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817be2f04a6f5c04b535038b70dfdc66 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-17-fi-menu17-story.html | Social policy on the menu | Social policy on the menu
Diners in this food-obsessed city are used to exotic offerings such as chili squid salad, risotto Milanese with oxtail ragu and marinated noisettes of venison.
But this winter a controversial new item has been showing up in the fine print of menus at some of the hottest restaurants: a surcharge to help pay for worker health insurance.
In the hip South of Market neighborhood, the menu at Tres Agaves, a popular Mexican restaurant and tequila bar, has a small message at the bottom of the first page that says, “3.5% service charge will be added to all checks for the San Francisco affordable healthcare legislation.”
At issue is the city’s new effort, kicked off Jan. 9, to provide healthcare for all residents. Since then, employers with more than 20 workers are required to spend a minimum amount on health insurance, set aside money in health reimbursement accounts or pay a fee to the city’s Healthy San Francisco program.
A big city jumping into universal healthcare is unprecedented. The program is being watched closely as officials from Sacramento to Washington struggle to invent ways to provide and pay for care for the uninsured.
Restaurant patrons so far don’t seem to mind footing the bill for expanded healthcare. “We haven’t noticed it, so I guess it’s not that big a deal,” said Stacy Wong, a Tres Agaves customer waiting with friends to lunch on Jalisco-style fish tacos.
But restaurateurs are irate, saying they eke out livelihoods on profit margins as slim as two pennies on the dollar. The program is burdensome for the city’s 4,200 eateries, and their trade group has filed suit to stop it.
Thousands of other small to medium-size businesses, which hire many low-wage and part-time workers, also complain about the healthcare mandate’s cost and are hoping that the restaurant association wins its lawsuit, said Scott Hauge, a San Francisco insurance broker and president of Small Business California, an advocacy group.
“There’s no doubt that the restaurant industry is going to survive in San Francisco,” even with higher health costs, said restaurant consultant Joan Simon. Medium-size cafes and bistros will need to get “leaner and meaner,” while “the larger restaurants, the ‘destinations,’ will raise rates and do fine.”
But city officials need to be careful of “shooting the golden goose” if they keep driving up menu prices, she warns. “What drives tourism partially is the reputation San Francisco has for dining,” she said. “If we make it difficult for restaurants to keep affordable prices -- not just for the high-end tourists -- then we’re going to see less tourism.”
Perhaps San Francisco’s best-known restaurateur is program supporter Mayor Gavin Newsom, a partner in five out-of-town eateries who sold his interests in the city after being elected. “No one argues that our program is perfect, but it’s better than anywhere else,” he said. “City Hall is not going to back away.”
The restaurant surcharges are spreading. Market Street favorite Zuni Cafe charges 4% of the total bill. Others, including Delfina, a trendy Mission District trattoria, collect a flat fee of $1 to $2 per person.
“The major players I talked to are all doing it. It’s in the dozens,” said Daniel Scherotter, the executive chef and owner of an Italian restaurant in the Financial District and president of the Golden Gate Restaurant Assn. “It’s a scary move, and only the bold are venturing into the territory.”
But other top restaurants, such as the Slanted Door, a Vietnamese haute-cuisine hot spot, said they simply hiked food prices, preferring not to alert patrons to the new costs.
Charles Phan, executive chef and owner of the 200-seat venue with a splendid view of the Bay Bridge, said that “customers will look at surcharges and say, ‘Why do I have to pay for that?’ ”
Phan pays as much as half the cost of health insurance for about 100 full-time employees. Another 100 part-timers get no coverage. He estimates that his healthcare costs will jump by 67% to $500,000 this year with the new program.
Such “a constant assault” makes “every chef I talk to not want to open another restaurant in San Francisco,” he said.
And owners of smaller places, with fewer than 20 employees and exempt from the healthcare requirement, say that it’s become too costly to expand in the city, even when business is booming.
“We will always have 18 [employees] now,” vowed Anna Weinberg, a co-owner of South, a 50-seat restaurant featuring Australian cuisine that opened in October. Weinberg plans to open her next eatery on the Westside of Los Angeles.
San Francisco costs already are among the nation’s highest, experts say. “It costs me triple to hire a waiter than a New York City restaurant,” Scherotter said. Health insurance costs at his Palio D’Asti are doubling to $120,000 a year under the new program, he said.
To be sure, owners like Weinberg and Phan pride themselves on sharing the liberal-leaning social values that are as much a part of their hometown as the Golden Gate Bridge. But as employers who depend on large numbers of waiters, cooks and busboys, they insist that they’re being unfairly singled out to make San Francisco the first place in the state to offer universal health services.
Local establishments, they point out, already are paying a $9.36 hourly minimum wage, the nation’s second highest and 17% higher than in any other California city. They also are the only employers in the state required by law to grant paid sick days to all workers.
The Golden Gate Restaurant Assn. has turned that gripe into a lawsuit against the city. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments April 17 in Pasadena.
What’s next? There are no plans for a dish-washing surcharge or a fee for laundering tablecloths. But the city is considering ordering restaurant chains to put nutrition information on menus.
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marc.lifsher@latimes.com
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7a79b4bfdc64926949616dd0430d519f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-17-he-generic17-story.html | Just as good? | Just as good?
In the contentious debate over insuring Americans’ health, the value of generic prescription drugs is a rare point of consensus. Patients, physicians, employers, politicians -- all hail generics as powerful treatment for a swelling healthcare tab. On average, these copycat medicines cost less than a third of the brand-name drugs they mimic. In turn, the competition they provide drives down the cost of those first-to-market drugs.
Officials of the Food and Drug Administration insist this feat of economics comes without any compromise to a medicine’s effectiveness. To be marketed in the United States, these low-cost medicines must be approved by the FDA, which ensures they are “bioequivalent” to their brand-name counterparts -- the same dose of the same active ingredient, delivered in the same way, and manufactured according to the same standards of quality.
The Generic Pharmaceutical Assn. touts them with a slightly catchier slogan: “Same Medicine. Same Results.” But sometimes, patients and their doctors beg to differ.
A switch from a long-used brand-name drug to its generic equivalent can, on occasion, bring a shifting profile of side effects. In a number of cases documented in medical journals and recounted in interviews with physicians, a generic version of what is often called a “pioneer” drug simply doesn’t appear to work as well for many patients.
“Everybody thinks generics are swell: To suggest otherwise is like saying you don’t love your mother,” said Dr. Peter R. Kowey, chief of cardiovascular diseases at the Philadelphia area’s Main Line Health System, who reviewed the issue of generic substitution of certain heart drugs for the American Heart Assn. But between some pioneer drugs and their generic imitators, Kowey said, “we are concerned that the margin of difference is large enough” to risk patients’ health.
Last December, the American Epilepsy Society called on the FDA to approve a large clinical trial to determine “once and for all” whether the substitution of brand-name drugs with generics increases the risk of “breakthrough” seizures or toxicity among patients with epilepsy. This type of research would probably take years. But until such a study is completed, the society declared, it would oppose measures by state, federal or private insurance programs that would limit physicians’ choices in prescribing anti-seizure medicines.
Last fall, an independent laboratory, prompted by a flurry of consumer complaints, presented evidence that a generic version of the once-a-day antidepressant Wellbutrin XL may be less effective than the original at reducing some patients’ depressive symptoms. An agency spokeswoman said the FDA is investigating the matter and will make its findings public when the inquiry is complete.
In a report released today, the New York-based ConsumerLab.com, which conducted the Wellbutrin XL analysis, also urges the FDA to review the performance of a new generic for Toprol XL, a once-a-day version of a high blood pressure drug that is the fifth most-prescribed medicine in the United States. That challenge comes after dozens of patients complained to the People’s Pharmacy -- a multimedia source of information about drugs and supplements -- of erratic spikes in blood pressure and side effects after they had switched from Toprol XL to a new generic version of the drug.
Cardiologists, meanwhile, have been growing more vocal in their concern about “generic substitution” for newer, brand-name drugs. They have had long-standing worries about the effect of switching patients whose blood has been thinned with Coumadin to generic versions of the anticoagulant, including warfarin. Many have warned that patients with heart arrhythmias should be switched to generic drugs only when necessary. And many cardiologists view the swelling field of generic blood-pressure and cholesterol drugs with some distrust.
