pickling time
Servings: 3 cups
Note: Adapted from Judy Rodgers’ “The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.”
1 pound zucchini
1 small yellow onion
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed yellow and/or brown mustard seeds
Scant 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1. Wash and trim the zucchini, then slice them one-sixteenth-inch thick; a mandoline works best. Slice the onion very thin as well. Combine the zucchini and onions in a large but shallow nonreactive bowl, add the salt and toss to distribute. Add a few ice cubes and cold water to cover, then stir to dissolve the salt. Alternatively, transfer the salted zucchini and onion slices to a Japanese pickle maker and screw down the top; do not add any water or ice cubes.
2. After about 1 hour, taste and feel a piece of zucchini -- it should be slightly softened. Drain and pat dry.
3. Combine the vinegar, sugar, dry mustard, mustard seeds and turmeric in a small saucepan and simmer for 3 minutes. Set aside until just warm to the touch. (If the brine is too hot, it will cook the vegetables and make the pickles soft instead of crisp.)
4. Return the zucchini to a dry bowl and pour over the cooled brine. Stir to distribute the spices. Transfer the pickle to jars, preferably ones that have “shoulders” to hold the zucchini and onions beneath the surface of the brine. Seal tightly and refrigerate for at least a day before serving to allow the flavors to mellow and permeate the zucchini, turning them a brilliant chartreuse color.
Each 1/4 -cup serving: 27 calories; 0 protein; 7 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 74 mg. sodium.
----
Pickled grapes
Total time: 20 minutes plus refrigeration time
Servings: Makes 3 cups
Note: Adapted from Catherine Plagemann’s “Fine Preserving.”
3 cups stemmed red seedless grapes (about 3/4 pound)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup white wine vinegar
3 (3-inch) sticks cinnamon
1 tablespoon minced onion
1. Wash the grapes and divide them into three pint-sized canning jars.
2. In a small saucepan, bring the sugar, vinegar, cinnamon and onion to a boil, then simmer 5 minutes. Pour the syrup evenly over the grapes and insert a cinnamon stick in each jar. Seal tightly and refrigerate at least 8 hours.
Each 1/4 -cup serving: 55 calories; 0 protein; 14 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 1 mg. sodium.
----
Quick radish pickles
Total time: 20 minutes, plus softening and pickling time
Servings: Makes about 2 cups
2 bunches radishes (about 3/4 pound with tops removed)
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 teaspoon whole mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
3/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1. Trim the tops and tails of the radishes and quarter them lengthwise. In a large, nonreactive bowl, toss them with 1 tablespoon kosher salt to coat well. Add water to cover and several ice cubes. Set aside until the radishes have softened slightly but are still crisp, about 2 hours. Alternatively, transfer the salted radishes without the water and ice cubes to a Japanese pickle maker and screw down the top.
2. While the radishes are softening, toast the mustard seed and black peppercorns in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until they are fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the vinegar, one-half cup water, the sugar and the remaining one-fourth teaspoon salt and simmer 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool until the pickling mixture is just warm to the touch.
3. Rinse the radishes well and pat them dry with a towel. Place them in a small, nonreactive container and pour the warm pickling mixture over them to just cover. Seal tightly and refrigerate at least 1 day to mature.
Each 1/4-cup serving: 11 calories; 0 protein; 2 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 0 fat; 0 fat; 0 cholesterol; 270 mg. sodium.
----
Quick pickled peppers
Total time: 20 minutes, plus pickling time
Servings: Makes about 4 cups
Note: Shishito peppers are available at many Asian markets.
3/4 pound shishito peppers
2 1/2 cups rice vinegar
3 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly smashed
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 small onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 to 3 whole chiles de arbol or other small dried red chile (optional)
1. Cut a thin lengthwise slit on each side of each pepper to allow the brine to penetrate.
2. In a medium saucepan, simmer the vinegar with 2 cups of water, the garlic, salt, sugar, oregano, peppercorns, onion and dried chile, if desired, until fragrant, 3 to 4 minutes.
3. Blanch the peppers in a large pot of boiling water until they begin to soften and the color just begins to fade, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain the peppers and pat dry with a kitchen towel; do not rinse them.
4. Place the peppers, still warm, in a large nonreactive container with a cover and pour the vinegar solution over them. Seal tightly and refrigerate at least 8 hours. Each 1/4 -cup serving: 7 calories; 0 protein; 2 grams carbohydrates; 0 fiber; 0 fat; 0 saturated fat; 0 cholesterol; 36 mg. sodium.
|
83901423ee5e85cf071d1325f35f0856 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-23-me-plastic23-story.html | City Council will ban plastic bags if the state doesn’t act | City Council will ban plastic bags if the state doesn’t act
The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to ban plastic carryout bags in the city’s supermarkets and stores by July 2010 -- but only if the state fails to impose a 25-cent fee on every shopper who requests them.
Council members said they hope an impending ban would spur consumers to begin carrying canvas or other reusable bags, reducing the amount of plastic that washes into the city’s storm drains and the ocean.
“This is a major moment for our city, to bite the bullet and go with something that is more ecologically sensitive than what we’ve ever done before,” said Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents such coastal neighborhoods as Venice and Playa del Rey.
Tuesday’s vote comes as the plastic bag industry, formally known as the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition, is fighting efforts to regulate its products. The group filed a lawsuit last week challenging a Los Angeles County plan to reduce plastic bags about 30% by 2010.
Still, a lawyer for the coalition said that as long as the council’s decision remains a policy and not a law, he sees no need for a legal fight.
“Why challenge it?” asked coalition attorney Stephen Joseph. “It’s not an ordinance.”
The council also voted to require city agencies to stop purchasing polystyrene food containers starting next year.
The plastic bag ban was hailed by environmental groups, including Heal the Bay and the Surfrider Foundation. Opponents warned the policy will have a devastating effect on the region’s packaging companies.
“When we start banning things and closing factories, where are the blue-collar workers going to go?” asked Anatolio Riegos, a Highland Park resident who works for Pactiv, a packaging company in the city of Industry that has roughly 1,300 workers.
City officials estimate that Los Angeles consumers use 2.3 billion plastic bags each year. An estimated 5% of plastic bags are recycled statewide, according to the city’s Bureau of Sanitation.
The ban was proposed by Councilman Ed Reyes, who called plastic bags “the graffiti of the L.A. River,” which passes through his district.
Although the plan originally called for the bag ban to go into effect in 2012, council members Janice Hahn and Richard Alarcon persuaded their colleagues to embrace an earlier deadline.
Alarcon said the council would eventually pass a law regulating plastic bags. But for now, the council’s vote is designed to persuade state lawmakers to impose a fee on them.
“If they don’t do [a fee], then we do a ban,” said Alarcon, who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley. “So yes, at some point there would be an ordinance.”
--
david.zahniser@latimes.com
|
fbb68081b88f651d965f9aada43c440e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-23-sci-prostate23-story.html | Prostate cancer drug seen as possible breakthrough | Prostate cancer drug seen as possible breakthrough
An experimental cancer drug shrank prostate tumors dramatically and more than doubled survival in 70% to 80% of patients with aggressive cancers, British researchers reported Tuesday.
Although the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology covered only 21 patients, the drug is now being tested in more than 250 men with what appears to be similar results, experts said.
“There is a general sense in the prostate cancer community that this agent is extremely promising and is very likely to have an important role in the management of prostate cancer patients,” said Dr. Howard M. Sandler, a radiation oncologist at the University of Michigan who is a spokesman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
“It’s pretty safe to say that we are going to have a lot more to offer patients when this drug gets approved,” added Dr. Robert Reiter, a urologist at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center who was not involved in the research.
Experts expect the new drug, called abiraterone, to be widely available by 2011. It could find use among most of the 28,000 U.S. men diagnosed each year with the most aggressive and almost-always fatal type of prostate cancer.
The trial was sponsored by Cougar Biotechnology Inc. of Los Angeles, which holds the patent rights to abiraterone.
The drug is also being tested for breast cancer, but no results have been released yet.
Key to the excitement is the drug’s unusual way of working.
Prostate cancer is fueled by the male hormone testosterone. One method of treatment is known as hormonal deprivation or “chemical castration,” in which drugs block production of the hormone by the testes and the adrenal gland.
Yet many tumors continue to grow. Recent research has shown that tumor cells themselves produce testosterone.
Researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research in London developed abiraterone to block an enzyme called cytochrome P17, which is crucial in converting cholesterol to testosterone. The point, Sandler said, is that the drug blocks testosterone production everywhere in the body, including inside the tumor cells.
“This agent can eliminate virtually all testosterone from the bloodstream . . . which seems to be important for patients because cancer may be sensitized to the presence of minute levels of testosterone,” he said.
The drug also blocks the production of estrogen, which is why researchers hope it will prove useful in breast cancer.
In the new study, Dr. Johann S. de Bono of the institute and his colleagues studied 21 men whose tumors were resistant to chemical castration. The men were given once-daily oral doses of abiraterone.
“The drug is spectacularly effective,” De Bono said. “The tumors shrink, the pain goes away. Some patients . . . have been on it for up to two years and eight months and are still doing well.”
Reiter noted that “these guys were at the end stage of disease, the worst stage of cancer, and 70% responded in a clinically meaningful way. That’s pretty dramatic . . . and is likely to lead to a major change in therapy.”
Historically, he added, most such patients die within six months.
Side effects were minimal.
Simon Bush, a 50-year-old retired banker in London, was one of the patients in the trial. First diagnosed with prostate cancer three years ago, he tried all other forms of therapy without success.
“Last year, I was in severe pain because of my prostate cancer, which had worsened and spread to my bones,” he said.
He began taking abiraterone in May 2007, and the improvement began within a week. Within two months, he said, his PSA level -- a marker of tumor growth -- had dropped by 95%.
Within three months, he had stopped taking painkillers entirely and was able to resume a normal life.
“The changes in my life have been dramatic, from managing thousands of people in a major bank to facing a very uncertain future, then to renewed hope, thanks to this drug trial,” Bush said.
Dr. Glen Justice, director of Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center’s Cancer Center in Fountain Valley, noted: “What is exciting about this drug is that it had activity in both earlier and later stages of disease. . . . The question is: Can we take people that have a very aggressive disease that was caught early and increase the cure rate by using it upfront?”
--
thomas.maugh@latimes.com
|
9bbd1f9abccb9f0c157cb4bf8079300f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-24-et-quick24.s2-story.html | A symphonic Dead concert | A symphonic Dead concert
When the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra warms up a week from Friday, the musicians will be clad in their usual summer attire: white dinner jackets and bow ties for the men, white tops and black skirts or slacks for the women.
Tie-dye might be more appropriate.
On the day Jerry Garcia would have turned 66, the venerable orchestra will welcome more than 2,000 Deadheads to the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for the world premiere of “Dead Symphony No. 6,” the first orchestral work inspired by the music of the Grateful Dead. It’s a 12-movement work by Lee Johnson that was recorded by the Russian National Orchestra in 2005 but which has never been performed live.
The approximately 50-minute performance will include a psychedelic light display.
|
ef03dcb4d59862915cd83e611d64eb6f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-24-fi-highwayangel24-story.html | Really, he won’t send you a bill | Really, he won’t send you a bill
Christin Ernst was in a fix. An errant screwdriver punctured her tire on a San Diego freeway, leaving her stranded.
That’s when Thomas Weller -- a.k.a. the San Diego Highwayman -- arrived in his monstrous white search-and-rescue vehicle, complete with emergency lights flashing. A surprised Ernst watched as Weller slapped on her spare, inflated it and handed her a card.
It reads: “Assisting you has been my pleasure. I ask for no payment other than for you to pass on the favor by helping someone in distress that you may encounter.”
Ernst assured Weller, “I will pass it on.”
She was lucky. Because of wallet-busting fuel prices, Weller has cut back his good Samaritan runs to once every three days. Weighing more than 5,600 pounds, Weller’s aging rescue rig is a world-class gas-guzzler.
“I sit home on the front porch a lot,” he said. “It’s killing me.”
Weller isn’t alone. High gas prices are forcing potential do-gooders of all kinds to stay home.
Meals on Wheels and other services that depend on volunteer drivers have had to scale back. In a June survey of U.S. groups that serve the elderly, more than 70% said fuel costs had made it harder to recruit and retain volunteers.
For a while, Weller had a benefactor. An Auto Trader executive saw a television report about his good deeds and arranged to pay his fuel bills from April 2002 until budget cutbacks ended the deal.
“The best time of my career of doing this was the 17 months that I didn’t have to worry about the expense,” Weller said.
He started his volunteer highway rounds in 1966. Now 60, Weller figures he’s helped more than 6,000 motorists. He’s been interviewed plenty, including by CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, who dubbed him the “Highwayman.”
But Weller isn’t out for glory.
“It’s what I do for excitement,” said Weller, who was vague about what his avocation costs.
Weller’s usual companion is Shela, a black-and-white mix of Labrador retriever and smooth collie. Weller describes her as “a person in a fur suit” who once charmed her way into a party at the Viper Room, the Hollywood nightspot that usually attracts wolves rather than family pets.
Riding in the back of Weller’s vehicle is a no-go. Instead of seats, there’s a carefully organized assortment of things one might need to help a motorist in a jam.
Among the items: An electronic ignition, mechanic’s tool kit, hacksaw, crowbar, fire-resistant overalls and a yellow hard hat emblazoned with “San Diego Highwayman.” He’s also got a first-aid kit, a wheeled stretcher and a kit for delivering a baby (never used, he says, with obvious relief). On one side hangs a pair of rifles -- “a little bit of self-preservation,” he says, though he hasn’t had to fire them.
Much of the equipment is there “just in case,” Weller said. Mostly, he helps people whose vehicles are out of gas, have a flat tire or an overheated engine. In Weller-speak, that’s an OOG, FT and OH. For those, he carries gas, water, compressed air and jacks capable of lifting an ambulance or a low-rider.
His vehicle is reminiscent of the “Ectomobile,” a 1959 Cadillac that carried around Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and crew in the 1984 hit movie “Ghostbusters.” Weller has embraced the comparison, even though his white chariot is a heavily modified 1955 Ford station wagon.
Weller estimates the rig has gone 600,000 miles -- the odometer broke 10 years ago -- and its lineage has blurred along the way. “Depending on which part you point to,” he said, his ride also is a Mercury, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Dodge, Thunderbird and Buick, with components that date from 1955 to 1978.
The San Diego-area California Highway Patrol, which has 34 freeway service vehicles offering rush-hour assistance, doesn’t condone Weller’s highway hobby.
“It’s obviously very dangerous,” CHP spokesman Brad Baehr said. “But this is a guy who does this on his own, with his heart in the right place.”
Weller says he’s careful to stay out of the way of the professionals and to avoid making a hazardous situation more so.
It helps that he knows more than most about what’s required. Weller works as a mechanic and trained as an emergency medical technician. He stopped short of earning EMT certification, he says, so he would be covered by California’s “good Samaritan” law, which limits liability for non-professionals who provide emergency first aid.
Weller’s desire to help others was ignited in 1964. Then a teenager in Illinois, the car Weller was driving slid off a freeway during a blizzard and plowed into a deep snowbank. It was after midnight, and his car was barely visible.
A man stopped, got him out and told Weller to pass the favor on. Two years later, after moving to San Diego and graduating from high school, Weller started his rescue rounds.
To make a living, he’s been a roofer, car repair manager, tire repairman and security guard. These days, he fixes cars for a select group of regular customers. He says it provides enough money for his modest lifestyle and, until gas prices went up, also covered his daily drives.
Over the years, Weller has weathered a few close calls.
There was the time he pulled somebody out of a burning car. Another day, he convinced a family to leave their broken-down car and stand behind a freeway pillar -- and saved them from a crash that killed the other driver and caused their vehicle to explode.
On a recent Friday afternoon, he headed out from his folksy “Highwayman’s Roost” in eastern San Diego County wearing one of his Highwayman outfits -- a short-sleeved blue shirt and jeans with reflective yellow-and-white stripes, elbow pads and knee and shin protectors.
Weller added a hat, sunglasses and, being an avid fan of western writer Louis L’Amour, a red bandanna around his neck (“a kerchief has about 300 uses”). He fell into his “Highwayman” persona, peppering his conversation with “git” and “ain’t” and phrases like, “that un got me a-sweatin’.”
About an hour later, he came upon Ernst and her hobbled Honda Civic.
“It looks like she’s got a flat. Maybe she’ll let me help her,” Weller said as he fired up the rig’s lights and pulled over. Ernst was a AAA member but didn’t have her card, and her cellphone battery was waning. She was delighted to see Weller.
“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced,” she said. “I would have been standing here for another two or three hours trying to figure out what I was going to do.”
Next, Weller pulled behind two cars parked just beyond a curve and barely off the freeway, where others were whizzing by at smash-you-to-bits speeds. One had a flat tire on the freeway side of the car. And the battery was dead.
The second driver was trying to help but couldn’t get in position to provide a jump and couldn’t jack up the car enough for a tire change. Weller’s hydraulic jack and heavy duty jumper cable did the trick.
“That gets the adrenaline pumping,” he panted as he pulled back onto the freeway. “That’s the excitement of jumping off the bridge with a bungee or going skydiving.”
The day’s mission was nearly done.
“The fuel gauge is showing me that it’s the right time to head home,” Weller said, peering at his extensive instrument panel. Two hours’ cruising had burned more than $40 in fuel.
On the way home, he spotted an old camper stopped on the freeway. The driver had fixed an electrical problem but was left with exposed wires and no electrical tape.
Naturally, the Highwayman had some handy.
--
elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com
|
3dc24cfaa89b44e43c96be6e696032d1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-24-me-brown24-story.html | Sex assault probe widens | Sex assault probe widens
A South Los Angeles doctor charged with sexually abusing eight patients, including a 15-year-old girl, is also under investigation for molesting seven other people who went to him for medical care, prosecutors said Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
In a preliminary hearing, Court Commissioner Henry Hall ordered that Dr. Kevin Brown, 37, be held in jail on $4-million bail, despite protests from his attorneys who suggested it was far higher than bail set in similar cases and seemed to be punitively based on his father’s position as premier of Bermuda.
But Hall agreed with prosecutors that Brown posed a “grave risk” to the community, as well as a potential flight risk because of his financial means and ability to flee to Bermuda, where his father heads the government.
Hall said that given the accusations and growing number of accusers it is likely there are more victims. The court commissioner noted that Brown was also being investigated in a multimillion-dollar healthcare fraud probe by the state. Hall continued Brown’s arraignment to Aug. 7 and ordered him not to contact the alleged victims.
As for the new allegations, at least three cases are being prepared against Brown, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Marie Wise said in court, and four other patients have come forward and will be interviewed by investigators.
Regarding the eight cases in which Brown has already been charged, at least one of the incidents occurred outside Brown’s medical office when he went to the home of a female patient in Alhambra and allegedly raped her, Wise said.
The California Medical Board also has filed a motion with the court to suspend or revoke Brown’s medical license, she said.
The doctor’s attorneys, Keith Bowman and Blair Berk, portrayed Brown as a physician arrested for touching patients and said that detectives went to the media to appeal for more victims.
Brown was jailed Monday on suspicion of sexually assaulting a number of female patients, including a 15-year-old girl and an undercover Los Angeles Police Department officer.
Brown allegedly molested eight patients over a two-year period. He is also being investigated by the state for “multiple healthcare fraud schemes and over prescription of Oxycodone,” according to court documents. He has not been charged in connection with that inquiry.
His arrest came after several women contacted authorities and accused Brown of sexually battering or raping them during medical examinations, Wise said. Brown faces 19 felony counts, including a lewd act on a 15-year-old, rape, sexual battery by fraud and sexual exploitation. The alleged assaults occurred between Nov. 6, 2006, and May 31, 2008. If convicted, he faces 27 years in state prison.
At the time of his arrest Monday, Brown was free on bail for a previous sexual assault arrest. Brown also operates the Urban Health Institute of Los Angeles. The charity, which is run out of the same building as Brown’s practice, seeks to provide disaster relief in the United States, South America and throughout Africa.
Founded by Brown, the institute has held fundraisers at the Playboy mansion. The events have featured celebrities such as Khloe Kardashian, Don Cheadle, Shannon Elizabeth and Hugh Hefner. Newspapers in Bermuda have reported that its tourism board provided free vacations to the charity. The trips were given as prizes for donors to the charity.
--
richard.winton@latimes.com
|
3f7931f13404c6edba51cf94dcca61cf | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-24-me-budget24-story.html | State worker wages may be slashed | State worker wages may be slashed
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has prepared an order to cut the pay of about 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until a budget is signed.
Administration officials said Schwarzenegger was expected to sign the order, a draft of which was obtained Wednesday by The Times, early next week as part of an effort to avert a cash crisis. The deadline for passing a budget was July 1, and without one soon, the officials said, California may be unable to borrow billions of dollars needed to keep the state solvent.
State Controller John Chiang, asserting that the state has enough money on hand, said through a spokesman that he would not implement such an order. Chiang’s office handles payroll for government workers.
The Republican governor’s controversial plan, likely to be challenged in court by public-employee unions if carried out, would allow the state to defer paying about $1 billion a month, administration officials said. Workers would be repaid their lost earnings once a budget was in place.
As drafted, the order also calls for the state to immediately lay off 21,855 part-time workers, stop overtime payments for almost all employees and cease all hiring until a budget is enacted.
“Because the Legislature has failed to pass a budget and our state does not have a rainy-day fund, this is one of a number of options we are considering to make sure we have sufficient cash to cover our costs,” said administration spokesman Matt David.
Until recently, the governor had played a relatively minor role in budget negotiations since offering his revised spending plan in May. As public frustration over Sacramento’s handling of the budget has mounted, much of the blame has fallen on him. His approval rating among voters is 40%, according to a Field Poll released this week, down from 60% in December.
The executive order appears intended to show that Schwarzenegger is taking action and to pressure lawmakers to finish work on the budget. Democrats rely on the major public employee unions to help bankroll their political campaigns, and the public-safety unions that Republicans often look to for support could be affected by his order.
Once the order took effect, most state employees, who are paid once a month, would not see another paycheck until the end of August. If the budget was passed late in that month, their full salaries would still be reflected in that paycheck.
The response to Schwarzenegger’s plan from unions was immediate and angry.
“The governor is turning a budget crisis into a catastrophe,” said Yvonne Walker, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents 95,000 state workers. “How can you tell people, ‘We will just pay you this amount and you can catch up later?’
“We are in the middle of a housing crisis, and people are losing their mortgages,” she said. “Are they going to issue a notice to mortgage companies that employees will just catch up later?”
Walker said she believed the governor’s plan was illegal, and union attorneys are already drafting a lawsuit to file if the order is signed.
Chiang, a Democrat, said in a statement that the governor’s order would be unnecessary because the state will have sufficient funds available to cover all its financial obligations through September -- a point on which the administration does not agree.
Officials in Chiang’s office said the controller would not comply with Schwarzenegger’s order.
“I will urge the governor to rethink his proposal,” Chiang’s statement said.
“Cutting workers’ salaries will do nothing meaningful to improve our cash position or help us make our priority payments,” the statement said. He called the order a “poorly devised strategy to put pressure on the Legislature to enact a budget.”
Administration officials contend that state law would require the controller to carry out the governor’s order. A court battle could ensue if Chiang refused.
Lawmakers so far have shown no sign of agreeing on a budget. Democrats continue to rally around their plan to close a $15.2-billion deficit with new taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and Republican lawmakers say they will stick to the pledge almost every one of them has signed to vote against tax hikes.
Democratic lawmakers urged Schwarzenegger not to sign the order.
“I don’t believe the governor would put public servants in the crossfire of this budget battle,” said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles).
Republican legislative leaders issued a statement saying they were working hard to get a budget passed “to avoid drastic measures like the one that is being proposed” by the governor.
The state Supreme Court has declared it legal to drop the pay of even union workers down to the federal minimum wage in the event there is no budget, but not if they work overtime. It is unclear whether the state’s electronic payroll systems are sophisticated enough to sort out which employees would be eligible to have their pay suspended.
Administration officials say they hope to avoid that problem by suspending almost all overtime. Only workers whose jobs are vital to public safety would be exempt from the governor’s order.
Meanwhile, officials at the state treasurer’s office have said California will need to borrow $10 billion sometime in September to have enough cash to make it until the usual flood of tax receipts arrives in the spring.
Securing such a loan takes at least four weeks, they say, and it can’t be done until the budget is enacted.
--
evan.halper@latimes.com
|
b06e4ea965542c54aea6691a34c69c13 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-24-na-obamatrip24-story.html | Obama assures Israel of support | Obama assures Israel of support
Despite months of warnings by John McCain that Barack Obama’s stance toward Iran threatens Israel, political leaders in the Jewish state welcomed the Democrat’s assurances Wednesday that he would work to block Iran from acquiring nuclear arms.
Obama navigated a thicket of regional tensions on a daylong visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. But Israeli leaders across the political spectrum voiced no misgivings about his commitment to Israel’s security -- above all in countering the Iranian threat.
On a day of talks with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Obama declared solidarity against “an Iranian regime that sponsors terrorism, pursues nuclear weapons and threatens Israel’s existence.”
“A nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat, and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama told reporters in Sderot, a rocket-battered town in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip.
Obama also traveled to the West Bank, where he spent an hour with the president and prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. They too gave a warm reception to the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee-in-waiting.
“He left us feeling very well, reassuring us about his commitment for peace,” said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator who escorted Obama into a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
But most remarkable on Obama’s visit was the absence of reservations expressed by the Israelis about his openness to dialogue with Iran.
Many Israeli leaders have said in the past that such talks would help legitimize Iran and give it more time to develop nuclear weapons. But rather than emphasize those differences, even in private, several who met with Obama sounded eager to find points of agreement.
Even former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, usually a vocal critic of talks with Iran, refrained from challenging Obama’s view. After the two met, the right-wing opposition Likud Party leader said they had agreed “the most pressing issue concerning the foreign policies of both countries must be to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.”
A Netanyahu advisor said it was more fruitful to find common ground with a man who might become president. He said Netanyahu, who aspires to lead Israel again, was satisfied with Obama’s argument.
“He explained why he felt that engagement with Iran is necessary. No one took issue with him because of the context in which he put it -- that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable,” said the advisor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the discussion. “No Israeli would dispute that if the purpose of having a dialogue is to exhaust all measures before moving up the ladder, then it’s a plausible approach, a pragmatic approach.”
A Cabinet official involved in a separate meeting with the candidate also voiced satisfaction with his stance.
“On the whole, his position did not contradict the need to take forceful action, if necessary, against Iran,” the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Instead, his position is based on the need to learn whether all alleys of diplomacy are exhausted.”
That left McCain out of sync with Israeli leaders in condemning Obama as weak on Iran. His campaign argues that Obama’s readiness to hold an “unconditional summit” with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would give Ahmadinejad the appearance of respectability, embolden Iranian hard-liners and “put the world’s security at risk.”
McCain has said he would never meet with Ahmadinejad while he is dedicated to Israel’s extinction and his country is developing nuclear weapons and sending explosives to Iraq. On Wednesday, McCain reminded a crowd in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., that Ahmadinejad once called Israel a “stinking corpse.”
A spokesman for the presumptive Republican White House nominee declined to comment on the reception Obama received from Israeli leaders. But his spokesmen sent a string of e-mails castigating Obama for saying a year ago that he would be willing to meet without precondition with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. (“Happy Anniversary,” one said in the subject line.)
McCain has called Obama’s approach to hostile nations naive.
In Sderot, Obama defended it. “My whole goal, in terms of having tough, serious direct diplomacy, is not because I’m naive about the nature of any of these regimes; I’m not,” the Illinois senator said outside a police station.
“If we show ourselves willing to talk, and to offer carrots and sticks in order to deal with these pressing problems, and if Iran then rejects any overtures of that sort, it puts us in a stronger position to mobilize the international community to ratchet up the pressure on Iran,” he said.
Obama’s visit was part of a nine-day trip abroad that has drawn intense news coverage, sparking complaints of media bias from McCain’s campaign. Obama plans stops in Berlin, Paris and London before he flies home Saturday.
In Jerusalem, Obama paid a solemn visit to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum. Wearing a yarmulke, he laid a white flower wreath on a stone slab that covers the ashes of Jews killed by the Nazis.
“Let our children come here and know this history, so they can add their voices to proclaim, ‘Never again,’ ” he wrote in the museum’s guest book.
When he left the city early this morning, Obama briefly visited the Western Wall, where he followed custom and tucked a note with his prayers into a crack between the stones.
Security for Obama’s trip was tight. Hours before his arrival Tuesday, a Palestinian man went on a rampage with a construction vehicle, wounding six people just outside the candidate’s Jerusalem hotel. At the museum, Obama met with Amal Ganem, an Israeli border police officer who, along with an armed Israeli civilian, shot and killed the assailant.
Obama spent much of his day with Israeli leaders, starting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who heads the Labor Party, and Netanyahu.
“He is trying to cover a large array of items on the Israeli-U.S. agenda,” said Isaac Herzog, an Israeli Cabinet minister who attended the meeting with Barak. “He is a new player in the region, so we are definitely pleased that he’s seeing so much on the ground.”
Obama also met with Peres at his home. Peres urged him to strive “to be a great president.”
“Senator, I have read your two books and was moved as a human being,” he told Obama at the start of their meeting.
From there, Obama headed to Ramallah, the West Bank administrative capital. Dozens of armed Palestinian security forces lined the road to the compound where he met Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad. On the wall behind them were photos of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In Israel, the country’s political instability worked in Obama’s favor, with some of those angling for power maneuvering to be shown on TV with the senator. Olmert, who ate dinner with Obama on Wednesday, may be forced out from the prime minister’s job on corruption charges before the next U.S. president is inaugurated.
Like Netanyahu, two of Olmert’s top ministers, Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, are among those who hope to succeed him. The pair scrambled to serve as Obama’s guide in Sderot. In the end, both escorted him on a helicopter tour of Israeli areas that have come under attack by rockets fired from Gaza.
After surveying Jerusalem’s holy sites, including the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall, they flew to the West Bank border area, back over Tel Aviv, then along the Mediterranean coast to Sderot.
In Sderot, Obama visited a family whose home was destroyed by a rocket.
“The fact that you came to Sderot shows something not only to Sderot,” Livni told Obama at the police station, “but to the entire state of Israel.”
--
michael.finnegan@latimes.com
richard.boudreaux@latimes.com
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah and Times staff writer Maeve Reston in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., contributed to this report.
|
42b33bc0b498157b6e1b02a8c731579d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-25-fi-microsoft25-story.html | Microsoft execs say they’ve given up on Yahoo | Microsoft execs say they’ve given up on Yahoo
Microsoft Corp. executives ruled out an acquisition of Yahoo Inc. on Thursday, even as they acknowledged that the Internet company would have provided a needed boost in online search, where the software giant trails leader Google Inc.
Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell told Microsoft investors assembled for an annual day of presentations that the odds of a takeover were “so small as to be essentially negligible,” because the two sides continue to disagree about how much Yahoo is worth.
Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said later that he hoped Liddell had removed any “specter” of uncertainty, adding that his comments were “as black and white on that topic” as any to date.
Liddell said Microsoft believed that Yahoo’s value was declining, so even though Yahoo was now willing to sell itself for the $33 a share that Microsoft offered in early May, Microsoft was no longer willing to pay that.
Liddell acknowledged that Microsoft could not get as far online on its own as it could with Yahoo, but asked: “Does that mean that we should pay anything for it? There has to be some economic justification.”
In a question-and-answer session, an investor asked how Yahoo could have been worth $33 a share May 3 and not worth negotiating for two weeks later, when major Yahoo shareholders had made it clear they would back a sale.
“The deadline passed on what we wanted to accomplish,” Ballmer said.
“Yahoo for us was always a tactic, not a strategy,” he said, complaining that the delays would have pushed regulatory review into the next presidential administration.
More recently, two attempts to buy just Yahoo’s search business fell apart, and Yahoo then co-opted the noisiest advocate for a sale among its shareholders by giving Carl Icahn a minority of seats on its board.
The continuing debate over the failed acquisition overshadowed the rest of Microsoft’s annual showcase for the financial world, where it touts new products and explains its strategy for the next few years.
Executives promised to do a better job in marketing, starting with a campaign to convince consumers that the disappointing Windows Vista operating system was better than they had heard.
Chief Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, who showed off a conceptual prototype that would let people navigate a three- dimensional representation of real-world streets and stores, also pledged to do more to explain Microsoft’s technological vision.
Mainly, Ballmer and others used the day to defend the company’s massive and so far unrewarded investment in online search and advertising, contending that the software power was the only real threat to Google and that a major “ante” in search was the best shot at a $1-trillion market for Internet media.
Without Yahoo, Ballmer said, Microsoft has more flexibility in its approach to search.
“There is a huge, huge, huge new opportunity around the Net and online, and we need to embrace that opportunity,” he said. “We’re anteing, we’re reinventing.”
He suggested that Microsoft would continue to sacrifice 5% to 10% of its operating income to invest in the area.
Several investors and analysts said they accepted Ballmer’s contention that the Internet was crucial and that search and search-based advertising were too important to ignore.
“A lot of people agree that the strategy is right. The devil is in the details and the execution,” said money manager Michael Lippert of Baron Capital, which owns Microsoft shares. “I’m hard-pressed to see it without an acquisition.”
Analysts said they also had doubts about Ballmer’s claims that Microsoft had the right people to take on Google in search, given its past efforts.
--
joseph.menn@latimes.com
|
b1367e5ca9086a9263403b65f6d89a0d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-25-fi-newspaper25-story.html | San Diego paper may be sold | San Diego paper may be sold
Pressed by newspaper industry woes and plummeting real estate advertising, the parent company of the San Diego Union-Tribune said Thursday that it may put itself up for sale.