The American Assn. of Clinical Endocrinologists, the Endocrine Society and the American Thyroid Assn. joined voices in 2004 to warn that patients with hypothyroidism could be harmed by switching among the many generics used to treat the condition. And physicians who care for organ transplant recipients have opposed generic substitution of immunosupressant drugs for their patients without a transplant specialist’s prior approval. Societies that represent these doctors have been active in seeking state laws that would limit such switches.
Kathleen Jaeger, president and chief executive of the Generic Pharmaceutical Assn., dismisses all of these debates as “misinformation campaigns” masterminded by brand-name pharmaceutical companies. As these companies’ most profitable medicines face competition from generic upstarts, Jaeger said, they seek to “extend their monopoly” by sowing doubt in the minds of physicians, pharmacists and patients about the quality of the cheaper substitutes.
Those who would question generic drugs’ equivalence to the brand-name drugs they mimic are calling into question a stringent FDA review process, said Jaeger. “They do a disservice to our healthcare system,” she added. “Consumers deserve better.”
But many physicians and pharmacologists interviewed said that with some drugs, the FDA -- an agency that has come in for harsh criticism on matters of drug safety in recent years -- may be overlooking differences that could be important to patients’ health.
FDA officials “have adopted a position that is in some respects quite brave,” said Peter Meredith, a University of Glasgow pharmacologist who has written extensively about generic drugs and their regulation. “The FDA quite rigidly states that when they say a drug is substitutable, they mean that with no caveats, no qualifications. My concern would be that if you don’t look for one, you don’t see it.”
With about 9,000 generic drugs on the U.S. market, concerns raised about a handful do not suggest a broad failure in the nation’s formulary of low-cost medications. But many physicians and pharmacologists caution that with new generics entering the market at a rate of almost 500 per year, and millions of consumers switching to them, their safety and effectiveness will be increasingly critical.
“The reasonable people I know aren’t pounding their fists saying all generics are bad,” Kowey said. “They’re saying to the FDA, ‘C’mon guys, there may be some situations in which [these differences] may turn out to be important.’ ”
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Doctors, users speak out
Dr. Gerald Naccarelli, chief of the Pennsylvania State medical center’s division of cardiology, believes a switch to a generic drug to control heart arrhythmia contributed to the death of one patient in Houston early in his career. Recently, he said, another of his patients suffered a life-threatening ventricular arrhythmia after the man was switched from a long-standing regimen of a brand-name medication to a new generic. The patient was hospitalized but lived. When the FDA approved a generic version of an anti-arrhythmia drug that Naccarelli did not believe had been studied properly at higher doses, he wrote a letter to the FDA.
“I’m confused why there’s one set of standards for patented trade-name drugs for FDA approval and a separate standard for generic substitutions,” he said. “Some generic drugs . . . should be held to higher standards than the FDA now enforces.”
Jillian Bealer of Buffalo, N.Y., is a fan of generics and the savings they bring. But she says her faith in their equivalence to brand-name drugs was shaken by a nasty recurrence of depression she suffered recently when she switched to a new generic for Wellbutrin XL.
For three years, Bealer, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and an anxiety disorder, took 300 milligrams of the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL to stabilize her mood and maintain her focus and attention. It helped her feel like herself, she said, “very outgoing and very upbeat.”
But in early November, a new pharmacy refilled her prescription with a large yellow caplet -- a newly approved generic version of Wellbutrin XL identified by its chemical name, Bupropion Hydrochloride XL, and marketed by the generic manufacturing giant Teva under the commercial name Budeprion. The new generic had a smaller co-pay than the branded product under Bealer’s employer-provided insurance policy, and the pharmacist assured her that the new pill would work just as well.
Bealer began taking the pill. But as the holiday season approached, she found that her favorite time of year was feeling like “just a burden.” For weeks, she didn’t answer the phone, didn’t go to parties and used up vacation days because she didn’t want to get out of bed. She had headaches that made holiday shopping miserable and in spite of a flagging appetite, felt she was gaining weight.
Bealer suspected that the new generic version of Wellbutrin XL wasn’t working the way the original had. On a sleepless night in early January, she started combing the Internet to see if other patients might have detected a difference. Bealer discovered she had lots of company -- and some lab evidence to suggest her suspicions were on-base.
“I was just so angry,” the 30-year-old pharmaceutical saleswoman said. “I was so miserable . . . I am not the only one who’s had these side effects. Something needs to be done, because someone could get really hurt or kill themselves.”
Denise Bradley, a spokeswoman for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, said Teva’s 300-milligram extended release antidepressant has met the FDA’s specifications and performed well in its first year on the U.S. market. As of mid-October, 4.5 million prescriptions had been filled last year, and Teva had received 101 consumer complaints. That rate of concerns expressed, 0.002%, is “consistent with the rate of such reports for all prescription pharmaceuticals,” said Bradley.
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Expanding market
Currently, 64% of all prescriptions filled in the United States are for generics. That percentage is expected to rise steeply over the next few years.
In 2007, the FDA approved manufacturers’ plans to market 682 new generics in the United States. The agency still is working its way through a backlog of about 1,300 more applications from generic pharmaceutical manufacturers -- a tally that grows weekly. Among the widely prescribed medications expected to appear in generic form in the next few years: the migraine drug Imitrex; the cholesterol drug Lipitor; the blood pressure drug Norvasc; the gastrointestinal reflux drug Prevacid; and the psychiatric medications Risperdal, Effexor and Zyprexa.
At the same time, consumers are finding themselves constrained by their health plans, or lack of one.
In 2000, 22% of American workers with employer-sponsored health insurance had plans that made no distinctions in their coverage of medications: A patient’s co-payment was the same whether she chose the expensive brand-name or the generic formulation of a drug.
Today, only 6% of workers have prescription plans with such free choice, reports the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts an annual survey of employer health benefits. Kaiser’s survey shows that more insurers are making more distinctions among medicines for which they will help pay and, in most cases, asking workers to shoulder a higher proportion of costs for drugs that cost more.
Most patients welcome generics enthusiastically. Retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Target have begun filling most generic prescriptions for prices as low as $4 apiece. Generic drugs cost between 30% and 80% of the brand names they mimic, and price tags on those pioneer medicines are headed upward. Wholesale prices for the top-selling 50 brand-name medications rose by about 8% in 2007, according to a report by Delta Marketing Dynamics, which tracks drug trends. That’s after hikes of about 7% in 2006 and about 6% in 2005.
At the same time, Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance companies and hospital pharmacies are trying to hold down rising costs by aggressively encouraging patients to use generics. Increasingly, many are going further: They are asking patients to switch to a different class of drugs to treat a condition -- say, from an ACE inhibitor to a beta blocker to control high blood pressure -- because more generics may be available in one drug class than another. Such “formulary switches” can be more problematic than a brand-to-generic switch, because the old and new drugs work differently.
As generics move into Americans’ medicine chests in growing numbers, two things are likely, say experts: There will be copycat medications that work differently -- and sometimes less effectively -- than originals; and there will be patients who do not respond as well to them. Patients and doctors should be alert to variations in a new prescription’s effectiveness, they advise, and report their concerns to the FDA’s adverse-events monitoring system, called MedWatch ( www.fda.gov/medwatch).
“The generics industry is highly successful, and it wouldn’t be if it was always failing patients,” said R. William Soller, a professor of pharmacology at UC San Francisco. But, he added, “it’s pretty hard to think you have an absolutely perfect system.”
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‘Pandora’s box’
In recent years, the system by which generic prescription drugs are approved as “bioequivalent” to their brand-name counterparts has come in for criticism from many quarters. FDA’s regulation of generics is most vulnerable to criticism in cases where a medicine must be administered in very precise doses and on a precise schedule to be safe and effective. These drugs have what pharmacologists call a “narrow therapeutic index”: There’s a fine line between a dose that’s ineffective and one that could be dangerous.
Typically, a patient’s response to such medicine must be carefully monitored, and the consequences of failure could be dire: a seizure, dangerously erratic heartbeat, soaring blood pressure, blood clots or uncontrolled bleeding.