Copley Press Inc., which also owns the biweekly Borrego Sun in Borrego Springs, Calif., said it hired New York’s Evercore Partners to explore possible deals, including a sale.
“The last couple of years have been a difficult period for the newspaper industry, especially those in a real estate-dependent market like San Diego,” said Harold W. Fuson, executive vice president of the La Jolla company. “We have every reason to believe the business will rebound with the economy, but the uncertainties pose too great a risk to sit still.”
The outlook has been bleak throughout the newspaper industry, as the weak economy and an exodus of advertisers to the Internet have cut into profits, accompanied by declines in readership and sales. Over the last week, a host of newspaper publishers have announced lower profits and double-digit declines in ad revenue.
Even so, the move by privately owned Copley Press was a surprise to many observers because the publisher had been selling off other assets to provide a financial cushion for its flagship newspaper. The Union-Tribune is the nation’s 21st-largest daily newspaper, with a circulation of more than 300,000 on weekdays and more than 350,000 on Sundays.
In May, the company sold its news service for an undisclosed price, and last December it announced plans to sell La Casa del Zorro, a Borrego Springs resort it has owned for nearly five decades. Previously, Copley Press sold its suburban Chicago weekly papers and the Daily Breeze in Torrance.
“It’s not clear why they needed to sell” the remaining company, said Mike Simonton, a media analyst with Fitch Ratings in Chicago. But given the industry’s dour outlook, he added, “someone could have thought that even selling at today’s distressed prices might be better than what they might get in the future.”
Potential buyers could be hard to find among financial investors and debt-laden newspaper chains, Simonton said. A wealthy local investor could emerge, but it’s unclear whether banks bitten by the mortgage crisis would help finance a newspaper purchase.
The Union-Tribune has 1,241 employees after job cuts this year.
--
elizabeth.douglass@latimes.com
|
84f485106ba4875beb49f986737bb302 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-25-me-workers25-story.html | Wage-cut plan angers state workers | Wage-cut plan angers state workers
No one likes to wake up to the news that the boss may slash salaries to the minimum wage.
California’s state workers on Thursday were digesting the news that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may cut their pay to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until legislators send him a budget he can sign.
For some, that went down about as well as a meal that could be afforded on minimum wage.
“I’d probably be out on the streets . . . learning how to eat out of garbage cans,” said Zola Salena-Hawkins, a legal secretary at the attorney general’s office at the Ronald Reagan State Office Building in downtown Los Angeles.
Salena-Hawkins said she left the private sector nine years ago for job security and benefits, but with the way things are going, she’s “thoroughly disappointed.”
“I’m a Republican. Ouch!” she said. “It really hurts to see the way everything is falling apart, especially during a Republican watch.”
Schwarzenegger was expected to sign the order early next week, affecting 200,000 state workers. The deadline for passing a 2008-09 budget was July 1, and without one soon, California may be unable to borrow billions of dollars needed to keep the state solvent, officials have warned.
The plan would allow the state to defer paying about $1 billion a month, administration officials said. Workers would be repaid their lost earnings once a budget was in place. But many workers questioned how they would pay their immediate costs: mortgages, food, gas, child support.
“I won’t be able to survive,” said Carolina Castillo, a legal secretary. “I have three kids, I’m a single mom. . . . There’s just no way.”
Castillo, 34, said that if her wages were cut, she might need welfare and would have no choice but to return to the private sector, which she left a year and a half ago for a steadier schedule and more time with her family.
However, some state workers with a knowledge of political history considered the prospect of Schwarzenegger’s plan with a Zen calm. Many a July has come and gone without a budget in place but with dramatic predictions of layoffs and pay cuts that never came to pass, they noted.
“It’s possible but improbable,” said Don Williams, a staffer in the Department of Social Services who ruefully called himself “a veteran of many wars” during his state service.
Williams said he thought the governor’s proposal “was strategically done to get the attention of the Legislature. It definitely got the attention of the state workers.”
But he added he wasn’t too worried yet. “For it to happen, a lot of things will have to transpire.”
He’s right. For starters, State Controller John Chiang has said he would not implement such an order, asserting the state has enough money on hand. Also, the governor’s plan, if carried out, probably would be challenged in court by public employee unions. “Anything’s possible the way things are going with the economy,” said Gary Balekjian, a deputy attorney general, as he crossed the street in front of the Reagan building. “The sun could supernova too.”
Balekjian, who defends the state against employees’ lawsuits -- and emphasized he was speaking only for himself, not his office -- said such a move would not save the state in the long run. Balekjian said he is ethically obligated to continue his legal work whether he is paid or not. But if he were to quit because of a drastic salary cut, he added, the state would have to scramble for new lawyers, possibly delaying court cases that would leave the state vulnerable to costly damage payments to plaintiffs. “It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face,” he said.
As drafted, the order also calls for the state to immediately lay off 21,855 part-time workers, stop overtime payments for almost all employees and cease all hiring until a budget is enacted.
“I’m kind of worried that one of them might be me,” said Jason Kwan, a part-time student assistant in litigation support.
Kwan, 24, is worried that without his job, he won’t be able to pay off his student loans at Cal State L.A. or afford law school.
The response from unions to Schwarzenegger’s plan was immediate and angry.
“The governor is turning a budget crisis into a catastrophe,” said Yvonne Walker, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents 95,000 state workers. “How can you tell people, ‘We will just pay you this amount and you can catch up later?’
“We are in the middle of a housing crisis, and people are losing their mortgages,” she said. “Are they going to issue a notice to mortgage companies that employees will just catch up later?”
Walker said she believed the governor’s plan was illegal, and union attorneys are drafting a lawsuit to file if the order is signed.
In the meantime, some state workers had their own suggestions for Schwarzenegger.
“I think the governor should fund the budget with his own resources until he and the Legislature can get together,” said Paul Ablon, a state attorney for nearly nine years. “And maybe he’ll appreciate how it is to worry about paying your expenses.”
--
carla.hall@latimes.com
joanna.lin@latimes.com
Times staff writer Evan Halper contributed to this report.
|
d62ef28601abce739f262ad7d1a43c8f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-25-na-challenges25-story.html | Obstacles linger for Obama | Obstacles linger for Obama
Even as his turn on the global stage hit an emotional peak Thursday with a speech before a cheering crowd of more than 200,000 in Germany, Barack Obama faced new evidence of stubborn election challenges back home.
Fresh polls show that he has been unable to convert weeks of extensive media coverage into a widened lead. And some prominent Democrats whose support could boost his campaign are still not enthusiastic about his candidacy.
Several new surveys show that Obama is in a tight race or even losing ground to Republican John McCain, both nationally and in two important swing states, Colorado and Minnesota. One new poll offered a possible explanation for his troubles: A minority of voters see Obama as a familiar figure with whom they can identify.
Republicans are moving to exploit this vulnerability, trying to encourage unease among voters by building the impression that Obama’s overseas trip and other actions show he has a sense of entitlement that suggests he believes the White House is already his.
In Ohio on Thursday, McCain hit that theme: “I’d love to give a speech in Germany . . . but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States, rather than as a candidate for the office of presidency.”
Obama also faces discontent from some of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most ardent supporters, who are put off by what they describe as a campaign marked by hubris and a style dedicated to televised extravaganzas.
Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Clinton fundraiser, said: “The Clinton supporters that I know are bothered by these rock-star events. These spectacles are more about the candidate than they are about the party and the issues that we care about.”
Obama is to return home Saturday after a nine-day trip that has produced some of the most memorable images of the campaign. Speaking in Berlin before a sea of young faces, the presumed Democratic nominee echoed a famous line from President Reagan, who, at Brandenburg Gate, implored Soviet counterpart Mikhail S. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
“The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down,” Obama told the warmly enthusiastic crowd in Tiergarten park. He spoke from a stage constructed near the Victory Column, a soaring monument to Prussian military triumphs.
Powerful as the image was, back home some voters wondered whether the trip was necessary. Both Obama and McCain had been invited Thursday to a cancer forum organized by cyclist Lance Armstrong’s foundation at Ohio State University.
McCain showed; Obama did not. Some in the crowd took notice.
Ann Marie Jones, a stay-at-home mother whose 10-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer in September, said she had leaned toward Obama “until he didn’t show up tonight.”
“I feel like I understand what he’s doing over there, but I think he needed to be here tonight for this,” she said.
Jones, a 40-year-old Republican from Aledo, Texas, said she was troubled by the duration and scale of Obama’s overseas trip. “I think we have a lot of things going on with our children -- many different things going on here in the United States that need our attention.”
Many voters still seem to be puzzling over who Obama is, even after a race that has lasted a year and a half. By 58% to 47%, voters identify more with the values and background of McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, than with Obama, according to a newly released Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
Obama may also be slipping in some key states. He lost a narrow lead in Colorado, falling 5 percentage points in the past month, and now trails McCain 46% to 44%, a new Quinnipiac University poll found. In Minnesota, Obama fell 8 percentage points, though he still leads McCain 46% to 44%, the survey found. The polling spanned the five days before Obama went abroad and the first four days of his trip.
At a time when nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track, the political climate would suggest that McCain, whose party controls the White House, might lag by large margins. Yet a national Fox News poll released Thursday showed that Obama’s 4-point lead over McCain in June had shrunk to a single point. The new Journal/NBC poll showed Obama leading by 6 points, unchanged from the month before.
The race remains close even though McCain has stumbled at times and has been largely eclipsed this week by Obama’s high-profile trip to Europe and the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Thursday, television images showed Obama addressing the throng in Berlin, his speech carried live on cable news networks. McCain, meanwhile, spoke to reporters outside an Ohio fudge shop, where his comments were nearly drowned out by wind chimes.
But Obama is struggling with a different set of obstacles; he has yet to lock in some of Clinton’s most devoted supporters and active fundraisers.
In interviews, Clinton supporters said they saw in Obama a presumption that had made it hard to give him their allegiance. Some said they were put off by his decision to accept the Democratic nomination at a football stadium that can hold more than 76,000; his use of a knockoff of the presidential seal at a campaign event; and his early interest in giving his Berlin speech at the famous Brandenburg Gate, where Reagan spoke in 1987.
The Republican National Committee has been pumping out regular e-mails titled “Audacity Watch,” a compilation of instances in which, in its view, Obama has appeared to act as if he were president. In an e-mail sent Thursday, the RNC mentioned a news report that he had already instructed aides to begin planning for a transition to the presidency.
Amy Siskind of Westchester, N.Y., is a Clinton supporter who said she wouldn’t vote for Obama. Siskind said she was especially offended when Obama hired Clinton’s former campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, to work with his vice presidential nominee. Given that Solis Doyle was demoted by Clinton, the appointment was perceived by Clinton loyalists as a slight.
“Most folks feel that the battle is over and he’s the winner, but he’s really acted like a sore winner,” Siskind said. “If Hillary had been the nominee, you would have seen a much more deferential approach to Obama supporters.”
Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a Clinton fundraiser who lives in New York City, said, “What I think is very important is that he has a problem with his image. He is an aloof candidate. He does not connect with people. He has words, but no ordinary person thinks that he is there for them, and women feel that intensely.”
Time remains for Obama to unify the party and find ways to win over skeptical voters. His campaign released ads last month that emphasize the parts of Obama’s life story that a typical voter might find appealing. Obama, for example, was raised by a single mother and grandparents who lacked substantial means.
The campaign hopes that the images in those ads will boost his standing in the polls.
“As we tell Sen. Obama’s story -- being raised by a single mother, pulling himself up, working his way through school -- people will become more familiar with him,” said Hari Sevugan, an Obama campaign spokesman.
Seeing an opportunity, McCain’s supporters have sought to drive home perceptions that Obama doesn’t connect with average voters.
“The fact that Obama is out of touch with voters . . . is certainly something we’ll continue to reiterate,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “To the extent that he’s acting as if he’s already president when the election is over 100 days away and everyone expects it will be a very close race raises questions about how in touch he is.”
--
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
Times staff writer Maeve Reston in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
|
262aa51152ad4bd1f9eef56b84665288 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-25-sp-cotto25-story.html | Two sides of Miguel Cotto | Two sides of Miguel Cotto
CAGUAS, Puerto Rico -- The sun is still fighting to rise over the lush green hills of Puerto Rico’s fertile midsection as five men meet in a park near the city center for their regular morning workout.
Less than a block into the run, when an SUV pulls up behind the group and honks, the man at the front of the pack responds by pulling down the back of his sweat pants and mooning the driver.
Miguel Cotto, arguably the island’s hottest athlete, breaks into a smile before he’s even broken a sweat. Turns out he’s just flashed his own mother.
Yet that’s a side of Cotto few outside a tight circle of friends ever get to see. Most of the world knows the undefeated, two-time world champion for his scowl and his punishing punches in the boxing ring. Cotto will defend his World Boxing Assn. welterweight title Saturday in Las Vegas against Antonio Margarito.
Outside the ring, however, Cotto is a tireless practical joker who isn’t afraid to let down his guard -- and his sweat pants -- once in a while. “When he’s boxing, people say he’s serious and he’s focused and he doesn’t smile,” says his trainer Phil Landman. “But he’s completely the opposite when he’s out of the ring. Always joking, laughing, having a good time.”
“He was always a bit cheeky, like all kids,” Jose “Joey” Gomez, one of Cotto’s cornermen and a friend since early childhood, says in Spanish. “He jokes in a way that leaves you stunned. He’s going to try to make you happy. [But] he’s not the type of person who makes friends easily and trusts everyone.”
The public Miguel Cotto, the one with the rock-star following in his native Puerto Rico, will greet a raucous crowd of 1,500 packed into a shopping mall with little more than a shy wave. But the private Miguel Cotto has proven so loyal that when he shaved his head at the start of training camp for Saturday’s fight, every one of his friends -- as well as his son -- insisted on having their heads shaved as well.
“He’s totally different with us,” Gomez says. “He’s the type of person that if you were with him from the beginning, he’s not going to leave you behind. He’s going to take you by the hand and take you with him.”
Perhaps one reason Cotto seems so uncomfortable in the limelight is the fact he never set out to be there in the first place. When he first stepped into the gym as a pudgy 156-pound 10-year-old he was hoping boxing might save his life, not take it over.
“At that time we weren’t thinking of this. It was simply because he had to lose weight. He was fat,” says Evangelista Cotto, Miguel’s uncle and the only coach he’s ever had.
In nine months Cotto lost more than 50 pounds, earning a chance to leave the speed bag and jump rope for a real fight in the ring. By 16 he was on the Puerto Rican national team, following in the footsteps of his older brother Jose, who boxed in the 1996 Olympics. “Year after year I took the boxing more seriously,” Cotto says.
And when he came back from the 1998 Central American and Caribbean Games in Venezuela with a silver medal, he says, “I decided I want to be a boxer for the rest of my life.”
But less than seven months after his pro debut, Cotto’s career -- and his life -- nearly came to an end when he fell asleep while driving to a predawn workout, crashing into a concrete wall and breaking his right arm and shoulder in four places.
“After 30 days he was running again,” his father remembers.
And after five months he was boxing again, flattening Joshua Smith two rounds into his return to the ring.
The accident, Cotto says, changed him, making him “more focused on boxing.” As a result, he’s scored knockouts in 21 of his 25 fights since beating Smith, raising his record to 32-0 with 26 KOs.
“When you think this thing never can happen to you and it happens, you put in more effort and you stay more focused on your work.”
And you find a friend to drive you to workouts, he adds with a smile.
Yet it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
For the last 14 months there’s been a bitter, if quiet, feud between the boxer and his uncle/coach, apparently dating to his older brother’s 2007 lightweight title bout in Puerto Rico. With Jose Cotto fighting poorly, Evangelista confronted him in a screaming, water-throwing rage after the eighth round. When the argument continued after the next round Miguel left his ringside seat to try to make peace, but Evangelista eventually stormed off.
Although Miguel Cotto continues to train in Evangelista’s gym -- an airless, windowless, zinc-roofed bunker tucked amid rows of low-slung concrete houses in a working-class neighborhood -- the two don’t speak much and rarely even acknowledge one another.
“Evangelista’s role is circumspect. And it has been for years,” says Bob Arum, the promoter for both Cotto and Margarito. But while there’s little doubt Cotto would like to break away from his uncle, the boxer’s father has insisted the family will stay together until the end, no matter how strained things become.
“It’s like every family,” the elder Miguel Cotto says. “There’s some friction, there’s some discussions. That’s part of what life teaches. But Evangelista is in charge of Miguel’s training.”
And the father has given his son several reasons beyond simple familial respect to heed his wishes. Millions of reasons, in fact.
Since becoming a pro Miguel Cotto has turned his prize money over to his father, who has invested it wisely, buying eight gas stations, an apartment building, commercial offices and 12 villas in tony Palmas del Mar, a resort in southeastern Puerto Rico.
Cotto also backs fights and fighters through his own promotion company, is the pitchman in Puerto Rico for everything from pickup trucks to pick-me-up pills and is pioneering his own line of sports apparel through a partnership with Ecko.
“Boxing is not forever,” the 27-year-old says. “One day I have to stop [and] I have on my side other things to continue to raise my family. If I announced my retirement today, me and my family are going to live good.”
That announcement, say many in the Cotto camp, is at least two years off. Among the things the boxer wants to do before he quits is unify the world welterweight title. Plus if he gets by Margarito there’s talk of a matchup with Oscar De La Hoya, a fight that would almost certainly earn Cotto more than in any previous bout.
And while that would make a rich man even richer, it wouldn’t change him.
“He’s very humble. You would never think he is what he is,” says Landman, the boxer’s South African-born trainer. “Just hanging out, he’s normal. It’s like hanging out with any of your other mates.”
--
kevin.baxter@latimes.com
--
FIGHT FACTS
Who: WBA world welterweight champion Miguel Cotto (32-0) vs. Antonio Margarito (36-5).
When: Saturday, 6 p.m.
Where: Las Vegas.
|
016c910a96206d7cd4174f2243a89a39 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-26-et-kroffts26-story.html | It’s the Sid and Marty show | It’s the Sid and Marty show
Hollywood is often described as a dream factory, but really it’s just as often a salvage yard. Anxious studio executives would rather bet their $100-million budgets on nostalgia than on new ideas, which is why, against all odds, Sid and Marty Krofft are back in business.
The Krofft brothers, both now in their 70s, have a showbiz story that dates back to the final days of vaudeville. But for children of the Nixon years, their name is the brand behind some of the era’s strangest TV programming: shows such as “H.R. Pufnstuf,” “Lidsville,” “Land of the Lost” and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.”
Those low-budget shows had rubber-costumed actors, fluorescent puppets and psychedelic sets that were by the 1980s hopelessly dated; and by the end of that decade, the same could be said of the Kroffts.
Today, though, thanks to the Hollywood appetite for all things kitschy and high-concept, the Kroffts are poised for the biggest payday of their career -- unless, of course, they strangle each other first.
“Things did get lean, but we never gave up,” said Sid, 78, the smiling, soft-spoken dreamer of the two.
His brother, sitting next to him at their Studio City office, rolled his eyes. “We? I wouldn’t let you give up,” snapped Marty, still the deal maker at 71. “I wouldn’t let us sell the rights to our old shows. That is why we are where we are today.”
And where they are isn’t a bad place to be. Universal Pictures has just finished principal photography on a $100-million adaptation of “Land of the Lost,” the mid-1970s Krofft show about a family stranded in a jungle teeming with dinosaurs and hissing reptile-men called Sleestak. The remake is a comedy starring Will Ferrell, and Universal has circled it as its big popcorn movie for summer 2009. The Kroffts -- who will speak about the franchise today at the Comic-Con gathering in San Diego in front of 6,000-plus fans -- will get a percentage of the profits and make a mint from licensing deals.
The Kroffts, however, are bickering all the way to the bank, which is no surprise.
“To hear Marty talk, I’ve never worked a single day,” said Sid, who at age 15 joined the Ringling Brothers circus as a puppeteer and proved so adept that he would go on to become an opening act for the Andrews Sisters, Judy Garland and Cyd Charisse. Marty had joined the act by the late 1950s, and from then on the two puppeteers were locked in a contest to prove who was really pulling the strings. Sid was the creative force, but Marty was the one who made sure the act actually made it to the stage.
“Oh, I’ve earned my pay, believe me,” Marty said. “It’s not easy for two brothers to work together.”
An example came up almost immediately. Sid was sharing one especially windy tale when his brother groaned, “Sid, I thought you were telling a story about ‘Land of the Lost.’ What happened to that?”
“I’m getting there, Marty,” Sid said. “You know I can tell long stories too, just the way you do.”
Marty answered through a clenched smile: “That wasn’t very nice.”
A few minutes later, Sid decided to clear his conscience by revealing a 50-year-old family secret -- “We’ve been living with this lie for decades,” he said -- and his younger brother was apoplectic. “Now?! This moment, right now, you decide you need to tell all of this?”
Sid, the man who dreamed up deliriously strange Saturday-morning characters such as Weenie the Genie, Horatio J. HooDoo and Cha-Ka the ape-boy, looked bewildered by his brother’s fury. “Well, Marty, I don’t see the harm. It’s history now.”
--
There are still plenty of young dreamers, oddballs and colorful hucksters in the entertainment industry, but, really, the modern corporate era has wiped away most of its greasepaint charm. In the flashbulb era, big stars were bigger and tall tales were taller.
For example, take the celebrated Krofft family history: Sid and Marty are supposedly fifth-generation puppeteers, dating to the opening of the Krofft Theater in the early 1700s in Athens. It is a truly amazing tale and cited in almost every article every written about them, and it’s the first line of their bio.
It is also not true. It was cooked up by a New York publicist in the 1940s. The brothers have carried it with them ever since, until Sid suddenly decided to clear his conscience in an interview for this story.
“It became a trap,” Sid explained, shaking his head. “I was telling Marty the other day how bad it is that some of his children even have heard it and believe it.”
There are other vivid moments in the Krofft biography that test credulity. Marty, for instance, says that Beatles manager Brian Epstein called him seeking tapes of “H.R. Pufnstuf” so the band could keep up to date on the psychedelic Saturday-morning show. Of course, Epstein died in 1967, two years before “Pufnstuf” went on the air.
But, at some point, subjecting the old Hollywood to too much Digital Age scrutiny becomes a crass exercise. Really, should the men who brought the world “Lidsville,” a live-action show about giant talking hats, be expected to keep real-world details straight?
Their father was actually a clock salesman. He took his family south from Canada to Providence, R.I., to find more opportunities. The family ended up in New York. Young Sid’s flair for puppet design and puppetry ended up opening a door for the whole family. His father joined him on tour -- which inspired the “fifth-generation” fib -- as “pretty much an apprentice,” Sid said. Father and son were performing in Paris when, back in New York, Marty rummaged through his older brother’s trunks and borrowed his puppets to begin making money on stage himself.
In 1958, the act was the Krofft brothers and the venue was the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, where they were opening for Garland. The critics raved about the act but, when they took it on tour, Marty was haranguing his brother every night about the bottom line.
“My brother was getting $1,500 a week from Judy Garland, and it cost $2,000 a week to travel the act,” Marty said. “But always, Sid would spend what we made -- and more -- on the show.”
Sid smiled. “If we didn’t put everything in the shows, they wouldn’t have been as good as they were. . . . That’s all that people see, what’s up on the screen. That’s where the magic is.”
In 1961, they premiered an adults-only puppet show, “Les Poupees de Paris,” at a dinner club in Los Angeles called the Gilded Rafters. Mae West, Richard Nixon and Liberace were in the audience on opening night. Johnny Carson caught a performance and deadpanned that it was the only performance he had ever seen by “naughty pine.”
The Kroffts began renting out their puppet and production savvy. They designed stage productions for fairs and amusement parks, took corporate work from Ford and Coca-Cola, and did some work for Walt Disney as well. Marty had crossed paths with the entertainment icon in 1959; Marty was at the Polo Lounge having drinks with Charisse when Disney stopped by to chat and gave him a bit of advice.
As Marty remembers it: “He told me, ‘The one thing to remember is, don’t ever sell anything you create and always put your name above the title, whatever you do. They’ll fight you off from doing it, but stick to it.’ The only thing he didn’t tell me was how to save money.”
--
Afew weeks before the Studio City interview, Marty was roaming the set of “Land of the Lost” out near the Trona Pinnacles, the eerie tufa rock formations that jut up from the desert floor past Palmdale. The spires, formed beneath the water of an ancient alkaline lake, have been used as a Hollywood location dating back to the ‘60s TV series “Lost in Space.”
“Look at this place. I never thought I would live to see one of our shows become something like this,” Marty said as he shaded his eyes from the sun. He nodded toward the trailers, tents, cameras, sets, props and a small army of crew members. “They spend more in one day than we spent in a year of making our shows.”
That’s a common pattern these days. Any character ever featured on a child’s lunchbox is fair game for a big-budget Hollywood treatment. Superhero films, of course, are a full-on bonanza, with “The Dark Knight” setting box-office records by the day.
The movie adaptation of “Land of the Lost” looks like the last great hurrah for the Kroffts, but if you listen to Marty’s relentless pitch, the windfall is just the beginning. He said the Krofft library may now be worth as much as $25 million and could become “the next Marvel Comics,” a reference to the comic-book company that has watched its 1960s creations (Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, etc.) take flight as 21st century blockbuster films.
“The Krofft era,” Marty declared, “is starting right now.”
Perhaps, but not all the Saturday-morning shows in the Krofft library are easy fits as feature films. The brothers say they have a former writer for “The Simpsons” working on a script for “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,” the show that had Billy Barty portraying a skittish little marine monster with tentacles (he resembled a pea-colored SpongeBob SquarePants with seaweed for hair) who is taken home by two boys. A movie could be a sort of meld of “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Splash,” the Kroffts hope.
Most of all, the brothers would love to make a feature film of “H.R. Pufnstuf,” the show Sid describes as “our first baby.” The plot was about a teen, portrayed by Oscar-nominated “Oliver!” star Jack Wild, who finds himself on Living Island (where everything -- houses, books, plants, candles -- can talk). He meets the title character, a rotund dragon, and matches wits with the shrill Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo.
The brothers, by the way, deny the popular perception that they were gobbling major amounts of LSD while making the shows. “I’m a runner, and I thought of them during my runs on the beach at Santa Monica,” Sid said. “That’s where they came from.”
After watching Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Marty knows who he wants to see wearing the witch’s crooked nose. “How great would Johnny Depp be as Witchiepoo? Maybe he’ll read this, right? Look, all we need is a star. And a story. Hey, you know what Michael Eisner has said about the Kroffts for years? He said, ‘The Kroffts always have one more show in them.’ ”
The Kroffts certainly were willing to try anything, and they went well beyond Saturday-morning shows. They launched the teeny-bopper variety show “Donny and Marie” for ABC in 1976 and a year later brought the cast of “The Brady Bunch” back on the air as stars of a variety show. That show was met with howls, but even worse was the infamous “Pink Lady and Jeff,” an NBC variety show built around the Japanese pop duo Pink Lady.
“The network made the deal and gave them the show,” Marty said, “but that’s when we found out that they really couldn’t speak English. That was a problem. But what can you do?”
The show must go on, and “Pink Lady” did -- for a few deliriously awkward episodes. The Kroffts bounced back -- their “Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters” was a hit, teaming the country stars with Krofft puppets in the early 1980s.
But the tide was turning against them. The variety-show format was dying. They could no longer find a foothold with their live-action morning children’s programming; Saturday mornings by that point belonged to cartoons.
More than that, the business of TV had changed. The Kroffts were true independent producers; they had made their shows on their own (usually small) budgets and then brought the finished product to the networks. By the ‘90s, that model was outdated.
Plenty of people approached the Kroffts about buying their library, usually at fire-sale prices. They said no to every offer, even the one from pop superstar Michael Jackson.
“The biggest thing as an independent is to survive. No one else really survived out there,” Marty said. “Either they’re dead or they sold the company. We’re lucky.”
Sid still gets misty every time he meets some 40-year-old who recognizes his name and reminisces about talking flutes or gentle, goggle-eyed sea monsters. “There aren’t many things,” he said, “that we take in our lives and carry for so long.”
Marty nodded in agreement. The shows were lucky in love, he said, but not in lucre.
Maybe that will change now that the Kroffts, after five decades in a small spotlight, are getting a late-in-life chance at the big time.
“How much money are we going to make?” Marty asked. “I’m not counting anything. I just want to be alive when the picture opens. It opens July 17, 2009. Don’t forget to put the date in the story.”
--
geoff.boucher@latimes.com
|
33b51ebd3e2033fd5a95a2182852aa26 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-26-me-airport26-story.html | Plane got too close to two jets | Plane got too close to two jets
Authorities are investigating an incident in which a charter aircraft from Hawthorne Municipal Airport made a wrong turn and violated safety requirements by flying near two jetliners preparing to land at nearby LAX.
Federal Aviation Administration officials said the incident occurred June 13, when a twin-engine turboprop turned right after takeoff from Hawthorne and strayed too close to a Skywest Airlines regional jet and a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 that were on final approach about 9:15 a.m.
Aircraft departing to the west from Hawthorne are normally instructed to turn left to avoid the busy airspace around Los Angeles International Airport. The municipal airport is about two miles southeast of LAX.
“There was a severe loss of separation,” said Mike Fergus, an FAA spokesman. “The required safety buffer between aircraft was violated.”
The incident has attracted the attention of air traffic controllers at LAX, who contend that only luck prevented a devastating midair collision.
Both the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. and Serco North America, an aviation services company that contracts with Hawthorne to provide controllers, are looking into the matter.
“It was just a roll of the dice,” said Mike Foote, a local representative of the controllers association. “The aircraft were flying through the haze and clouds. Miraculously, the charter plane did not hit anyone.”
Fergus said errors were made by a controller in the Hawthorne tower and the pilot of the charter aircraft, a Piaggio Aviant that ferries passenger to and from Las Vegas.
According to the FAA, the controller instructed the pilot over the radio to make a left turn after takeoff. The pilot, however, read back the instruction as a right turn -- a mistake that was not corrected by the controller, Fergus said.
Pilots are required to maintain either three miles of lateral separation or 1,000 feet of vertical separation from aircraft on final approach for landing.
But after making the right turn, the Aviant ended up 1.7 miles from the Skywest flight, which was traveling at the same altitude, the FAA reported. The turboprop, flying at an altitude 400 feet higher than the Northwest flight, then passed the aircraft at a distance of 1.62 miles, Fergus said.
Foote said the controllers association would review the radar records to determine whether the charter plane came closer to the airliners than reported.
The Aviant “was climbing and turning right through their flight paths,” Foote said. “That’s about as ugly as it gets. The aircraft didn’t need to be where it was.”
Steve McCarney, a spokesman for Serco, said the incident is under investigation. He requested that further inquiries be made to the FAA.
The company is required to prepare a report about the incident for the FAA, Fergus said. He added that Serco appears to be responding appropriately.
Fergus noted that none of the pilots of the three aircraft reported the loss of separation to the FAA. But that does not mean the incident is not serious, he said.
--
dan.weikel@latimes.com
|
035cc0a87cbef624597ec5e3ad2bcce4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-26-me-trucking26-story.html | National trucking group to sue ports over cleanup plan | National trucking group to sue ports over cleanup plan
The American Trucking Assn. plans to file a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court on Monday in an effort to block a plan by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to clean up the air by replacing an aging fleet of 16,000 trucks that spew deadly levels of toxic diesel emissions.
For decades, the ports have operated under a system in which individual truck owners transport a large portion of the container cargo that moves to and from the terminals. Because those drivers are legally considered independent operators, they cannot unionize, have no collective bargaining power and generally make so little money that they can afford only the oldest and more heavily polluting trucks.
But a coalition of grass-roots community groups, environmentalists and labor unions forced both ports to change their ways under threat of a separate lawsuit. Under a $1.6-billion cleanup plan, new trucks would be paid for through a $35 cargo fee on containers that move through the ports, which would be charged to the shippers.
The Port of Los Angeles’ plan would set up trucking company franchises in which the drivers would become employees, based on the idea that only large-scale companies would have the wherewithal to maintain the new trucks.
The Port of Long Beach earlier had hoped to avoid a lawsuit by not mandating that drivers become employees, which would have left them responsible for their own maintenance and fuel costs. But like L.A.'s plan, it would require drivers to have special permits to operate at its terminals.
Curtis Whalen, head of the trucking association, stressed in an interview Thursday that his group was not opposed to the ports’ goal of reducing diesel truck emissions by 80% within five years. Whalen added that he also supported the cargo fee, but he said that both ports have overstepped their authority in a way that “could not be tolerated.”
The association is expected to argue in its lawsuit that both ports are trying to dictate terms to the nationally deregulated trucking industry, that the ports are making decisions governing interstate commerce and that their plans will make it difficult for small trucking companies to stay in business.
Whalen and other critics also contend that to obtain such operating permits would wrongly require delving deeply into the financial records of private businesses and interfere with the free flow of commerce.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement Friday that stopping the ports’ plans would be an egregious mistake that would cost lives.
“When thousands of lives are cut short every year by toxic emissions from the port, we have a moral mandate to act. The health of our environment and the public is at stake, and it is time to hit the brakes on the 16,000 diesel-spewing trucks polluting our air every day,” Villaraigosa said.
The pending legal battle has also forged some uncommon alliances. The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has pressured both ports to clean up their operations, will seek to intervene in the case on behalf of the ports to prevent the plans from being shelved, said David Pettit, a senior attorney in the council’s Santa Monica office.
The Port of Los Angeles said it would have no comment until it had received a copy of the lawsuit. The Port of Long Beach’s executive director, Richard D. Steinke, vowed to move forward.