But FDA regulators have been “very categorical” in their insistence that no differences exist between generics and the pioneer drugs they follow, said Kowey. As a result, the agency has resisted studies that might call that into question with any single class of drugs, fearing that consumers will come to question the equal effectiveness of all generics. “They don’t want to open the Pandora’s box,” said Kowey.
Dr. Gary Buehler, director of the FDA’s office of generic drugs, declined an interview request. But FDA spokeswoman Sandy Walsh told The Times the “FDA cannot offer any examples where generics have been shown to not perform as expected.”
The “FDA has many years of experience in the review of generic drugs and has great confidence in the quality and equivalence of generic drug products,” added Walsh.
By the time Jillian Bealer turned to the Internet for information early this year, she found a chorus of complaints from Wellbutrin XL users who had switched to a new generic made by Teva. Their disappointment in the generic’s performance began showing up on drug- and depression-related Internet chat sites in March 2007, about two months after Teva’s generic hit the market.
More than 300 of those patients had sent anguished letters and e-mails to Joe and Teresa Graedon, the founders of a respected multimedia clearinghouse that dispenses independent advice on drugs and dietary supplements. (The Graedons’ syndicated column, People’s Pharmacy, runs in this and other newspapers.)
These consumers reported increased anxiety and irritability, headaches, nausea and insomnia since switching to the generic. Many reported a return of their previously controlled depressive symptoms.
By summer 2007, the Graedons had collected enough letters from readers to alert the FDA and to ask an independent testing and certification lab, ConsumerLab.com, to compare the new Wellbutrin generics against their original counterparts and assess claims of equal performance.
The results, confirmed by a second test lab and released last fall by ConsumerLab.com, raised questions about at least one version of the generic copies -- a 300-milligram dose of bupropion marketed by Teva -- as well as the FDA process by which a proposed generic’s equivalence to a pioneer drug is established.
“We were shocked when we got the results” comparing the 300-milligram tablet of Wellbutrin XL -- the most frequently prescribed dose of the product -- and Teva’s generic, said Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com. The rate at which the two pills dissolved when in a medium mimicking the human digestive system “was very different,” he said.
Both products released the same amount of bupropion hydrochloride into the solution over 16 hours, but the generic pumped out its active ingredient much faster than did the branded product: In the first two hours, the generic released a third of its active ingredient -- four times as much as its brand counterpart. At four hours, the generic had released almost half of its medicine, the brand-name about a quarter.
The difference might well explain why consumers accustomed to taking Wellbutrin XL would feel different when taking Teva’s generic, marketed as Budeprion XL, said Cooperman. With a more rapid release rate, the concentration of generic bupropion in the blood will rise quickly, but may also fall lower late in the 24-hour cycle than would be the case with the branded Wellbutrin XL.
With a greater-than-accustomed dose of medicine in her system soon after taking her pill, a patient like Jillian Bealer might experience more of bupropion’s recognized side effects, including irritability, headaches and insomnia. In the second half of her 24-hour pill cycle, she may feel the effects of a lower-than-accustomed dose, including depressed mood.
Cooperman adds that the different dissolution rates of the two products could have safety implications, since patients who take too high a dose of bupropion are at increased risk of having a seizure.
In December, Dr. Robert Temple of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research confirmed that in the lab and in volunteers, the two products differed significantly in their dissolution rate. But that difference was within allowable limits set by regulators. By the time both pills had dissolved, he said, they had released equal levels of Wellbutrin’s active ingredient into the bloodstreams of subjects.
The agency thought the allowed variations in the rate at which the medicine was absorbed by patients “wouldn’t make any difference,” Temple told Southern California public radio station KPCC-FM (89.3).
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Back to brand names
Jillian Bealer thinks it made the difference between functioning effectively and dragging herself through a holiday season she usually loves. When she shelled out $150 to refill her prescription with Wellbutrin XL, Bealer said, she regained her good humor within a week and a half. She now pays a $45 co-payment instead of $15 for a generic refill. But she said she’ll never go back.
The FDA, she said, will probably dismiss stories like hers as flukes. With so much company, Bealer thinks that would be a mistake. “This many people,” she said, “could not be wrong.”
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melissa.healy@latimes.com
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360bb726eecaf964a1cd6e0b31e414ea | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-17-he-genericside17-story.html | FDA standards are questioned | FDA standards are questioned
In carrying out its mission to ensure that generic drugs are “the same medicine” with “the same results” as the pioneer drugs they follow, the Food and Drug Administration rigidly applies a standard of what is called “bioequivalence.” Measured in laboratories and in simple, small-scale human trials, a generic must deliver the same active ingredient to the bloodstream of patients in virtually the same amount at virtually the same rate as the pioneer drug.
The FDA considers “bioequivalence” a good surrogate for “therapeutic equivalence” -- the equal ability of two drug formulations to ease symptoms or cure disease. Physicians and pharmacologists say that for some copycat drugs, showing bioequivalence to the original is not proof enough that the “same medicine” will yield “the same results.”
There are several potential flaws in the FDA’s standards of comparison, drug experts say.
First, the agency’s tolerance for variance in the content and release of a drug’s active ingredient -- the healing compound -- may be too broad.
Second, the FDA does not demand realistic trials of different formulations in large patient populations.
And third, by measuring a generic medication’s ability to deliver a drug compound to the bloodstream, the FDA may be looking in the wrong place. Most drugs work their magic not in the blood but in organs, cells or tissue elsewhere, and the agency does not insist on proof that a generic formulation delivers its active ingredient effectively to the same sites that pioneer drugs do.
In fact, a brand-name drug’s generic counterpart is rarely an exact replica. Though the two share equal amounts of the same active ingredient, they generally look different. And those differences, say some pharmacologists, can result in small variations in how they work in patients.
A brand-name drug and its generic in most cases are formulated with different colorants, fillers and binding materials. Though all of those must come from an FDA-approved list of pharmaceutical ingredients, they are, in most cases, assembled differently in each manufacturer’s product. One version of a drug might use lactose or sugar as an inactive ingredient; another might not. But incidental ingredients like these can affect the way patients dissolve and metabolize a drug’s active ingredient -- faster or slower. And that, in turn, can result in variations in the two formulations’ effects.
In almost all cases, the FDA permits a generic drug to release 80% to 125% of an active ingredient into the bloodstream, compared to that released in a single dose of the original medication. That range would make little practical difference in the effect that most drugs have. And the FDA and generics manufacturers defend the allowable range of variance as the same that is permitted among “batches” of brand-name drugs.
But medical and pharmacology specialists warn that the FDA’s range may be too broad for some drugs, especially in cases where a drug has a “narrow therapeutic index” -- the fine line between an ineffective dose and a dangerous one.
Variations in the rate at which a brand-name and its generic (or two different generics) release their active ingredient could court disaster with some drugs, as well. On this front, experts said “extended release formulas” -- doses that usually are taken no more than once a day -- can pose particular problems.
If one formulation releases its therapeutic agent evenly over 20 hours and another releases a large percentage in the first five hours and very little in the final five, a patient might get a toxic concentration of drug in the morning and limp along with a dangerously ineffective dose late in the day. In lab tests and in small samples of human subjects, FDA measures release rates at periodic intervals. But pharmacologists warn that those intervals may not always be fine enough.
“Bioequivalence and therapeutic effectiveness are not necessarily the same,” wrote neuropsychiatrist Dr. Giuseppe Borgheini in a 2004 article published in the journal Clinical Therapy. Borgheini reviewed the medical literature documenting differences in the clinical effects of generic psychoactive drugs and their brand-name counterparts. In the case of three anti-seizure drugs -- phenytoin, carabamazepine and valproic acid (marketed under the commercial names Cerebyx, Tegretol and Felbatol, respectively), studies found that generic formulations either failed to release the correct dose to patients’ bloodstreams or eventuated in higher rates of “breakthrough seizures.”
Finally, the agency demands little clinical evidence that a proposed generic drug will work the same as a pioneer drug in a broad cross section of real patients. The agency conducts quality-control tests on generic samples periodically after marketing begins, and patients and physicians can report problems with a generic drug to the FDA’s adverse-event monitoring system. But neither generic-drug manufacturers nor the FDA does post-marketing studies that might indicate patients are responding differently to a generic than to its brand-name counterpart.
In the generics approval process, the FDA typically requires a manufacturer to administer a single dose of its proposed product to a group of 24 to 48 healthy volunteers, then to sample their blood levels periodically to gauge concentrations of the active ingredient. The generic’s performance is then compared with the pioneer drug in the same group.
But that may not be a good gauge of how large populations of sick patients will tolerate or respond to a variant of the medication they’ve already been on, say critics of the approval process. “We don’t use these medicines in normal volunteers: our patients are old, their hearts, their livers, their kidneys don’t work so well,” said Pennsylvania State medical center cardiologist Dr. Gerald Naccarelli. “They test these generics on a healthy 30-year-old and test his blood levels and say, ‘OK, close enough.’ And they translate that into an 80-year-old-guy who’s on nine different meds? I would suggest that someone who knew nothing about medicine would say that’s problematic.”
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melissa.healy@latimes.com
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781516edecf18c4a6a9a13d69de160ab | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-17-he-sweetener17-story.html | Rats get fat, but we may get lucky | Rats get fat, but we may get lucky
Artificial sweeteners -- those diet-friendly ways to satisfy the sweet tooth -- recently got some bad press. In a study that has spurred discussion among scientists and on dieting blogs, researchers at Purdue University found that rats consuming saccharin-sweetened yogurt ate more food overall and put on more weight during a two-week period than rats consuming glucose-sweetened yogurt.
The rodent finding has led some to ask: Are artificial sweeteners really good for a diet? Or do they, in fact, undermine weight-loss efforts?
Some researchers, including authors of the rat study, say the answer is the latter. Zero- or very-low-calorie sweeteners such as saccharin and aspartame are charlatans, they say -- signaling sweetness without delivering the goods. As a result, the body’s Pavlovian association of “sweet” with “calories” -- is weakened, upsetting the ability to balance how many calories are eaten against how many are used up.
The result? Weight control becomes more difficult.
“There’s no reason to believe that humans don’t do the same thing” as the rats, says Susan Swithers, lead author of the rat study and an associate professor of psychology at Purdue University.
Other nutrition researchers aren’t convinced that the rat study applies to people and point to human studies with different results. They say that even if taste signals are weakened in humans consuming artificial sweeteners, any imbalance is likely to be dwarfed by other influences on eating -- including portion size, mindless munching and eating for self-comfort’s sake.
“We don’t quite know where this fits,” said Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition and director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina. “It’s another part of the puzzle, the long- and short-term human effects of all the sweeteners that have been added to our diet -- both the caloric and diet -- over the last 20 to 30 years.”
The rodent study, published last month in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, manipulated the signal that sweet taste sends. Rats ate yogurt (some days it was sweetened and other days it wasn’t) in addition to their regular chow. Glucose was the sweetener in one group of rats, and saccharin was used in a second group.
The saccharin-eating rats ingested 5% to 10% more calories overall, gained 20% more weight and increased their percentage of body fat by more than 5%. Swithers and co-author Terry Davidson suggest that, by interfering with what sweet taste means, artificial sweeteners upset an ancient physiological system that evolved to regulate food intake and energy use.
In other words, just as artificial sweeteners trick our taste buds and satisfy our sweet tooth, they may confuse other systems involved in assessing calorie intake and controlling appetite.
Scientists who doubt the rat finding point to similar studies with human beings in which artificial sweeteners didn’t make people overeat.
In one of them, published in 1990 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers gave healthy U.S. adults 40 ounces of either aspartame-sweetened soda or high-fructose corn syrup-sweetened soda every day for three weeks. Then, after a three-week break, the volunteers drank the other test beverage for three weeks.
Under both conditions, subjects reduced their caloric intake of other foods, to the tune of about 200 calories per day. The aspartame group lost a little weight (the average was less than a pound) and the high-fructose corn syrup group, who took in 530 calories each from their soda, gained a little weight (on average 1.5 pounds).
In a 2002 Danish study also published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, overweight subjects were given packages containing food and drink sweetened with either sucrose or a variety of artificial sweeteners (a mix of products was used, so a mix of artificial sweeteners was consumed). They were instructed to consume a certain amount of the foods provided each day, which resulted in consumption of about 600 extra calories daily in the sucrose group.
After 10 weeks the researchers found that both groups compensated elsewhere in their diet for consuming the sweetened foods; the noncaloric sweetener group lost a little weight and the sugar group gained a little weight (less than a pound either way).
Both these studies were too small (30 to 40 subjects) and too short (three to 10 weeks) to be considered definitive. However, many obesity experts say they are more comfortable with their findings than those of the animal study. “I’m a little taken aback, because people are getting all excited about this rat study,” says Mark Pereira, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota. And yet, he adds, these two human studies show that in terms of weight gain, “a calorie is a calorie.”
The two studies also showed that people don’t fully compensate for the calories they drink in sugar-sweetened beverages by reducing their intake of other calories by the same amount. Indeed, study subjects overshot their intake by about 70% of the amount of calories they drank with the beverages provided by the researchers. Many obesity researchers agree that liquid calories are less likely to be counted than solid ones -- and thus that quaffing sugary drinks is particularly likely to lead to a slow gain in weight.
“When you’re consuming liquid sugar, you’re probably going to end up with a higher caloric intake on a daily basis,” Pereira says.
Michael Tordoff, a faculty member at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia who conducted the U.S. study, says he can’t say for sure what would happen over months or years if someone drank only the diet version of all their soda. But based on his three-week study, he says, “I can say for certain that if you are a regular soda drinker and you switch to diet soda, that’s a good thing.”
As well as the small, controlled diet studies, there are also large population studies on the matter of weight gain and diet drinks. And here the findings differ, with several studies showing an association between diet beverages and weight gain and/or higher obesity rates.
Two recent long-term studies found a positive correlation between diet beverages and metabolic syndrome, which is a constellation of risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
A 2007 study published in the journal Circulation looked at soft drink consumption in a group of 6,000 adults who were part of the famous Framingham Heart Study and found a 50% increased risk of metabolic syndrome over four years in participants who drank one or more sodas per day compared with those who drank less than one soda per day. Whether the soda was regular or diet made no difference.
Similarly, data collected from about 9,500 adults in another large prospective study called the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study showed that over nine years, participants who consumed one serving of diet soda a day had a 34% higher risk of metabolic syndrome compared with those who didn’t drink diet soda. (This study, published in Circulation earlier this year, also found a positive correlation with eating meat and fried foods, but not sugar-sweetened beverages.)
Although these kinds of studies have the advantage of monitoring changes over time, they still may suffer from a chicken-or-egg scenario: Is the diet soda causing metabolic syndrome, or are those high-risk individuals drinking diet soda because they’re counting carbs?
The bottom line on the artificial sweetener imbroglio: a knotty tangle of data that screams “more research needed.”
“I don’t think we have the answer, and I don’t think these authors are claiming that they have definitive evidence that this is causing the obesity epidemic in humans,” says Richard Mattes, professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University.
But, he adds, “They are posing an interesting and testable question.”
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health@latimes.com
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34c6c4d5225473e2a75aaa51287cae8a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-17-oe-rodriguez17-story.html | White suspicion, black ‘luck’ | White suspicion, black ‘luck’
For decades, critics of affirmative action on both sides of the aisle have argued that the policy calls into question the talents and qualifications of the minorities who benefit from it. They insisted that it generates a cloud of suspicion around the successful black or Latino student or professional. It makes whites wonder whether their minority colleagues really “earned” their positions.
It turns out those critics are right about the suspicion part. And evidently you don’t even have to be an actual beneficiary of affirmative action to be accused of having an unfair advantage. Geraldine Ferraro’s remark that “if [Barack] Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position” was not racist per se; it did not presume racial inferiority on the part of any person or group. But it was remarkably arrogant, ignorant and, unfortunately, reflective of an all too common and growing sentiment in the post-Civil Rights era.