--
ronald.white@latimes.com
louis.sahagun@latimes.com
|
55efd3bcfac5dab019026c01109d1c8b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-27-ca-elite27-story.html | Elitism: It’s an equal opportunity affliction | Elitism: It’s an equal opportunity affliction
Every NOW and then, writers at The Times lose a word. Mainly these are adjectives subject to misuse. Some years ago we were advised to let go of legendary. Similarly, don’t expect to see iconic, which has become equally cheapened, in the paper much anymore.
The adjectival criminal I’d like to see handed over to the word police is elitist, especially in its relationship to the arts and popular culture. In the “elitist” Oxford English Dictionary, the first definition of “elite” is the “choice part, the best (of society, a group of people, etc.),” none of which sounds so terrible. But that is not what is meant when, say, classical music, my field, is scorned as elitist, as it regularly is.
One tack many of us in the arts choose is to proudly take back the word. “Hey, Bud, you got a problem with us being the best?” Of course, you do. The arts are seen as for the select few -- too expensive, too inaccessible, too chichi for the general public devoted to movies, pop music, television and sports.
In fact, the reverse can just as easily be true. Cinema and video and all kinds of music and even sports can, of course, be art -- or not. And the more popular something or someone is, the more likely elitism will occur. Google “rock god” -- which the supposedly non-elitist Urban Dictionary defines as “an artist that is so talented and amazing that he is worshiped as a god by his fans” (please note the “he”) -- and you will have the option of spending the next several days running through a half-million results. Go for “classical music god” and you are blessed with free time, unless you wish to get hung up on such items as " . . . classical music (God, I hate the term). . . . “
A ticket to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic in fancy-schmancy Walt Disney Concert Hall may not always be easy to come by at the last minute and top seats are now $147. But for most programs, bench seats behind the stage (which many love) go on sale two weeks before the concert for $15. Do I need to detail the princely sums in the thousands it takes to attend an NBA playoff? On Broadway, $400 tickets no longer raise eyebrows. At Disney, we are a democratic audience who sit together. In the supposedly populist Staples Center, luxury suites resemble nothing so much as the royal boxes in European opera houses of old. Anyone can go to an art museum, but not anyone can get past the bouncers at the latest in-crowd club.
Let’s not even get into how the epithet “elitist” has sullied a lot of recent political attacks.
Breathing rarefied air
In SPORTS, the best athletes are still known as the elite. Anyone who rides a bicycle knows that a cyclist able to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France is no mere mortal. And isn’t the scandal about doping in the Tour really a scandal about elitism? Performance-enhancing substances may have side effects, but I suspect the real fear is that these drugs have the potential of making the rest of us better athletes and the pros less special.
But the argument is actually much more complicated and more interesting than that. The arts are both elitist and non-elitist, and so is popular culture.
I try to follow the Tour, which is witnessed by hundreds of thousands of fans who line the route over three weeks. This is an epic event and requires at least the time and effort of reading Homer. And explanations of ancient Greek mores are easier to come by (and I think comprehend) than the arcane Tour culture.
The other day I visited Amoeba Music with Times television critic Robert Lloyd, who performs in a rock band and is an authority on pop culture. I told him that these days, I felt as intimated by the pop section as people tell me they are by the classical department. He said that even he could no longer manage the amount of specialized knowledge that pop music now requires to have a full grasp of the field. Hip-hop and dub have become suitable for graduate level course work. Is that elitist or what?
On the other hand, some of the classical music that has been around for a century or two is simply in our cultural blood, having long ago instituted itself into film soundtracks and popular music. Sure, it helps to know a little something about it, just as you need to know a little something about baseball to enjoy a game. But elitism, in its pejorative sense, is a state of mind, not a cultural phenomenon.
--
mark.swed@latimes.com
|
261f71debe26ab5ee496f97b92389e70 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-27-ca-shame27-story.html | Highbrow. Lowbrow. No brow. Now what? | Highbrow. Lowbrow. No brow. Now what?
It was only 50 or so years ago that critics and intellectuals were busy constructing -- and redrawing, and shoring up -- hierarchies about what kinds of culture were good for us and which ones were bad. ¶ Literary man Dwight Macdonald wrote a famous essay about “Masscult and Midcult” -- both, he said, were degrading real, traditional High Culture. Art critic Clement Greenberg, in an influential essay about modern painting, looked at “Avant-garde and Kitsch,” championing the former as essential to the human spirit and denouncing the latter as tinder for a fascist revolution. ¶ But judging from my recent conversations with a handful of literary and intellectual types -- the heirs, you could say, to the Macdonald/Greenberg tradition -- we live, today, in a pleasingly hierarchy-free, almost utopian cultural world. Most people I know share my disparate taste, enjoying “South Park” alongside Franz Schubert, the crisply plotted novels of James M. Cain as well as the philosophically searching films of Antonioni.
Do guilt or shame still play a role in shaping people’s taste? The answer was a unanimous “no.” What I found instead when I asked my posse what culture they were consuming this summer was a sense of good feeling, an expectation of openness -- a lack of angst all around. (Writer Michael Chabon, whom I interview on Page F9, even said he hates the very phrase “guilty pleasure.”)
“My reading in general is kind of heavy and pretentious,” said New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross, who favors modernist literary masterpieces. “But when I go to the movies, I love to see bloated Hollywood blockbusters. I never worry too much about the category that those experiences fall into.”
“I’ll probably go see ‘Hellboy II,’ ” said the unimpeachably smart Salon book critic Laura Miller. “I like to see popcorn movies in the theater.”
Pico Iyer, the eminent Japan-and-California-based travel writer, told me: “One highlight of recent summers for me was ‘Nacho Libre’; I saw it in a packed house on opening night and subsequently hurried to see it again, so carried away was I by Jack Black’s impromptu hymn.” Like a true 21st century man, Iyer likes to mix it up: This summer, his favorite has been “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” a grim Romanian art-house film (now on DVD) unlikely to be remade with Jack Black.
Not that it matters. “To me, high and low, guilt and innocence, masscult and midcult are as out of date now as East and West and old and new,” said Iyer, who thinks globalism and the Internet have shuffled all the decks. “Many of the more interesting artists today, from a Salman Rushdie to a Sigur Ros, blur the distinctions in all kinds of ways ‘til we don’t know, exhilaratingly, if we’re being elevated or entertained.”
Miller was more sober but no less decisive: “There are still some people who are snobs about it,” she said. “But they are so few and they don’t have much influence on anyone but other snobs.”
Fast-tracked freedom
How THEN could this melting of the hierarchies have happened so quickly and so completely?
Ross thinks his own listening -- from Messiaen to Missy Elliott to Miles Davis -- is pretty typical these days. “The most natural state is to have this curiosity and openness,” he said, describing “a deep-seated American impulse. It was only in the 20th century when people really tried to organize and divide different art forms off from each other.”
Ross is fond of a scene that begins Lawrence Levine’s “Highbrow / Lowbrow,” which describes Shakespeare performances on the 19th century American frontier. “There were scrambled programs,” Ross said, “with a Rossini aria, then a vaudeville pianist, and then a movement from a string quartet, and then dancers, and then something from Shakespeare.” That kind of mix, he said, “is very deeply rooted culturally,” and today’s eclecticism is just a return to the way things were before culture became sacred.
Novelist and Los Angeles magazine film critic Steve Erickson thinks the ice broke more recently. “Mass media, as much as anything else, has broken down the distinction between high and low,” he said. “One of the reasons the Beatles took over the world was they came along at a certain point on the timeline,” when they could appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” show up in magazines and record songs that would play all over the world with a then-unheard-of speed. Thanks to their interest in classical and experimental music, they made strict highbrow / lowbrow divisions look creaky: With 1966’s “Revolver” album alone, said Erickson, “The Beatles obliterated those distinctions.”
Other distinctions are melting away as well. Formerly “uncool” musicians -- psychedelic cowboy Lee Hazlewood, for instance, who died last summer -- have become very cool today “because people have gone back to listen with fresh ears and without those cultural biases,” Erickson said. “Kids today can see something on YouTube and get into it without looking over their shoulder.”
But it’s taken awhile for other perceived bastions of the culture to catch up. “One of the areas that lags behind the rest of the culture is literature,” Erickson said, “with the New York Times perpetuating those high / low distinctions,” in the attention it gives to realistic, purportedly “literary” fiction over genre works rooted in fantasy, horror or pulp traditions.
This may be, but Miller, who writes often for that hidebound Times, doesn’t think literary types worry all that much about these categories. They don’t even consider pulpy work a guilty pleasure anymore. “I think most people are so proud of themselves for reading anything,” she said, “that they don’t make a huge distinction between high and low.”
Instead, they feel guilty about things that seem to them morally reprehensible or utterly mindless.
“What people feel sheepish about is that they watch ’24' and can’t stop. . . . It’s so politically repellent, but you can’t stop watching. As opposed to something that is just fluff. If I read something like a chick-lit book, I don’t think I’d feel guilty. Who really feels guilty about fluff anymore?”
Americans, she said, began to see reading as “morally improving” about the time radio and movies began to dominate leisure time, and the arrival of television in the ‘50s made reading seem more virtuous still. As reading has been moved aside by the Internet and everything else, its connection to virtue has only increased.
Restoring some value
Iwonder sometimes if we may have succeeded too well in getting rid of distinctions, though. It’s hard for me to avoid a low-grade worry that we’re losing our ability to recognize quality itself.
“What we seem to have nowadays is more of a hierarchy of media,” said Iyer, “whereby, for example, dance, classical music, opera, and even theater and books, all of which commanded their own sections in Time magazine only a generation ago, are now regarded as lofty and remote subjects for only a handful of connoisseurs.” Those pages, he said, are “given over now to a Britney watch or extended investigations into the new iPhone.”
Instead of feeling guilty about reading pulp novels, he said, we worry that we’ve become “elitist” if we go see chamber music or jazz. “The culture as a whole seems to have decided which arts are elitist and which ones popular, and so made some people feel guilty to be watching European movies [otherwise known as art-house stuff] or to be reading novels not likely to be turned into screenplays.”
Having some standards seems more and more important in a time when the traditional arts have lost a bit of their prestige, some of their audience, and all of their monopoly on perceived quality. As silly as the chaste, Victorian tones of the literary and high culture worlds could be in their heyday, we need a certain amount of seriousness in our lives. At least I do. If the marketplace is left entirely unfettered, we’ll lose a lot of what we consider valuable -- not just J.S. Bach and John Coltrane but shows such as “Deadwood” and nonchain bookstores.
In California, among the least traditional of states, we have an unusual perch. For a long time, it has had a more flexible sense of what was valuable than Eastern elites did. But California became bound up in tyrannical ideas of hipness as well as a Cult of Now. “The West Coast became a concept unto itself,” Erickson said. “And things that didn’t conform to that were dismissed as passe.”
The great 21st century work seems to me to merge this promiscuous blend of pop styles with a rigor and discipline that comes from the old-school approach to serious art. So I don’t just mean, say, the exuberant, 1990s-style high / lowisms of Quentin Tarantino and Beck, whose films and music, respectively, are wonderful but driven by, let’s face it, an adolescent sensibility. (I’m leaving poignant, mature work such as Beck’s “Sea Change” and Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” out of this.)
What I’m talking about -- what I hope the demise of rigid hierarchies is leading us to -- is a flowering of work that draws on the whole range of culture but with a genius of structure and sophistication as well: novels such as David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas,” from 2004, which merges a South Seas adventure story with a ‘70s-style corporate thriller with a science-fiction tale into an intricate whole, or Junot Diaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” which rightly won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for its combination of trash-talking, comic book love and very serious Dominican history lesson.
It’s what I expect to find when I see “The Dark Knight,” which, let’s not forget, was made by Christopher Nolan, an outsider (and literature student) whose first masterpiece, “Memento,” was a bizarre personal vision made with very limited connections to the Hollywood mainstream.
I’d dig those any time, any season.
--
scott.timberg@latimes.com
|
c2a5842e0573ef85cf39aa6d32d3f9e8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-27-na-cyclists27-story.html | Cyclists vs. motorists: a showdown in Colorado | Cyclists vs. motorists: a showdown in Colorado
In the feud between motorists and cyclists, the hour was high noon.
A lawman stopped two visitors on a quiet county road and warned them that their behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in these parts.
Their transgression: riding their two-wheeled steeds side-by-side instead of falling into single file when an automobile approached.
“Don’t let the sun set on your behind in my county” is how the cyclists heard the deputy’s warning.
Or maybe he said, “If you stay in Dodge, be prepared to follow the rules or suffer the consequences,” as the sheriff would later say.
Either way, they were fighting words that shook a fragile truce between Colorado motorists and bicyclists and raised anew the question of whether the two groups can coexist on the state’s roads.
As in other parts of the country, tensions between cyclists and motorists are considerable. Drivers complain about cyclists whizzing down mountain roads, oblivious to nearby cars. Riders say drivers veer dangerously close and toss soda cans at them.
The northern Colorado county of Larimer draws cyclists by the hundreds for its solitary country roads winding through fields and canyons, and around beautiful lakes. Larimer’s largest city, Fort Collins, is a college town lauded for its friendliness to bikes.
But in the county’s rural areas, some residents have grown weary of the spandex-clad athletes who fill the roads every weekend, said Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden, who stands accused of sharing such prejudices.
The conservative sheriff takes potshots not only at cyclists but also at the nearby liberal college town of Boulder, which produces some of Larimer’s cyclists.
In one recent column on the sheriff’s website, Alderden wrote: “Don’t you just love this time of year, when the birds, boats and cyclists come out? Well, two out of three ain’t bad.”
This spring, Alderden’s traffic deputies stepped up their efforts to rein in those they saw as violators -- cyclists who rode two abreast, requiring motorists to edge into oncoming lanes to avoid them.
Among those stopped in May were a pair of riders from Boulder. They said Deputy Brian Ficker told them he didn’t appreciate Boulder cyclists riding in his county and told them to return there or face a ticket.
Because they were not ticketed, authorities did not release their names, and the cyclists did not identify themselves in an account circulated in the cycling community.
Alderden disputed their account. “It wasn’t ‘Get out of Dodge,’ ” he said. “He told them, ‘This is the law. You might get away with it in Boulder County, but in Larimer County, we enforce the statutes.’ ”
In the ensuing media coverage, barbs flew back and forth. Some accused the sheriff of being an overweight, lazy man jealous of the cyclists’ fitness; Alderden called cyclists arrogant and said that spandex had adversely affected their sense of humor.
“There’s a sense of entitlement to do whatever they want: They’re environmentally conscious, and everyone else is a fat pig,” he said.
But the flap also revealed a division of opinion over the law.
State law permits cyclists to ride two abreast, as long as they don’t impede the normal flow of traffic.
To Alderden, that meant they should move into single file if a car approached.
Bicycle advocates, including the author of the bill, see it differently. It’s OK for a car to drive around two cyclists, just as they might for a slow-moving farm vehicle, said state Sen. Greg Brophy. “I don’t believe it’s unreasonable for a car to come off cruise control,” he said.
Bicycles also are vehicles on the road, noted Dan Grunig, executive director of Bicycle Colorado. If there are more bikes than cars on a particular road, then perhaps they constitute the normal flow of traffic, he said.
“It’s a point for discussion,” he said. “You can’t assume traffic is only motorized.”
Despite a recent meeting called to find common ground, the two sides reached no consensus. Brophy said the law should be clarified, something he intends to address next year. Alderden says that until then, he will continue to enforce the law as he interprets it.
A long-term solution will require revamping Colorado’s roads, Grunig and Brophy said.
In Colorado, growth has encroached on traditionally rural areas, where two-lane roads have become major commuter routes, Grunig said.
“Those are the routes that recreational cyclists use,” he said. “When there’s a big shoulder on the road, there’s not conflict. People get along fine.”
“We really need to work toward [building] roadways that recognize both uses,” Brophy said.
Until that happens -- if it does -- everyone should remember that safety is paramount, said one Boulder cyclist, who said he could understand the sheriff’s point of view.
“The car is much bigger than the bike,” said Donald Cicchillo, president of the Boulder Cycling Club, who recently came upon the aftermath of a fatal bicycle crash. “We want to share the road, but my philosophy is: Be safe.”
--
deedee.corell@latimes.com
|
65a0aecbcf773a2296f2e1442b579308 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-27-na-housing27-story.html | Congress tosses a life preserver to housing market | Congress tosses a life preserver to housing market
Congress sent President Bush legislation Saturday designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, spur home buying and prop up struggling mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The president intends to sign the bill as soon as he receives it.
It is the government’s most sweeping response yet to the nation’s housing crisis.
The Senate, in a rare weekend session, overwhelmingly approved the measure, 72 to 13, a reflection of the election-year jitters on Capitol Hill over the troubled economy.
Earlier in the week, the House approved the bill, 272 to 152.
“Today, Congress did more than send a bill to the president -- we sent a message to American families that help is on the way,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who helped write the legislation.
“In addition to providing urgently needed relief to homeowners on the brink of losing their homes, this legislation will address our broader economic problems by helping to reform our housing sector and provide reassurances to our financial markets,” Dodd said.