In 1999, the Seattle Times commissioned a survey that found 75% of whites agreed with the statement that “unqualified minorities get hired over qualified whites” most or some of the time. Two-thirds felt the same when asked about promotions and college admissions. Whether white disadvantage is real or imagined, the poll showed that a considerable number of whites feel threatened not only by the means of ascent but by minority advancement itself. Clearly, most minorities who advance up the professional ladder are not unqualified. (If you think that last sentence is incorrect, you probably are a true-blue racist.)
But what’s most troubling about Ferraro’s comment was that she seemed blind to its implications and absurdities. In retrospect, Ferraro’s own claim to fame -- being tapped by a white male party “elder” to be the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate -- clearly had the whiff of tokenism about it. Unlike Ferraro in 1984, Obama has built his run for high national office over many, many months, from the ground up, raising money and voter awareness on his own. Where then is the affirmative action?
If Ferraro had clarified her remarks (and she had oh so many television minutes last week to do so) -- perhaps explaining that what she meant was that Obama’s blackness has played a role in his appeal -- she might have saved her role in the Clinton campaign, but she still would have been only partly right.
Because what’s impressive about Obama is not so much his African American identity as the way he wields it. He uses both the language of group pride and national unity. Unlike so many -- often media-created -- black leaders, Obama doesn’t use a parochial message of victimhood or the zero-sum logic of “us versus them.” Rather than spend a lot of time talking about racism, historical or otherwise, he preaches a form of collective can-doism. He sells himself as a symbol of reconciliation and knows that at this point in history, cries of racism are the quickest way to turn off white voters who are tired of being made to feel guilty for racial injustice.
But, of course, after Obama’s campaign rightly complained about Ferraro’s rhetoric (calling it “absurd” and “wrongheaded”), the indignant Ferraro inaccurately accused them of accusing her of being a racist. So there you go, despite all his efforts, the lucky-to-be-a-black-male presidential candidate can’t escape the stereotype. In the end, she still sought to paint him as that much-maligned “black civil rights leader” who never stops whining about racism: Barack Obama as the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Now, none of this would matter much if these had been the utterances of a small-time Clinton campaign worker. But Ferraro has a legacy in Democratic politics. Her remarks, coupled with those of former President Clinton comparing Obama’s win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s victory there in 1984, reveal a reckless disregard for blacks in the higher echelons of the Democratic Party. Yes, it’ll all be forgotten if Obama wins the nomination. But it’ll fester if he doesn’t.
Nor should Republicans gloat too much. Ferraro’s implicit leveraging of white resentment over affirmative action was essentially an ad-hoc version of Richard Nixon’s infamous “Southern strategy.”
And what happens if black voters do become disaffected with the Democratic Party? Because the GOP isn’t likely to embrace them, those voters would probably abstain from the process. And as even someone with the slightest knowledge of history should know, having large numbers of African Americans feeling alienated from the political system and with no place to turn isn’t just bad for blacks but for the entire body politic. Now is as good a time as any for Hillary Clinton’s supporters to realize that there are more important things than winning.
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grodriguez@latimescolumnists.com
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3167ff2e42544acd52e5c8ae759cbad1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-18-fg-gripes18-story.html | Years of grievances erupt into rage | Years of grievances erupt into rage
Public schools Tibetans attend give short shrift to the Tibetan language, emphasizing Chinese instead. Ethnic Chinese hold most jobs, and Tibetan civil servants can be fired if their homes contain the traditional Buddhist shrine: a Buddha statue with incense sticks in front. Portraits of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader who has been in exile since 1959, are prohibited.
Tibetans have compiled a long list of grievances since 1951, when the Chinese Communists seized control of their Himalayan-area homeland. Those grievances are the backdrop for the violence that has burst to the surface during the last week in protests across China and the world.
The Dalai Lama has repeatedly accused the Chinese of “cultural genocide,” suppressing language, faith and customs while simultaneously flooding traditional Tibetan territory with ethnic Chinese.
Less than half of what Tibetans consider their historic homeland lies within the bounds of what is now called Tibet in western China. The rest of these lands are within China’s Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces, where Tibetans are a minority and treated as second-class citizens.
“It is not a genocide like World War II, but there is just no attempt to preserve our culture,” said a 29-year-old student living in Beijing, who asked that her name not be used for fear that she could lose her residency permit.
The Chinese Communist Party says it has invested billions trying to lift what it calls a backward, feudal society into the 21st century. The most ambitious component of that investment was a $4-billion railroad extension that opened in 2006, linking the isolated Tibetan capital, Lhasa, to the rest of the country.
But Tibetans say that the Qinghai-Tibet rail line, billed as the highest in the world, had served only to bring more Chinese entrepreneurs, migrant workers and tourists into their lands, further diluting their culture.
The vast majority of the 4 million tourists who visited Tibet last year were Chinese, who are using their newfound wealth to experience what they see as China’s exotic “wild west.”
The hotels, travel agencies and restaurants they patronize are Chinese. Even many of the souvenir stalls selling traditional crafts in front of the main Jokhang Temple are owned by Chinese.
“All the jobs are held by Chinese. The businesses on the main square in front of the most sacred Tibetan temple are Chinese. You can imagine the resentment that generates and how it can manifest itself,” said Donald S. Lopez Jr., professor of Tibetan studies at the University of Michigan.
Although exact figures are hard to come by, Lhasa’s urban population of about 270,000 is already between 70% and 80% Chinese, said Kate Saunders, communications director for the London-based International Campaign for Tibet. She added that at least 100,000 migrant workers come from neighboring Sichuan province alone.
“The Sichuan dialect is now the most commonly heard in Lhasa, and there is a saying Lhasa is the backyard of Chengdu,” Saunders said, referring to the capital of Sichuan province.
“Although we have seen years of investment in Tibet, the vast majority of Tibetans are severely disadvantaged both socially and economically by inadequate education and healthcare so that they cannot compete with the growing number of Chinese migrants coming in,” Saunders said.
Tibet in the past was basically a theocracy with Buddhist monks not merely the spiritual leaders, but also the politicians, landlords and bankers. When the Communists arrived in the 1950s and confiscated the monasteries’ lands, they “threw Tibet into an economic chaos from which it still hasn’t recovered,” Lopez said.
The Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 saw wide-scale destruction of the monasteries by the Red Guards and harassment of the monks.
Under Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, the monasteries were rebuilt and religious practice restored, but under tight supervision.
Chinese President Hu Jintao was named for a stint as Communist Party secretary for Tibet in 1988 and rolled back many of Deng’s reforms. His protege, the current party boss Zhang Qingli, is also said to have tightened regulations on the monks.
To this day, monks are forced to undergo what is called “patriotic education,” sitting through lectures by Communist Party cadres about China’s virtues and the dangers of religion. What most offends the monks is hearing tirades against the Dalai Lama and being forced to sign statements denouncing him.
The 72-year-old Dalai Lama is revered as a god-king by Tibetans, and insults toward him elicit a visceral response -- not unlike the violent response of some Muslims to perceived slights against Muhammad. In October, when the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, Tibetan monks who tried to stage a celebration with fireworks were arrested.
Any Tibetan who wants to hold a civil service job must be careful not to be seen in processions or public religious celebrations.
“They say we can have religion. But if you practice religion, you won’t have a job,” said a 34-year-old Tibetan restaurant worker from Gansu province, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Probably the biggest complaint of the Tibetans is the continued absence of the Dalai Lama. People fear that if he dies in exile, they will be left without spiritual or political leadership. In 1995, a 6-year-old boy considered a possible successor was detained by the Chinese, and his whereabouts are unknown.
As in many long-running ethnic conflicts, simmering grievances may explode over the most trivial incident.
Only last month, a riot broke out in Tongren, Qinghai province, after a Tibetan child bought a balloon from a Chinese Muslim merchant at the market. The balloon wafted away and the child demanded another for free. The merchant refused. Within a few hours, two police cars were burned and 20 people were hospitalized. A hundred people were arrested.
“Tibet is like a bomb,” said Tanzin Lama, a 25-year-old student from Qinghai province who fled in 1999 and now lives in London.
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barbara.demick@latimes.com
Times staff writer Ching-Ching Ni contributed to this report.
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30a05841b7e2feb96eeba085d9186f98 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-18-na-campaign18-story.html | Obama to give ‘major address’ on race, as sermons ring on | Obama to give ‘major address’ on race, as sermons ring on
In an attempt to move beyond the controversy over inflammatory sermons given by his longtime pastor, Sen. Barack Obama said he would deliver a “major address” on race and politics in Philadelphia today.
The Illinois Democrat has struggled for several days to deal with comments by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., now retired, after videotapes of past sermons surfaced in which Wright said, among other things, that African Americans should sing “God Damn America” instead of “God Bless America.”
Obama ended a speech at a community college in western Pennsylvania on Monday morning with the words “God bless America” -- an atypical closing for him.
At a news conference later, he repeated condemnations he made of Wright’s remarks shortly after the videos were widely broadcast last week.
But he also said “the caricature that is being painted of [Wright] is not accurate.”
Obama has portrayed Wright as a close spiritual advisor, crediting Wright with leading him from a secular lifestyle to church membership.
The title of Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” is drawn from one of Wright’s sermons.
Obama has been involved with Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Wright was pastor, for nearly two decades. Wright presided at Obama’s marriage and baptized both of the couple’s daughters.
Obama has cast himself as a candidate who can move beyond America’s racial divisions. The controversy over Wright has challenged that image.
Throughout his campaign, Obama has rarely addressed race directly, and he has sought to prevent his campaign from being consumed by the subject.
Aides said Obama’s decision to deliver a speech on race was driven by the Wright controversy as well as by other developments that have heightened attention to issues of race.
These include recent comments by Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1984, in which she said in part: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” Ferraro supports the candidacy of Obama’s rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (R-N.Y.).
Clinton focused on the war in Iraq on Monday, delivering what was billed as a major policy speech on the conflict, which marks its fifth anniversary this week.
She said the war “we cannot win” may cost the nation $1 trillion and further strain the economy.
She blasted Obama and the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, arguing that she is the only candidate with a withdrawal plan.
“Sen. McCain would gladly accept the torch and stay the course, keeping troops in Iraq for up to 100 years if necessary,” she said in the address at George Washington University. “That in a nutshell is the Bush-McCain Iraq policy -- don’t learn from your mistakes, repeat them.”
Arguing that victory can only be achieved through political, not military, solutions, Clinton said, “Sen. McCain and President Bush claim withdrawal is defeat.
“Let’s be clear: Withdrawal is not defeat.
“Defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years.”
McCain, who was in Baghdad, told CNN that Clinton “obviously does not understand nor appreciate the progress that has been made on the ground. . . . The surge is working.”
Clinton also faulted Obama, saying he had not worked “aggressively” to end the war “until he started running for president.”
An Obama administration, she said, would not follow through on campaign promises to end the war.
“I have concrete, detailed plans to end this war, and I have not wavered on my commitment to follow through on them,” she said.
Obama fired back during a town-hall meeting in Pennsylvania.
“I have been consistent as saying that we have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in,” he said, adding that he would endeavor to withdraw U.S. forces while maintaining stability in Iraq. Clinton has not been consistent, he said.
Noting that he opposed the war in 2002 and each year since, Obama said, “I’ve been clear, unlike Sen. Clinton, who voted for war and has never taken responsibility for it.”
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Times staff writer Johanna Neuman in Washington contributed to this report.
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97e275e5f1f8c021367e28ad5f8978cc | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-19-et-color19-story.html | Exposing classical art’s true colors | Exposing classical art’s true colors
Contrary to popular belief, the sculpture of the ancient world was intensely colorful, with statues, friezes and decorative objects regularly covered in brilliant pigments intended to enhance their lifelike qualities.
But as curator Roberta Panzanelli explains in the fascinating catalog for “The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture From Antiquity to the Present,” now at the Getty Villa, it was the Renaissance and the Neoclassical era -- the two major periods of classical revival -- that shaped our understanding of ancient sculpture, and neither was particularly disposed to color.
In the Renaissance, ideological rivalries between painters and sculptors compelled each camp to define itself in opposition to the other, leading sculptors to eschew pigment in favor of pure form. “The sculptor needs only consider body, figure, position, motion, rest,” Leonardo da Vinci wrote, and “need not consider color.”
The Neoclassicists, for their part, driven by a Platonic aversion to the visceral, found the immediacy and realism of color in poor taste. From the middle of the 18th century until far into the 19th, Panzanelli observes, “color itself seemed the opponent of pure art.”
What’s more, by the time most ancient sculptures resurfaced in the Renaissance, any pigment they might have borne had generally faded, worn away or been washed off. In the absence of today’s high-tech methods of analysis, it was easy to presume that that was how they had always been.
The ubiquity of classical polychromy was thus overlooked for centuries, until mounting evidence and a flurry of scholarship forced the issue to light in the 1800s. Yet the disregard persisted. Even in recent decades, several of the catalog’s essayists suggest, scholars have tended simply to look the other way -- with, as Panzanelli puts it, “bewildering scholarly results.”
Clearly, polychromy has not been an easy sell. But with this show, Panzanelli and her fellow curators, Eike Schmidt and Kenneth Lapatin, make a valiant -- and persuasive -- case for it, combining scholarship and accessibility in typical Getty fashion.
The show is not as large as you might expect, given the time span. (The earliest piece -- a portrait of an Egyptian official and his family -- dates to the 3rd century BC; the most recent is a 2002 Stephan Balkenhol sculpture.) The selection is so conscientious, however, and the objects so exquisite, that one hardly notices.
The first gallery contains the ancient works, displayed alongside a number of painted reconstructions illustrating what scholars today believe their original state was. It’s a startling juxtaposition and one that few viewers are likely to consider an improvement -- part of the reason, no doubt, that the idea is such a hard sell.
The colors are bright, flat and slightly garish -- more suited to a child’s playroom, it would seem, than the hallowed quarters of a fine art museum. There is a romance to the notion of antiquities as chipped, faded, time-worn objects -- mysterious objects -- that is difficult to let go of, whatever the facts. (And no one, for the record, is suggesting that the objects be returned to their original state, even if scholars could agree on what that would be. The intention is more historical than aesthetic.)
That said, the colors the original objects retain are thrilling enough to make one muse about a career as an archaeologist or conservator: vivid smudges of blue tangled in the corkscrew curls of a 4th century BC terra cotta head; gold gleaming on the face of Mithras in a 3rd century AD relief; faint black eyelashes circling the ghost of a pupil on a bust of Caligula.
The remaining galleries are devoted to the next two millenniums and present a rich sampling of polychromatic tendencies in nearly every traditional material. Most are quite beautiful, a few quite strange.
The strangest, without a doubt, is an 18th century wax figure known as the “Anatomical Venus”: a comely young woman, life-sized and nude, lying prostrate on a pink silk cushion in what looks to be a state of sensual rapture, her torso flayed and all her glistening organs -- including a womb containing a tiny fetus -- revealed. Her long brown hair is real, her eyes are open and unfocused, and the cloth of her pillow is crumpled -- she might as well be writhing. The product of one sculptor’s clearly intimate experience with cadavers, she suggests an Enlightenment-era St. Teresa ravished by communion with the invisible forces of science.
Among the other highlights are several touchingly human 16th and 17th century painted wood busts; a pair of small, nude, painted wood figures attributed, rather surprisingly, to the painter El Greco; a lovely Venetian Madonna and Child carved from a quartz-like stone called chalcedony; a charming, Martinique-era bronze bust by Paul Gauguin; and -- especially spectacular -- a pair of female busts by 19th century French sculptor Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier that achieve their dramatic tonal varieties through an intricate interplay of bronze, marble, inlay and stones.
The show’s creepy finale -- Duane Hanson’s hyper-realistic “Old Couple on a Bench” -- may be the embodiment of everything polychromy’s detractors throughout history have feared: color that transforms bronze into what looks like genuine, meat-and-potatoes-fed Middle American flesh. It makes the already uncanny presence of the sculpted body just a little too real.
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‘The Color of Life’
Where: Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Monday
Ends: June 23
Price: Free, but reservations are required and parking is $8, cash only
Contact: (310) 440-7300 or www.getty.edu
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a71e937a8dcf5d63bd746722df1ecb78 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-19-me-minghella19-story.html | Director won an Oscar for ‘The English Patient’ | Director won an Oscar for ‘The English Patient’
Anthony Minghella, the Academy Award-winning director of “The English Patient” whose other acclaimed films include “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain,” died Tuesday in London. He was 54.