Bush plans to sign the legislation despite reservations about “some provisions, including nearly $4 billion to help lenders, not the homeowners this legislation is intended to serve,” said Tony Fratto, deputy press secretary.
“It’s been nearly six years since we called for a strong, independent regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and nearly a year since the president called on Congress to quickly pass legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration to keep more deserving Americans in their homes, especially low-income Americans,” Fratto said.
Critics of the measure called it a bailout of speculators and irresponsible borrowers at potentially huge cost to taxpayers.
“This bill is fraught with too much risk and too little protection to the taxpayer,” Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) said in a statement, contending that it would allow lenders to “dump their worst subprime mortgages” on the Federal Housing Administration.
All the votes opposing the legislation were cast by Republicans.
Democrats, who control Congress, are looking at other proposals to turn around the economy. Lawmakers in September will debate a second election-year economic stimulus package that would provide $50 billion or more for bridge and road projects, home-heating assistance and other matters.
The bill passed Saturday, the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act, contains a key provision allowing the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee up to $300 billion in lower-cost mortgages -- provided that lenders accept significant losses.
The provision is expected to help at least 400,000 homeowners.
The bill gives the Treasury Department authority to temporarily increase its lending to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and buy their stock, a provision that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson has called crucial to bolstering confidence in the companies and stabilizing housing finance markets.
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that there was a “probably better than 50%" chance that the federal bailout would not be needed.
But if it is, it could cost taxpayers $25 billion, budget analysts said.
The measure includes about $15 billion in tax breaks, including a tax credit that is, in effect, an interest-free loan of up to $7,500 for first-time home buyers.
It also funnels $4 billion to communities hard hit by foreclosures to buy and renovate abandoned properties, a provision that supporters say would prevent blight and a decline in the value of neighboring properties.
The measure gives states authority to issue an additional $11 billion in tax-exempt bonds to refinance troubled loans, provide loans to first-time home buyers, and finance low-income rental housing and financial counseling.
It permanently raises the cap on mortgages that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy and that the Federal Housing Administration can insure to $625,500 in high-housing-cost markets such as California.
The bill also sets up a new regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to oversee the mortgage giants.
Voting for the legislation in the Senate were 43 Democrats, 27 Republicans and the chamber’s two independents.
Republicans voting for the measure included Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who called it “one of the most important things our government can do right now to help prevent the collapse of our economy.”
Both presumptive major-party presidential nominees, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, have expressed support for the legislation but missed the vote Saturday.
Obama started his day in London, wrapping up his weeklong overseas trip; McCain, after campaigning in several states last week, was at his home in Sedona, Ariz.
The Senate action came one day after a new report showed that foreclosure filings nationally during the second quarter were up 121% from the same period a year ago.
The problem remains acute in California and Florida, which accounted for 16 of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates during the second quarter, with the Stockton and Riverside-San Bernardino areas No. 1 and 2 respectively, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) forced the Saturday vote to protest the Democratic leadership’s refusal to allow a vote on his proposal to ban the federally chartered but privately operated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from lobbying Congress and making political contributions if they receive a bailout.
DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton accused the Democrats of seeking to “protect Fannie and Freddie so they can continue funneling money back to politicians on Capitol Hill and now do it with taxpayer money.”
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), called DeMint’s proposal a “desperate, cheap stunt designed to distract attention from the fact that he has stalled the housing bill for so long.”
Freddie Mac’s PAC has contributed $202,997 to federal candidates in this election cycle, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, while Fannie Mae’s PAC has contributed $617,900, 59% of it to Democrats, according to the independent Center for Responsive Politics.
Fannie Mae spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus, asked about a lobbying ban, said: “It is critical for Fannie Mae and other financial service companies to be able to communicate our interests and concerns in order to advance homeownership and affordable housing in America.”
She declined to comment on the proposal to prohibit the mortgage company from making political contributions.
--
richard.simon@latimes.com
|
4c170ab2f5525594c5e1dd748f8c8193 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-27-na-onthemedia27-story.html | In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias | In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias
Haters of the mainstream media reheated a bit of conventional wisdom last week.
Barack Obama, they said, was getting a free ride from those insufferable liberals.
Such pronouncements, sorry to say, tend to be wrong since they describe a monolithic media that no longer exists. Information today cascades from countless outlets and channels, from the Huffington Post to Politico.com to CBS News and beyond.
But now there’s additional evidence that casts doubt on the bias claims aimed -- with particular venom -- at three broadcast networks.
The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.
You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.
During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.
Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.
Conservatives have been snarling about the grotesque disparity revealed by another study, the online Tyndall Report, which showed Obama receiving more than twice as much network air time as McCain in the last month and a half. Obama got 166 minutes of coverage in the seven weeks after the end of the primary season, compared with 67 minutes for McCain, according to longtime network-news observer Andrew Tyndall.
I wrote last week that the networks should do more to better balance the air time. But I also suggested that much of the attention to Obama was far from glowing.
That earned a spasm of e-mails that described me as irrational, unpatriotic and . . . somehow . . . French.
But the center’s director, Robert Lichter, who has won conservative hearts with several of his previous studies, told me the facts were the facts.
“This information should blow away this silly assumption that more coverage is always better coverage,” he said.
Here’s a bit more on the research, so you’ll understand how the communications professor and his researchers arrived at their conclusions.
The center reviews and “codes” statements on the evening news as positive or negative toward the candidates. For example, when NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell said in June that Obama “has problems” with white men and suburban women, the media center deemed that a negative.
The positive and negative remarks about each candidate are then totaled to calculate the percentages that cut for and against them.
Visual images and other more subjective cues are not assessed. But the tracking applies a measure of analytical rigor to a field rife with seat-of-the-pants fulminations.
The media center’s most recent batch of data covers nightly newscasts beginning June 8, the day after Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination, ushering in the start of the general-election campaign. The data ran through Monday, as Obama began his overseas trip.
Most on-air statements during that time could not be classified as positive or negative, Lichter said. The study found, on average, less than two opinion statements per night on the candidates on all three networks combined -- not exactly embracing or pummeling Obama or McCain. But when a point of view did emerge, it tended to tilt against Obama.
That was a reversal of the trend during the primaries, when the same researchers found that 64% of statements about Obama -- new to the political spotlight -- were positive, but just 43% of statements about McCain were positive.
Such reversals are nothing new in national politics, as reporters tend to warm up to newcomers, then turn increasingly critical when such candidates emerge as front-runners.
It might be tempting to discount the latest findings by Lichter’s researchers. But this guy is anything but a liberal toady.
In 2006, conservative cable showmen Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly had Lichter, a onetime Fox News contributor, on their programs. They heralded his findings in the congressional midterm election: that the networks were giving far more positive coverage to the Democrats.
More proof of the liberal domination of the media, Beck and O’Reilly declared.
Now the same researchers have found something less palatable to those conspiracy theorists.
But don’t expect cable talking heads to end their trashing of the networks.
Repeated assertions that the networks are in the tank for Democrats represent not only an article of faith on Fox, but a crucial piece of branding. On Thursday night, O’Reilly and his trusty lieutenant Bernard Goldberg worked themselves into righteous indignation -- again -- about the liberal bias they knew was lurking.
Goldberg seemed gleeful beyond measure in saying that “they’re fiddling while their ratings are burning.”
O’Reilly assured viewers that “the folks” -- whom he claims to treasure far more than effete network executives do -- “understand what’s happening.”
By the way, Lichter’s group also surveys the first half-hour of “Special Report With Brit Hume,” Fox News’ answer to the network evening news shows.
The review found that, since the start of the general-election campaign, “Special Report” offered more opinions on the two candidates than all three networks combined.
No surprise there. Previous research has shown Fox News to be opinion-heavy.
“Special Report” was tougher than the networks on Obama -- with 79% of the statements about the Democrat negative, compared with 61% negative on McCain.
There’s plenty of room for questioning the networks’ performance and watching closely for symptoms of Obamamania.
But could we at least remain focused on what ABC, NBC and CBS actually put on the air, rather than illusions that their critics create to puff themselves up?
--
james.rainey@latimes.com
|
0375c5ffaa9209c105b9be866f89926f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-27-sp-dodgers27-story.html | Lowe shows staying power | Lowe shows staying power
When the possibility of dealing free-agent-to-be Derek Lowe was raised Saturday, Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti replied with a single word: “No.”
Lowe added an exclamation point to Colletti’s response later in the evening at Dodger Stadium, as he held the Washington Nationals to a single hit over eight innings and lifted the Dodgers to a 6-0 victory that marked Casey Blake’s debut.
Acquired in the morning from the Cleveland Indians for a couple of minor leaguers, Blake was two for three with a double and run, helping the Dodgers stay within a game of first-place Arizona in the NL West.
“That was great to get the first hit out of the way,” Blake said.
While Blake was making his grand entrance, Lowe was doing what he could to ensure a triumphant exit, should his four-year run with the Dodgers come to an end after the season.
Lowe (8-8) said he wanted to remain a Dodger through the season.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Any time you sign up for something, you want to finish it. I’ve said this numerous times, that I consider my tenure here a failure. We haven’t won one playoff game. I would love to get the opportunity to win a couple of series and get to the World Series.”
Only two Nationals players reached base while Lowe was on the mound: Ronnie Belliard, who doubled in the fourth, and Austin Kearns, who walked later that inning.
“He looked like he had movement all over the place,” Dodgers Manager Joe Torre said. “It looked like they didn’t get many good swings on him. His at-bats were pretty darn good too.”
The reference was to Lowe’s two-for-three night that included an RBI single in fourth inning.
Lowe said he was drawing on lessons learned in 2004, when he was facing the prospect of free agency for the first time as a member of the Boston Red Sox.
He said he understands why his name pops up in trade rumors, but that he doesn’t let them weigh on him.
And he learned something about this time of the year.
“It’s not the time to be heroes and pitch complete games,” Lowe said. “It’s time to win games.”
Which is why Lowe said that when Torre asked him if he wanted to pitch the ninth inning, he said no. Lowe’s next scheduled start is Thursday, when the Dodgers open a four-game series against the Diamondbacks. The opposing pitcher that day will be Brandon Webb.
“I’d rather save the 15-20 pitches,” Lowe said. “I understand where my next start is.”
The night was far less pleasant for Nationals starter Odalis Perez, who was back in Dodger Stadium for the first time since the Dodgers traded him to Kansas City in 2006. Perez (3-8) was pounded for six runs and eight hits in four innings.
“Too anxious,” Perez said. “I wanted to come out there and beat them.”
The first three Dodgers to face Perez scored in a first inning that included a two-run home run by Matt Kemp.
Nomar Garciaparra led off a three-run fourth inning with his fifth home run. Blake followed with a double to left and scored on a double by Angel Berroa, who scored on a single by Lowe.
--
dylan.hernandez@latimes.com
|
d2f313d2532b6ac4af9336c95866b57f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-fg-monument28-story.html | An incomplete monument in El Salvador | An incomplete monument in El Salvador
It looms solemnly over the shady corner of a city park, an incongruous emblem of pain amid a happy clamor of picnicking families and children chasing scuffed soccer balls.
A granite echo of the Vietnam memorial in Washington, the 300-foot-long lead-colored monument serves as a kind of giant gravestone for the civil war that ripped El Salvador apart in the 1980s.
Engraved with nearly 30,000 names, the Monument to Memory and Truth is a roll of dead and disappeared from the conflict, which ended in 1992. It is incomplete. Officially, the fighting between leftist guerrillas and the right-wing military government killed 75,000 and left thousands more missing. Not all the names of the war’s victims were available when the monument project began, so the list is growing.
The monument, erected five years ago by the city’s leftist-run government, draws visitors from around the country to mourn loved ones confirmed killed in the political violence or, in many cases, who have simply vanished.
An engraved name on this glinting stone is often the closest thing to a proper grave site many people will have. The neat rows of names represent bits of history, fibers of memory, personal anguish.
“These are stories,” said 73-year-old Cipriana Rivera, a copper-skinned woman in a floral skirt and polo shirt who was scanning for the name of her husband. He disappeared in 1979 or 1980. “They are stories that happened.”
Her story, like so many from that turbulent time, has no real ending. Her husband, Tomas Candelaria, a fortysomething activist in a peasant cooperative in the rebel-friendly town of Suchitoto, went off one day and never came home.
Rivera assumes he was killed, but received no confirmation. At the time, she learned about a body that had turned up in the same area. The dead man was missing front teeth, like her husband, and scarred above the right eye, like her husband.
But Rivera never saw the body before it was reportedly buried by the army. It could have been her Tomas, she said through teeth lined in silver. Or not.
The carved names are organized by year and category: killed or disappeared. The last year listed is 1992, when the conflict ended with a peace accord that brought the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, into the political mainstream, alongside its right-wing foes.
A truth commission recommended creating a monument to help Salvadoran society heal, but the idea went nowhere until a coalition of human rights groups took up the project.
It won the support of the municipal government of San Salvador, by then governed by the FMLN. The 10-foot-high monument was unveiled in December 2003, with nearly 26,000 names of men, women and children. Panels with 3,169 more names were added in March.
“It’s a place where the pains of the past can be freed,” said Carlos Henriquez Consalvi, who played a leading role in establishing the monument. “It is also a place where new generations can learn the contemporary history of El Salvador and build a culture of peace.”
But the past here is inevitably political, and many rightists would probably find the monument a biased record. All deaths, for example, are classified as “homicides.” The monument describes rights abuses and massacres against civilians, but does not mention excesses committed by rebels.
Its biggest pull appears to be personal. The monument is a favored spot during the annual Day of the Dead celebration, when scores of Salvadoran families commemorate their deceased loved ones by placing flowers and candles at the foot of the smooth stone wall.
Most other days, the visitors come in twos and threes, squinting at the tidy rows of names and running fingers over the creases. On this morning, Rivera arrived with her 30-year-old grandson, who said his father died in an army ambush in 1985.
The young man, Tomas Arevalo, was 7 at the time. He said he has three photographs of his late father, but the name engraved here -- Tomas Francisco Arevalo -- provides an equally tangible link.
Rivera would have to be satisfied with seeing the name of her son-in-law. Her husband does not appear on the list, yet.
The monument has space for more.
--
ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
--
Special correspondent Alex Renderos contributed to this report.
|
b4c683d500dfe4cbb3365c919ce058dd | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-le-letters28.s5-story.html | Hands on deck | Hands on deck
Re “Shaping up -- no thanks to LAUSD,” Column, July 23
It is easy to stand on the sidelines and pass judgment on what you see, like an armchair quarterback. Steve Lopez throws verbal stones at those of us in the Los Angeles Unified School District who show up for work every day with the intention of changing the lives of the students who are put in our charge. Dedicated professionals strive to make a difference, working unnoticed and ignored by politicians and journalists The only time any attention is paid is when there is a shooting, fight or some other negative action on our campuses. Even then, these acts only involve a small segment of the thousands who make up the LAUSD.
Lopez claims this “battleship” is “listing,” but I would like to add that all hands are on deck, fighting to right the ship.
Tom Iannucci
Los Angeles
|
091979c0b636274d07706afd8b253abc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-me-bus28-story.html | Budgets idle school buses, raising concern for safety | Budgets idle school buses, raising concern for safety
Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs.
Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students’ academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school.
“All the parents, we’ve been scrambling to try to work out car pools,” said Wayne Tate, whose second-grader’s bus to Castille Elementary, two miles from their home in Mission Viejo, was eliminated. “For somebody that young, that’s a pretty long way to walk or ride a bike. All you need is one kid getting hit to realize that maybe the [savings] wasn’t worth it.”
Districts say they have no choice.
“It’s a horribly difficult decision,” said Larry Brown, assistant superintendent of business services at Moorpark Unified School District in Ventura County, which is eliminating bus rides for its 2,400 high school students. “It’s a decision no one wants to make.”
Unlike most other states, California does not require districts to provide home-to-school transportation except in limited circumstances. Fewer than 15% of the state’s 6.3 million students ride school buses, according to a 2007 report by the state auditor’s office. Los Angeles Unified is among districts that do not offer the service for most students.
A year’s worth of bus service costs an average of nearly $1,400 per student in urban districts and more than $900 per rural pupil, according to the state auditor’s report. The state provides less than half of the $1.1 billion that districts spend annually on transportation. To make up the rest, districts dip into their general fund, the same pot of money that pays for smaller class sizes, teacher salaries and textbooks. Many districts also require parents to buy bus passes that can cost hundreds of dollars annually per child.
But this year, in districts across the state, this method no longer works. State education leaders report that more districts are reducing or eliminating bus service, although no agency has a complete tally.
In Poway Unified School District near San Diego, where parents pay $399 for an annual bus pass, several hazardous conditions that once qualified students for bus service -- among them living near a busy intersection or lacking a safe path or sidewalk to school -- no longer are considered. In addition, only routes that draw at least 50 paying riders will operate. The change leaves as many as 1,600 students of all ages without rides.
“It’s gotten to the point where we could not continue to do what we have historically done,” said Tim Purvis, the district’s director of transportation, who budgeted $700,000 for fuel last school year and ended up spending $1.1 million. “I have 26 years of experience in this business, and I’ve never seen such an erratic year for fuel increases.”