Minghella died in a London hospital from complications of surgery for tonsil cancer a week earlier, Leslee Dart, his spokeswoman, told The Times.
He had not been ill before the surgery, she said.
The London-based writer-director’s death came as a shock to friends and colleagues, who remembered him as a gentle, caring and intelligent man and an inspiring leader on a film set.
“The grace, joy and tenderness he brought to his films were symbolic of his life and the many people he touched,” Harvey Weinstein, an executive producer of “The English Patient” and “Cold Mountain,” said in a statement.
Producer-director Sydney Pollack, Minghella’s partner in the production company Mirage Enterprises, described him in a statement as a “realistic romanticist” and “a sunny soul who exuded a gentleness that should never have been mistaken for lack of tenacity and resolve.”
Minghella was a critically acclaimed playwright and a successful TV writer in England when he wrote and directed his first film, “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” a 1991 British romance starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman that Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers called “the thinking man’s ‘Ghost.’ ”
That was followed by “Mr. Wonderful,” a 1993 comedy romance starring Matt Dillon and Annabella Sciorra.
Then came “The English Patient,” the World War II romantic epic that, as a London Independent writer once observed, “opened every door in Hollywood to Minghella.”
The 1996 film dominated the Academy Awards for that year, winning in nine of the 12 categories it was nominated in, including director, picture and supporting actress for Juliette Binoche.
“Anthony possessed a sensitivity and alertness to the actor’s process that very few directors have,” Ralph Fiennes, who co-starred in the movie, said in a statement. “He directed most of ‘The English Patient’ with an ankle in plaster, never losing his gentle humor and precision. He delighted in the contribution of everyone -- he was a true collaborator.”
Minghella received Oscar nominations for two screenplays: “The English Patient” (adapted from the Michael Ondaatje novel) and “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel), a 1999 drama starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.
“He was a brilliantly talented writer and director who wrote dialogue that was a joy to speak and then put it onto the screen in a way that always looked effortless,” Law said in a statement. Law also starred in 2003’s “Cold Mountain” and Minghella’s 2006 film “Breaking and Entering.”
Directors Guild of America President Michael Apted said in a statement that he “truly admired” the director’s “ability to take a world of epic proportions and make it intimate and personal.”
“His films had grandeur and scale and big subject matter, yet there was always an emotion and an intimacy that served as the backbone of his work.”
As a director, Minghella made an unusual professional departure in recent years: opera, a longtime passion.
At the invitation of the head of the English National Opera, who thought Minghella’s talents as a writer, director and musician were well-suited for opera, he staged a successful production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” in 2005 and directed it again a year later as the season opener of New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
Minghella recently wrote and directed “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s novel about a Botswanan private eye. It is to be shown Sunday on the BBC and later on HBO.
“He was one of Britain’s greatest creative talents, one of our finest screenwriters and directors, a great champion of the British film industry and an expert on literature and opera,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement Tuesday.
The son of parents of Italian descent who owned an ice cream factory, Minghella was born Jan. 6, 1954, in Ryde on England’s Isle of Wight. As a child, he acted in school plays.
He majored in drama at the University of Hull in England in the 1970s. After graduating, he stayed on as a drama lecturer for several years before quitting in 1981 and spending the next decade writing for radio, TV and the theater. For British TV, he wrote for “Grange Hill,” “The Storyteller” and the miniseries “Inspector Morse.”
In 1984, the London Theatre Critics named him the most promising playwright of the year for three plays: “A Little Like Drowning,” “Love Bites” and “Two Planks and a Passion.”
Two years later, the London Theatre Critics selected his “Made in Bangkok,” which marked his West End debut, as best play of the year.
“He was a brilliant writer and a lovely guy,” British director Danny Boyle, who met Minghella when they were working on “Inspector Morse” and directed “Two Planks and a Passion,” told The Times.
Like screenwriters Ronald Harwood (“The Pianist”) and Richard Curtis (“Love Actually”), Boyle said, Minghella was able to write emotional, moving stories that never felt calculated and cloying. “That was what set him apart,” he said.
Minghella is survived by his wife, choreographer Carolyn Choa; his son Max, an actor; his daughter Hannah, who was recently named president of production at Sony Pictures Animation; his parents, Gloria and Eddie; his brother Dominic; and his sisters Gioia, Lauretta and Edana.
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dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
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b55a66ec1d71859bc858fc9ae09be4a4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-19-na-protest19-story.html | Protesters turn out for war’s anniversary | Protesters turn out for war’s anniversary
Thousands of people carried signs and chanted in the streets of Manhattan on Tuesday, calling for an end to the war in Iraq, which began five years ago today.
Demonstrators also converged in Washington; San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; and elsewhere to call on President Bush to heed what they said was the will of the people.
Marchers said the anniversary of the war came at a time of condemnation of the fighting and a disconnect with politicians in Washington.
“The American people want this war to end,” actor and filmmaker Tim Robbins said at the start of the march. “When are we going to start listening to them?”
Beatrice Rubsam, 55, of Mastic Beach, whose son is an Army sergeant leaving for Iraq this week, joined the protesters in calling for all U.S. forces to be withdrawn from Iraq, which she said would reduce violence in that country.
“I just think we’re wasting our time over there,” Rubsam said. “Instead of making it better, we’re just making it worse.”
The march from Bryant Park up to 57th Street, and then south again to the United Nations, stretched for more than a mile, with some people carrying signs reading “Not one more dollar! Not one more death!”
In Washington, demonstrators opened two days of war protests Tuesday with a raucous morning march along Constitution Avenue and a piece of silent street theater during the evening rush hour inside Union Station.
A full day of rallies, marches, blockades and demonstrations is planned today for downtown Washington. Activists plan to blockade the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service as well as offices of various corporations in the vicinity of K Street. Antiwar veterans plan a 9 a.m. march on the Mall from the National Museum of the American Indian to the Capitol.
Many of the marchers in New York said that with such large appropriations earmarked for the war, there were problems caring for soldiers when they returned. They cited the recent scandal over degraded facilities at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“There is something morally wrong with a country that will spend billions on the war and cut funding for healthcare,” said Clyde A. Anderson, chief executive of the United Methodist City Society, alluding to the battle over Medicare cuts in New York.
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ab13a725df0c47d1298f89585e7b75c6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-19-na-scotus19-story.html | Justices debate gun rights | Justices debate gun rights
The 2nd Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” finally had its day in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, and the long-held view that it protected the rights of gun owners appeared poised to win a historic victory.
Five of the justices, a bare majority, signaled that they thought the amendment gave individuals a right to have a gun for self-defense. It was not limited to arms for “a well-regulated militia,” they said.
By adopting that view, the justices are likely to strike down the nation’s strictest gun control law, a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he favored a narrow ruling, one that would not cast doubt on an array of gun control laws across the nation. They include a ban on the sale of new machine guns, required background checks for new buyers of handguns and state licensing rules for those who wish to carry a concealed weapon.
“But I don’t know why when we are starting afresh we would try to articulate a whole standard that would apply in every case.” Roberts told one lawyer.
The court is indeed “starting afresh” with the 2nd Amendment, more than 200 years after it was adopted as part of the Bill of Rights. It says: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The high court has never struck down a gun control law for violating the 2nd Amendment.
For many years, judges thought the amendment merely prohibited the federal government from interfering with the state’s right to maintain a “well-regulated militia.”
But most Americans know the second clause, referring to the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.” In polls, a large majority say they think it gives law-abiding people a right to own a gun.
Though the court appeared ready to agree with them, the chief justice alluded to the difficulty of deciding what kind of right was protected by the 2nd Amendment. Is the right to own a gun like the right to freedom of speech in the 1st Amendment? If so, most restrictions on that right would be in doubt. Or is the gun right subject to strict regulations by the government?
The justices strongly hinted Tuesday that they would leave open the question of whether many restrictions on gun rights would stand.
Nonetheless, a ruling recognizing an individual right in the 2nd Amendment would be a landmark. And it could well signal the beginning of an era in which anti-gun regulations are subject to legal challenges.