In response, private shuttle companies are offering to ferry students to school -- for $400 a month. Purvis predicted that most of the students without bus service would be driven to school in family cars or neighborhood car pools. “School loading/unloading zones are going to be a mess,” he said.
They also will be significantly more dangerous, according to Mike Martin, a spokesman for the American School Bus Council trade group.
“School buses are . . . the safest way for kids to get to and from school, bar none,” he said.
About 800 children are killed and 152,000 are injured annually during school travel hours; 2% of the deaths and 4% of the injuries involve school buses, according to a 2002 study by the National Research Council. The rest occur when children are walking or bicycling to school, or in family cars, particularly if a teenager is driving.
Extra cars on the roads are also prompting at least one city to threaten to sue a school district over its bus program reductions.
The Capistrano Unified School District in south Orange County eliminated 44 of its 62 bus routes, saving $3.5 million annually and cutting service for 5,000 students who had transportation last year, including Tate’s youngest son.
City leaders in surrounding communities are threatening to sue, arguing that the district failed to consider the traffic, noise and pollution implications of its decision.
“The school district, in making those reductions, is going to cause an impact on our students and on our neighborhoods,” Mission Viejo Mayor Trish Kelley said.
Critics also are concerned about the long-term effect of the reductions on academic achievement. State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell fears that less bus service will mean lower school attendance, particularly for families struggling economically.
“It’s a question of our priorities as a state and as a society,” O’Connell said. “Realigning bus routes . . . can potentially contribute to lower attendance and a higher dropout rate. What effect does that have on our society? People less prepared to become productive members of your community and more crime.”
School district officials say the situation will get worse unless the state provides more funding for transportation.
Mike Patton, Capistrano Unified’s director of transportation, said the district had to kick in several hundred dollars for each child who rode a bus, in addition to state funding and parents paying $400 for annual bus passes. Subsidizing so many students was no longer tenable, he said.
“If the funding is not fixed for home-to-school transportation, eventually home-to-school transportation will cease to exist in California,” he said. “We are a direct encroachment into the general fund. We compete with classroom dollars and teachers’ salaries and textbooks. Every year, we encroach more and more. The only way to control it is to stop providing service.”
--
seema.mehta@latimes.com
|
6bf59827c99ac71af980ada6d98b816f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-me-valecon28-story.html | Appetite grows for food aid | Appetite grows for food aid
Food pantry operators throughout the Los Angeles region report that demand for free groceries has surged to the highest level in recent memory this summer as the sagging economy has hit not only the poor, but also middle- and upper-class families.
“This is probably the most people we’ve ever seen use emergency food assistance,” said Darren Hoffman, communications director for the 35-year-old Los Angeles Regional Food Bank. “We’re seeing people who were making $70,000 a year coming into a food bank for the first time. . . . They’ve used their retirement to pay their mortgage, and gone through their savings.”
The organization, which distributes groceries to about 670,000 people each year through a network of more than 900 religious entities and nonprofits, watched demand increase by 80% this spring.
Steep job losses in the banking and entertainment industries, on top of the housing downturn, are reverberating particularly hard through the San Fernando Valley, leading to less work for janitors, waiters and others. The Valley has lost thousands of jobs in financial services, largely due to the failure last fall of Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial Corp. -- the nation’s largest mortgage lender -- which laid off more than 20% of its workforce.
“We’re seeing an increase in people who never would have asked for help in the past,” said Joan Mithers, a director at SOVA Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, which operates three food pantries including its headquarters in Van Nuys. The agency served 5,605 people in June, up 28% from a similar period in 2007 and 46% over June 2006.
One recent day, Teresita Guzman was among those standing in long lines to receive food, clothing and other assistance at the northeast Valley headquarters of Meet Each Need With Dignity, or MEND.
Her eyes cast downward, Guzman tugged at her worn black T-shirt and recounted how her three teenage sons decided to hold off eating the corn flakes she brought home from a food pantry until she could afford to buy milk.
“I told them to wait until their dad gets paid,” the 39-year-old Pacoima resident said through an interpreter. With construction work increasingly hard to find, the family can’t depend on regular paychecks.
The one-two punch of a declining income of about $1,300 a month -- with half going to rent -- and higher gas and food prices forced Guzman for the first time this spring to visit MEND to pick up food for her family.
The Valley’s largest charitable group aiding the poor, MEND serves about 46,200 people a month and has seen demand jump about 26% so far this year.
“There’s a perception that the Valley is middle class and one of the richer parts of L.A.,” said Marianne Haver Hill, MEND’s executive director. “The poverty is very much hidden here.”
But recent statistics underscore the fact that times are tough for people of all income levels who call the 225-square-mile Valley area home. Job losses in the Valley’s signature industries, such as financial services and entertainment, pushed unemployment claims in May to a four-year high, said Dan Blake, director of the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at Cal State Northridge.
Local food pantry operators said some clients had exhausted savings and retirement funds and had their vehicles repossessed before they came for free food.
Yet as demand is climbing, food donations to charities throughout Southern California are at record lows, leading some organizations to face a tough choice: Should they feed each family less in order to serve more people?
“We’re able to provide less food for the money we have,” said Cambria Smith, president of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council, a network of 18 pantries that primarily serves people living in the west Valley.
Food pantry administrators said they tend to give cereal and other scarce items to families first, in some cases leaving single clients without certain goods. They also refer clients to agencies in surrounding communities that haven’t been hit as hard, and limit free grocery visits to once a month.
The federal government exacerbated food pantry shortages when it slashed two-thirds of the surplus food it donated to charities earlier this decade. In 2002, 42 million pounds of groceries were donated to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, and 60% of that came from the Department of Agriculture; in 2007, the organization received 35 million pounds of food, and the government’s share of the donations dropped to 25%, said Hoffman, the agency’s spokesman.
Supermarkets have also decreased donations by trimming the amount of food sold close to its expiration date and selling dented goods to discount outlets.
With fewer groceries available, many charities are scrambling to raise money to buy staples such as powdered milk. And prices for those staples are at 18-year highs.
At MEND, food bank director Gina Mirabella said her volunteers spend hours some days dialing grocers and food manufacturers requesting donations. She said she’s even gone so far as to phone the toll-free number on cereal boxes and Canadian outlets asking for donations from their Los Angeles warehouses.
“I try to keep up by covering more ground, covering more stores, covering more merchants, covering more companies,” said Mirabella, who said the workload is the highest it’s been in her 20 years at MEND. “We come up short mostly on cereals and soups and canned meats.”
In search of eggs, milk and other staples to feed her husband and three children, Maria Oliveros visited her neighborhood church in Pacoima recently, only to find that they were out of food.
Sitting in a dirt backyard surrounded by a camper covered by a plastic tarp, a camper shell and several rusted storage sheds, Oliveros said two-thirds of her husband’s paycheck pays for two rooms the family rents in a nearby bungalow.
What’s left is barely enough to pay for gas, school uniforms and other necessities, she said, forcing her to seek free food for her family several times a week.
“Last year I would go to the church every once in a while, but now I go every Monday and Tuesday,” Oliveros said through an interpreter. “It’s very hard right now.”
--
jennifer.oldham@latimes.com
|
051392d01387e3cd53c51ae236635ff0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-na-apology28-story.html | Apology came just in time | Apology came just in time
Samuel Snow, an 83-year-old black World War II veteran who had traveled across the country to receive an apology from the Army for being unfairly convicted on rioting charges, died early Sunday just hours after the ceremony honoring him and 27 of his fellow soldiers.
Snow had been admitted to a hospital on the eve of Saturday’s ceremony at Ft. Lawton in Seattle. He died hours later -- after his son had read to him the certificate that exonerated him and converted his discharge to an honorable status.
“He had talked incessantly about how important this weekend was going to be, and while I’m tremendously sad -- more than you know -- that this man is no longer with us, I do have the sense that he had a tremendous amount of fulfillment,” said Jack Hamann, who in his book “On American Soil” exposed serious flaws in the 1944 prosecution of 28 black soldiers on rioting charges during a night of violence that left an Italian prisoner of war dead.
The only other surviving veteran associated with the incident could not make the trip from Chicago for the ceremony. Family members, on behalf of the “Ft. Lawton 28,” received certificates and a formal apology from the Army in a tearful but celebratory ceremony that capped three days of commemorative events, some of which Snow had attended.
“My dad has been standing in formation all these years, waiting to have his name cleared. With the Army’s honorable discharge, he was at ease. He now has his discharge papers and he went home,” Snow’s son, Ray Snow of Leesburg, Fla., said in a statement.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Luke Knittig said in a statement: “Sam’s strength of character and devotion to family and country shined. It was my personal privilege to know him, and his Army family pays tribute to his service and legacy.”
--
kim.murphy@latimes.com
|
4d563fbddece72acdb9a246d644be5f8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-na-candidate28-story.html | Kansan sticks it to election system | Kansan sticks it to election system
When Sean Tevis decided to run for a seat in the Kansas Legislature, he faced a serious problem: money. Local political advisors warned the campaign novice that he would need a war chest of at least $26,000 to compete against his entrenched Republican rival.
It seemed like a fortune to the 39-year-old Democrat. Everyone he knew here was either on a fixed income, worried about losing a job or fretting that the nation’s stumbling economy could spread to this southwestern suburb of Kansas City, Kan.
So Tevis created a droll online cartoon strip to appeal to potential supporters wherever they might be, using stick figures to represent himself, his GOP opponent and others.
In one panel, a stick-figure Tevis greets a constituent by rattling off a stream of personal facts he’s found online about her -- including her birthdate, voting pattern, divorce, paycheck, credit card balances and medical history -- to illustrate his interest in protecting individual privacy.
When she slams the door in his face, the cartoon Tevis muses, “Maybe I should rethink my approach.”
“I figured I’d raise a few thousand dollars, at most,” for his bid to become a state representative, said Tevis, a computer systems manager who works for an industrial manufacturing company.
In fact, before he created the comic strip, Tevis spent weeks asking cash-strapped friends and family for help and walking door-to-door in the district. He raised $1,525.
The comic strip -- at www.seantevis.com/3000 -- was first posted online July 16. Today, when he files his campaign finance forms with the Kansas secretary of state’s office, Tevis will report that he has raised $95,162.76 in donations through PayPal, the online service that allows payments and money transfers via the Internet.
Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid has transformed the way presidential candidates use the Internet to reach volunteers and donors -- particularly donors who give relatively small amounts. Now Tevis’ success underscores how such online grass-roots efforts are also revolutionizing down-ticket races.
“This shows how all political races could be done in the future: drawing support across state lines and around a community of common interests, instead of just where people vote,” said Julie Barko Germany, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.
“But for something like this to work, you have to be the right counter-political candidate -- a cool maverick,” Barko Germany said. “And Sean is that.”
The strip is the antithesis of the typical campaign mailer.
It is peppered with online geek-speak, with references to “downmodding” (voting down anything not considered worthwhile) and “forum troll” (someone who intentionally riles up a Web-based social group or conversation) and gives a nod to “Rickrolling” (an Internet bait-and-switch prank where people are misdirected to a Rick Astley music video). It is drawn in a style similar to xkcd, a popular Web-based comic.
And its message is barely concealed exasperation with his opponent’s social conservatism and a political process where the candidate with the most money often wins.
“Relax,” a bearded stick figure consoles the Tevis figure. “You just need 52 people who can donate $500.”
Tevis’ character replies, “I know two.”
The solution, Tevis says, is simple: If 3,000 people donated $8.34 each, he’d reach his goal.
Those who gave $60 would get a handwritten thank-you note. Donors who gave $500, the legal limit, would get a DVD of Tevis’ mom thanking them.
It was a long shot at best.
Seasoned Democrats in Olathe (population about 115,000), located about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City, Kan., advised Tevis to drop his online efforts and stick with asking local residents and state political action groups for financial help. The average state representative race rarely pulls in donations from more than a couple hundred people or PACs, according to the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.
“These state seats are not big-money races being run by professional politicians with dreams of higher office. These are citizen legislators who are trying to get to Topeka because they are trying to make a change in their community,” said Joseph Aistrup, head of the political science department at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.
“Besides, the idea of anyone outside of Kansas being interested enough in a state legislative race here to give money is unfathomable,” Aistrup said.
Tevis initially shared the strip with a group of friends and asked them to share it with their friends if they thought it was funny and believed in his bid for office. The comic quickly spread to social networking websites -- and the donations poured in.
In less than 24 hours, Tevis said, he reached his goal. More than half of the funds were donations of $8.34 or less.
His opponent, Arlen Siegfreid, a 61-year-old grandfather and semi-retired real estate agent, said he had raised about $12,000 the old-fashioned way -- offline. He’s proud of his approach.
“This is a race you win by getting out and walking, not sitting in front of a computer,” said Siegfreid, a three-term incumbent whose website offers information on how people can physically mail a check for his reelection bid.
Indeed, the strategy could backfire on Tevis, particularly if voters are put off by the idea of outsiders paying for a candidate’s campaign, said Martin Hawver, a longtime Kansas politics-watcher who publishes Hawver’s Capitol Report.
“Arlen is fairly popular and a pretty conservative old-boy who represents a pretty conservative district,” Hawver said. “All those people supporting Sean won’t be able to vote for him. He could e-mail his heart out and still get stomped.”
Still, Tevis’ fundraising success had Siegfreid nervous enough to print out a copy of the comic strip and show it to a group of fellow state GOP officials.
“I told them, ‘If he’s successful and wins in November, this is what you’re going to see from every Democrat in Kansas -- and everywhere -- in two years,’ ” Siegfreid said.
As of Saturday, 5,703 people had made online donations to Tevis’ campaign. The majority live outside of the state. Fans from other countries even sent more than $1,700 -- which Tevis refunded, in compliance with federal election rules.
Staffers for two political candidates in Kansas and eight out-of-state campaigns -- Democrats and independents running for state or congressional seats -- have contacted Tevis in recent days to ask for help and advice. And the money has continued to pour into Tevis’ campaign, along with fan e-mails cheering on his campaign platform of boosting teacher pay, eliminating food taxes and protecting an individual’s right to privacy.
“Hilarious and awesome!” wrote one woman from Portland, Ore. “I only wish my $10 could be more.”
Mark Davis, a donor from West Virginia, said he was crushed by debt and had been unemployed for nearly six months. “Despite this, I sent my first-ever political donation to your campaign,” he wrote. “My [significant other] and I are attempting to find jobs so that we can move to Kansas. I can only hope I end up in your district, and can also offer you my vote.”
Tevis sheepishly broke the news to his mother last week that she needed to step in front of a camera: Four people so far have given enough to get the DVD.
“All I could think was, ‘Gosh, we still have months to go before November, and more people will probably donate money,’ ” said Claudia Tevis Schindel. “That’s a lot of thank-you cards to send out, let alone the videos. I hope we have enough time to get it all done before people actually go vote.”
--
p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com
|
8a101062ffedbc7919ee095ab57d1ba6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-28-oe-rushdie28-story.html | Giving birth to ‘Midnight’s Children’ | Giving birth to ‘Midnight’s Children’
One day in 1976 -- I’m no longer certain of the date -- a young, unsuccessful writer wrestling with an enormous and still intractable story decided to start again, this time using a first-person narrator. On that day, much of what is now the beginning of “Midnight’s Children” was written. “I was born in the city of Bombay
“Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came.” “Handcuffed to history.” “Snotnose, Stainface, Baldy, Sniffer, Buddha and even Piece-of-the-Moon.” I can still summon up the feeling of exhilaration that came over me as I discovered Saleem Sinai’s voice, and in doing so discovered my own. I have always thought of that day as the moment I really became a writer, after a decade of false starts. “My clock-ridden, crime-stained birth.”
By the end of 1979, I had a completed manuscript, and the book had publishers, the best there were in those days, Jonathan Cape in London and Alfred A. Knopf in New York. Their support encouraged me to think that I might at last have written a good book, but after the long years of unsuccess, I was still plagued by doubts. I managed to set them aside and plunge into another novel, “Shame,” and thank goodness I did, because it meant that when “Midnight’s Children” had its first, extraordinary success, I did not have to wonder how on Earth to “follow that.” I had already written a first draft of “Shame” by the night I was awarded the Man Booker Prize, and so I had work to do.
“Midnight’s Children” took an unusually long time to be published because of a series of unfortunate events. Cape and Knopf had agreed to print jointly in the U.S. to save money, and then a printers strike began. When that ended and the book was finally printed, a transport strike meant that copies could not be shipped to London. When the copies finally arrived, a dockworkers strike meant that they could not be unloaded. And so the publication date slipped and slipped, and I chewed my fingernails.
I had other worries too. The Knopf dust jacket was a livid shade of salmon pink, inaugurating the salmon/Salman problem that would plague me ever after, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t much care for the Cape cover either, but when I timidly asked if I could see some alternatives, I was told grandly that I could not because that would delay the publication even further. (Publishers have since become more receptive to my concerns.) It was easy to see these pre-publication gremlins and uncertainties as harbingers of a catastrophe to come.
The catastrophe didn’t happen. The things I remember most vividly about that wonderful moment of first success are a small lunch at Bertorelli’s restaurant in London, at which my editor, Liz Calder; the book’s early reader, Susannah Clapp; a couple of other friends and I celebrated the book’s critical reception, and a nervous, superstitious moment just before I entered Stationers’ Hall for the Booker dinner, when Carmen Callil, then the publisher of Virago, told me I was going to win, which immediately convinced me I would not. Oddly, I remember very little about the British reviews. The three I have never forgotten were written by Anita Desai in the Washington Post, by Clark Blaise in the New York Times and by Robert Towers in the New York Review of Books. There was also one memorable bad review. The BBC radio program “Kaleidoscope” had devoted a great deal of time to my novel, and given it the works: Indian music to introduce it, a reading, a sympathetic interview with me, and then it was over to their critic ... who unreservedly hated the book. The program’s presenter, Sheridan Morley, kept asking this critic (whose name I’ve forgotten) to find some little thing to praise. “But didn’t you think ... " “Wouldn’t you at least agree that ... " and so on. The critic was implacable. No, no, there was nothing he had liked at all. After the magnificent buildup, this negative intransigence was delightfully, bathetically funny.
“Midnight’s Children,” a book that repeatedly uses images of land reclamation because Bombay is a city built upon reclaimed land, was itself an act of reclamation, my attempt to reclaim my Indian origins and heritage from my aerie in Kentish Town north of London. By far the best thing that happened to it, and to its author, was its reception in India, where people responded not to the magic but the realism; where Saleem’s narrative voice felt to many readers -- as it had to its author -- like their own; and where the book was so heavily and successfully pirated that the anonymous pirates started sending me greeting cards.
“Happy Birthday from The Pirates.” “Happy New Year. Best wishes, The Pirates.” These, perhaps, were the ultimate compliments.
With the passage of time there have inevitably been some revisionist assessments. Such critics as D.J. Taylor in Britain and Amit Chaudhuri in India have deplored the book’s influence -- which, according to Taylor, has been “almost entirely malign,” while for Chaudhuri my novel embodies “all that was most unserious about India -- its loudness, its apparent lack of introspection and irony, its peculiar version of English grammar.”
I don’t much care. I remember the day Saleem’s voice first burst out of me, the joy and liberation of that day, and I’m proud of the way that young voice immediately attracted and still attracts a legion of younger readers -- and that, I’m happy to say, will do.
|
5dd088e7ff1b3dabf11b1b049dd49e47 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-29-et-darkknight29-story.html | One foe eludes Batman: ‘Titanic’ | One foe eludes Batman: ‘Titanic’
It’s as hallowed a statistic to Hollywood as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak is to baseball: “Titanic’s” record box-office gross of $600.8 million. All of a sudden, that mark might be within “The Dark Knight’s” reach.
Distribution executives have started debating in earnest the potential total “Dark Knight” haul, which already has passed $300 million and is projected to eclipse the $400-million mark on Aug. 4 or 5. Although half a dozen industry insiders surveyed Monday said “Titanic’s” record appeared safe for now, the majority of distribution executives placed the film’s probable final gross just past $500 million, thanks in part to repeat business from across the audience spectrum.
That would make “The Dark Knight” the second-highest grossing film of all-time, ahead of 1977’s “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” (whose combined theatrical releases total $461 million) and 2004’s “Shrek 2" ($436.7 million).
In its second week of release, “The Dark Knight” grossed $75.2 million, for total sales of $313.7 million. The Warner Bros. sequel’s performance was especially strong on Sunday, with a gross of $23.7 million. Rival distributors said that was evidence that older moviegoers, families, Latino and African American audiences were flocking to the film, because those moviegoers tend to turn out at the end of the weekend.
The film appears on track to pass the $400-million mark as early as Monday, in which case “The Dark Knight” would pass that benchmark in its 18th day of release. The film to have passed $400 million most quickly up until now is “Shrek 2,” which took 43 days to get there.
“Titanic,” which opened in 1997 but did most of its business in 1998, was the nation’s No. 1 film for a remarkable 15 weeks in a row. Although it never sparked weekend business like “The Dark Knight,” writer-director James Cameron’s epic love story generated enormous repeat business from teenage girls.
“The Dark Knight” is also drawing a steady stream of repeaters; one rival distribution executive said his teenage kids had seen the film three times. And that kind of can’t-get-enough interest has helped start the “Titanic” comparisons.
“We are honored to be considered in that company,” said Dan Fellman, the domestic distribution chief for Warner Bros. “But I think ‘Titanic’ will hold that record for eternity.”
Because “Titanic” came out when movie tickets were much cheaper (an average of $4.69 in 1998), it could still have sold more tickets than the “Dark Knight” will, even if the latter film somehow ends up grossing more. The average movie ticket will probably run about $7 this year.
Regardless of inflation’s effect, “The Dark Knight” is clearly the story of Hollywood’s summer.
“This has become a cultural phenomenon on so many levels,” said Greg Foster, the president for Imax Filmed Entertainment, whose “Dark Knight” sales have surpassed $16.4 million, a record. “Even my dad [septuagenarian movie producer David Foster] has seen it three times.”
--
john.horn@latimes.com
|
6da70341555fc60073de574992007af7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-29-fi-gas29-story.html | Motorists help gas costs slide | Motorists help gas costs slide
Gasoline prices skidded sharply lower during the last week partly because motorists have been curbing their driving -- cutting back so much that Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters warned Monday of a looming shortfall in the fund that pays for highway and bridge construction and repairs.
The U.S. average price for a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline dropped below $4 a gallon for the first time since June 2, declining 10.9 cents a gallon to $3.955, according to the Energy Department’s weekly survey of filling stations. In California, the average fell 14.3 cents to $4.317 a gallon.
Fuel prices have been falling as lower oil prices make their way to the pump and because motorists are driving less.
Model and actress Risako Takahashi on Monday spent more than $62 to fill her 2002 Mazda Protege, or about $17 more per tank than it cost last year.
As a result, Takahashi has curtailed her driving by about 25%, having cut back on visits to her favorite Hollywood hangouts and seeing friends in Orange County, she said. Instead of driving to the beach and jogging on the sand, the 37-year-old Westwood resident runs in her neighborhood, and she walks to the grocery store instead of driving.
“It’s still amazingly expensive, so I just try to stay on the Westside now,” Takahashi said. “The only thing I won’t drive less for is an audition.”
In May, U.S. motorists drove 9.6 billion fewer miles, or 3.7% less, than in May 2007, according to a report on traffic volume trends released Monday by the Federal Highway Administration. It was the seventh consecutive monthly decline, suggesting that U.S. road travel will record the first annual drop since 1980.
The May total for vehicle miles traveled represented the third-biggest drop recorded in the 66 years that such figures have been tracked, the report said. The drop was particularly surprising because May is usually a big driving month, launching the summer car-trip season.
The numbers are so significant that officials have become concerned that the nation’s highway trust fund might not receive enough in gasoline and diesel tax revenue to maintain the country’s transportation infrastructure. The fund gets 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline sold and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel.
“By driving less and using more fuel-efficient vehicles, Americans are showing us that the highways of tomorrow cannot be supported solely by the federal gas tax,” Transportation Secretary Peters said in a statement.
“We must embrace more sustainable funding sources for highways and bridges through more sustainable and effective ways such as congestion pricing and private activity bonds.”
Also on Monday, the Energy Department said U.S. petroleum demand in May fell 4.3%, or 891,000 barrels a day, compared with May 2007, the lowest monthly demand in five years. The agency previously estimated that May demand fell 1.8%.
The reports sketched a picture of a fundamental change in American driving behavior that could be unprecedented, analysts said.
“This is only the first act in this opera, and if you think it was bad, wait until Acts 2 and 3,” said Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst for investment firm Oppenheimer & Co. “Gasoline demand in 2009 will be less than it was in 2008.”
Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, believes that motorists are hitting the brakes permanently.
“I think we have tilted behavior to the point where this demand does not come back,” Kloza said.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for September delivery posted a $1.47 gain to $124.73 a barrel after reports of a rebel attack on a Nigerian pipeline owned by Royal Dutch Shell.
The cost of the U.S. benchmark crude hit a record $147.27 a barrel July 11. Worries about declining fuel demand in the U.S. have put a damper on prices since then. Still, oil prices are up 62% from a year earlier.
--
ron.white@latimes.com
|
cc515aae7762b22013415f7e8f615c90 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-29-fi-spaceship29-story.html | One giant leap for private spaceflight | One giant leap for private spaceflight
A souped-up aircraft that would help boost well-heeled thrill seekers into the outer atmosphere was unveiled Monday, lifting the prospects for travelers to one day fly in a commercial spaceliner.
After keeping the project shrouded in secrecy for more than three years, project developers dropped the curtain on the White Knight Two, an odd-looking aircraft with two airplane bodies joined at the wings and resembling a flying catamaran.
And that was just the mother ship, designed to ferry an eight-person rocket from the Earth’s surface to a launch point 48,000 feet up.
Still under construction is the rocket-powered passenger ship, dubbed Space Ship Two, which would be attached to the mother ship and carried to its launch altitude.
There the rocket ship would be released and its engine ignited, hurtling it up to an altitude of 360,000 feet -- the edge of space -- where passengers and crew would experience about four minutes of weightlessness. The craft would then drift back to Earth and land at an airport like a plane. Elapsed time from takeoff to touchdown: about 2 1/2 hours.
Space Ship Two could be ready for flight tests next year. If all goes well, the first spaceflight is expected by the end of the decade.
The mother ship was revealed at a much-hyped ceremony at the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 95 miles north of Los Angeles. The spaceport is the home of the aircraft’s developer, Scaled Composites, a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary founded by famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan.
The maverick engineer has built such pioneering aircraft as the Global Flyer, which shattered aviation records by flying around the world on one tank of fuel.
On hand for the ceremony were Rutan and British billionaire Richard Branson, who bankrolled the project. In typical Branson fashion, the aircraft was unveiled in front of about 150 journalists, many of them flown in by Branson’s U.S.-based carrier, Virgin America, for the two-hour affair. The plane was painted with the message, “My Other Ride Is A Spaceship.”
After the media were corralled into a hangar, a massive white curtain was dropped to reveal the White Knight Two.
Sitting alone, tucked in a corner and covered in black so it could not be seen was Space Ship Two.
Both vehicles are larger versions of the mother ship and rocket that made the first privately funded suborbital spaceflight four years ago. Unlike most of today’s planes, which are made of aluminum and other metals, the space launch vehicles are built with composite materials.
“This is quite something, isn’t it?” Branson said, after unveiling the mother ship to a throng of television cameras and reporters. “It’s one of the most beautiful, extraordinary aviation vehicles ever developed.”
The rollout at the remote desert airport here came a year after a deadly accident killed three Scaled Composite engineers who were testing an engine for a rocket ship nearby. It and other development problems set back the effort to launch the first commercial spaceflight initially set for this year.
During the ceremony, Branson also revealed that he was naming the mother ship after his own mother, Eve, a former “air hostess” who attended the rollout, and that the first passengers would be his family, including his mother and father.
“If you are going to build a mother ship, it’s only right that you should name it after your mother,” Branson said.
So far, the first 100 wannabe astronauts have paid $200,000 for a chance to float weightlessly in space. An additional 175 have put down deposits of $20,000 or more.
Many of those who have signed up are deep-pocketed thrill seekers who are running out of adventures on Earth, said Matthew Upchurch, chief executive of Virtuoso, a Forth Worth luxury travel agency that is booking passage on the spaceflights.
“One of our customers has climbed every peak in the world,” Upchurch said.
Eric Wittenberg, a retired home builder and a Laguna Beach resident, paid $200,000 three years ago to “find out the difference between the deep sea and space.”
An avid scuba diver, Wittenberg has dived in a submersible to depths of more than 10,000 feet. “Now I want to know what it’s like up there.”
But he would like Branson and Rutan to hurry it up: “Safety is first, but I’m 75 years old,” Wittenberg said. “So for me, sooner is better if you know what I mean.”
peter.pae@latimes.com
|
db8a42d83e25dec3c69e827e4c7749f5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-29-me-banks29-story.html | A level playing board for all | A level playing board for all
Andrew Becker hovered near the chess tables in Santa Monica for hours, itching to play, but uncertain of the protocol.
The 16-year-old -- visiting from suburban Philadelphia -- was hard to beat at home, at the ornate chess table in the Beckers’ family room, where he plays his father, Steve, and younger brother, Eric.
But here, the unexpected mix of strangers -- scruffy homeless guys, soft-spoken elderly immigrants, bricklayers and schoolteachers, the castoffs and the cultured -- “made him kind of shy,” his mother, Lisa, told me as we watched.
Then someone called “checkmate,” and a player left. Andrew slid into the seat and asked for a game. He won a few, lost a few, and listened intently as a grizzled player known as “Down Low,” who had just beaten him, explained the moves Andrew should have made.
“Amazing,” said his mother. And she wasn’t talking about the chess. She was shocked that with a dozen games going around them, she never heard an insult or a raised voice.
“I saw the rules on the bulletin board, but I can’t believe they all follow it. There’s no drinking, no smoking , no cursing . . .You’d never see this in Philadelphia.”
The tiny International Chess Park, in the shadow of the Santa Monica Pier, wasn’t always so decorous. Ten years ago, the area “was pretty rough and tumble,” recalled Mark Rosenberg, a teacher from Palms who helped expand and spruce it up.
In 2000, a $600,000 city grant paid for new tables -- some with cutouts to accommodate wheelchairs -- umbrellas, landscaping and a display of man-sized chess pieces. Rosenberg helped persuade officials to shut down a nearby liquor store, then enlisted fellow Vietnam vets to run off lingering troublemakers.
On Sunday, I sat with Rosenberg -- now 58 and recovering from heart transplant surgery -- for a world tour of the regulars. “That guy’s from Greece, he’s from Serbia, he’s an X-ray tech from Mexico . . .” He scanned the tables and ticked off homelands of the guys he recognized: “Chile, Poland, Mexico, Israel, Russia, El Salvador, Tibet . . .”
Not to mention Santa Monica and South Los Angeles.
I met trucker Eddie Foster, who drives down from Santa Clarita to play software engineer Mark Duckworth. Their game drew a boisterous crowd; Duckworth is a ranked chess master and one of the best players to frequent the park.
A few tables away, there was no audience for the game between the retired lawyer in the straw hat and the grubby young man whose possessions bulged from a backpack and plastic trash bags piled on a bench beside him. They played silently for an hour. The lawyer won, they rose, shook hands without speaking and left.
“Here, it doesn’t matter if you have money or where you live or what you do,” Rosenberg told me. “You don’t have to speak the same language. It’s a level playing field . . . No excuses. No bad cards. No bum roll of the dice.
“All that matters is your skill and how you conduct yourself. You’re civilized, you’re regular, you’re playing chess.”
Some, like John Washington, 57, come because the game takes them outside themselves. He learned to play at 8, on a battered board with coins standing in for missing pieces. At 10, he was carrying his board around the local college campus, looking for opponents. As a young man, he saw chess legend Bobby Fischer play.
Now, the former electronics tech is struggling to make a living, displaced by the sour economy. “Chess engages your mind, makes you think about life philosophically,” he said. “It’s recreation in the best sense of the word.”
Some are looking for a challenge, or an antidote for loneliness.
Ronald Quintana, 30, picked up the game two years ago after coming here from El Salvador. “I was curious, so I bought some books and began studying. I come here to try to keep up with the game, to see how far I can go. It’s a kind of discipline I like. It gives me something to do with my mind.”
When he lost, he stood up and thanked his opponent in Spanish, then stuffed his chess books in a plastic grocery bag and headed for the bus.
I’ve probably walked by the tables a hundred times, on walks down the boardwalk at Santa Monica beach. That’s the value of seeing something through a tourist’s eyes -- the familiar looks new.
There are other places in L.A. where chess lovers congregate. Russians play for hours in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, engaging in silent, high-stakes matches. African Americans play at Magic Johnson’s Starbucks in Westchester, with lots of trash talk and camaraderie.
But nowhere is the crowd so eclectic, the vibe so pure that a homeless drug addict can take a game from a Harvard-trained mathematician and no one blinks.
And there’s something else -- teaching is part of the ethos.
Sonny Rogers, 67, of Santa Monica didn’t take up the game until he retired.
Thirty years ago, he used to watch his co-workers play chess at lunch, but he was too intimidated to try.
Six months ago, he began dropping by the chess park. At first, he just watched.
“I enjoyed the different attitudes of the people, hearing their stories, watching them enjoy themselves,” he said. “Every now and then, I get up the nerve to sit down and play a game, then six moves in, it’s over.”
But he doesn’t mind losing. Here, winning isn’t the point. It’s about sitting down and playing together, learning new lessons and listening to someone else’s story.
It’s an L.A. story writ in sand, sea and 64 squares of a faded chessboard.
--
sandy.banks@latimes.com
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.