The case heard by the court Tuesday began when Robert A. Levy, a libertarian lawyer at the Cato Institute who lives in Florida, decided to challenge the District of Columbia’s 30-year-old ban on handguns. One plaintiff, Dick A. Heller, is a private security guard who wants to keep his handgun at home.
Last year, the U.S. appeals court here struck down the law, prompting the city to appeal the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller.
Washington lawyer Walter Dellinger, defending the city’s law, began by arguing the Constitution’s framers sought to protect state militias. The phrase “bear arms” refers to the “military context,” he said.
But he ran into skeptical questioning.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made clear he thought the 2nd Amendment included an individual right to self-defense. “In my view . . . there’s a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia,” he said.
“If it is limited to state militias, why would they say ‘the right of the people?’ ” Roberts asked.
Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that “Blackstone thought the right to self-defense was inherent,” and early members of the Supreme Court saw the 2nd Amendment “as a personal guarantee” of the right to self-defense.
Switching gears, Dellinger argued that the District of Columbia law was a reasonable regulation of gun ownership.
“What is reasonable about a total ban on possession?” Roberts asked.
Dellinger replied that homeowners might have rifles or shotguns, so long as they were disassembled or had a trigger lock. The law bans only easily concealed handguns, which can be taken into schools or onto playgrounds, he said.
But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. questioned whether District of Columbia residents could defend themselves with a disassembled rifle. “Even if you have the gun, under this code provision it doesn’t seem as if you could use it for the defense of your home,” he said.
As usual, Justice Clarence Thomas said nothing, but he has said in the past that he thinks the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun.
If the oral arguments are a guide, the outcome will not be unanimous. Several justices said they thought the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect the state’s right to maintain a “well-regulated militia,” not to give gun rights to individuals.
Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the first Congress and all but two of the original states had focused the “right to keep and bear arms” on the militia, not on personal self-defense. It was described then “as the right to keep and bear arms for the common defense,” he said.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer focused on the toll taken by gun violence. “About 80,000 to 100,000 people every year in the United States are either killed or wounded in gun-related homicides or crimes or accidents or suicides,” he said. “In the District, I guess the number is somewhere around 200 to 300 dead and maybe 1,500 to 2,000 wounded. Now, in light of that, why isn’t a ban on handguns, while allowing the use of rifles and muskets, a reasonable or proportionate response on behalf of the District of Columbia?” he asked.
His question went mostly unanswered.
Alan Gura, a lawyer for Heller, agreed firearms were subject to regulation, but the government may not “prohibit people from having functional firearms in their own home for the purposes of self-defense.”
U.S. Solicitor Gen. Paul D. Clement agreed the 2nd Amendment protected an individual right to own a gun, but he urged the justices to avoid a broad ruling.
Otherwise, the federal ban on the sale of machine guns would be threatened, he said, because someone could argue that a machine gun is a militia-style weapon.
There were three main questions before the court Tuesday. Does the 2nd Amendment protect an individual right? Is this right subject to reasonable restrictions by the government? And is the District of Columbia’s law unconstitutional because it forbids the private possession of handguns?
By the end of the argument, a slim majority sounded ready to say “yes” to all three.
A ruling is not likely to be handed down until June.
--
david.savage@latimes.com
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c16249c6643a4c03443fb817ef4e78ed | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-19-oe-kaplan19-story.html | It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world | It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world
I’m mad. Let me qualify that -- I’m black and mad.
The mad I’m talking about I inherited from generations of black people before me. I learned early in life that this mad is not curable (not yet) but that I could manage it. But sometimes I get flare-ups of anger that defy management.
I’ve been having such moments as Barack Obama has publicly rebuked remarks made by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Wright has been vilified for excerpts of sermons in which he’s said some fairly outlandish things (that “we” -- America -- started AIDS), and he has also denounced the U.S. for what he calls racist and imperialist tendencies, like imprisoning people of color and throwing away the key and uncritically supporting Israel. One repeatedly shown clip ended with a blistering alternative to the traditional speech-ending “God bless America”: “God damn America!”
That sort of language was immediately condemned as hate speech, unpatriotic and certainly unbefitting the avowed spiritual leader of a presidential candidate on the brink of a historical racial breakthrough. Wright was called dangerous, extremist, a black nationalist crank from the 1960s who had no place in the political landscape today. Even after Obama’s profound, nuanced speech Tuesday, in which he made clear his differences with Wright, he’s still being pressured to do more to concede the point.
Watching all this unfold, my blood started boiling. What I think Wright’s critics really don’t like is the fact that he is mad. Although I don’t necessarily share all of his analyses or his stridency, I recognize his rage as a general anger about the conditions of black Americans, who he says still deal constantly with racism. This is exactly what most other black people I know believe. Unlike Wright in the pulpit, most of us don’t come off nakedly angry -- we’d never survive that way, emotionally or otherwise.
But what for us is ever present nonetheless strikes white people as outrageous. Nothing makes them more skittish than realizing that there are angry black people in their midst -- and an angry black man is most alarming of all, especially one running for president.
Obama rebuked Wright, in part, because he knew their association was in mortal danger of morphing him into just another angry black man a la Nat Turner, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan (whom Obama detractors have already attempted to conflate with Obama). Whatever salient points these men made have been entirely eclipsed by the fact that they were just too mad for comfort.
Strange, when you consider that we live in a culture that thrives on vituperation institutionalized by conservative talk radio -- guys such as Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus are paid to be mad. But, of course, white anger is seen as fundamentally reasoned and righteous, and Americans have an almost limitless capacity to forgive it when it isn’t.
Imus was kicked off the airwaves for a racial insult he made against black women last May, but he was back at the mike in six months’ time; Limbaugh’s many transgressions hardly raise an eyebrow, including taunting Obama as “Barack, the magic Negro,” a parody of “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” William Buckley was eulogized as a genteel genius a few weeks ago, his sanctioning of Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1950s written off as a forgettable faux pas. Buckley’s real genius was dressing up white anger in the guise of intellect.
Black anger is never seen as intellectual in nature, merely primal, and black public figures therefore have no such latitude (unless, of course, they’re in the conservative camp already, in which case they can rail to their heart’s content).
There are exceptions. Martin Luther King Jr. is lauded now as a paragon of peace and disciplined black leadership, but it’s useful to remember that he was mad most of the time. The famous let-freedom-ring tremulousness in his preaching voice reflected not simply emotion or patriotic fervor but frustration. It’s also useful to remember that toward the end of King’s life, his unrelenting social analysis was not met with much enthusiasm; even his supporters called him radical and out of touch. But that hardly deterred him.
Obama addressed black anger head-on Tuesday: He said it was not always productive. But the anger is real, he continued. “It cannot be wished away.”
It’s that kind of risky honesty that Obama has skillfully channeled into a broader movement of discontent and hope in 2008. If we can keep our racial neuroses in check, it is that kind of honesty that just might transform us all.
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0d47145c96337afe4770bafe0ec02fc5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-20-et-vampire20-story.html | No, they don’t vant to drink your buzz | No, they don’t vant to drink your buzz
Vampire Weekend is a band of the moment. The New York indie-pop quartet appeared on the cover of Spin this month, played on “Saturday Night Live” two weeks ago and will headline a sold-out show tonight at the El Rey. Yet the group is also a throwback to the ‘80s, in the players’ preppy sartorial style and the world-music flavor of such tracks as the modern-rock hit “A-Punk,” from their debut album, “Vampire Weekend.”
Still, the hype surrounding the band is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, as these four Columbia University graduates have generated buzz in new media (mp3 blogs such as Stereogum and Music for Robots) and old (the New York Times, the New Yorker). It’s been so talked about that on Jan. 29, the day the album was released, New York magazine put up a tongue-in-cheek blog article titled “What to Expect From the Upcoming Vampire Weekend Backlash.”
Singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig chuckles at the mention of the item. So much has been written about VW that he and bandmates Rostam Batmanglij (keyboards, vocals), Chris Baio (bass) and Christopher Tomson (drums) can’t keep up . . . not that they want to.
“You really start to realize that the Internet is a very bizarre place,” he says. “You can’t worry about every little thing, positive or negative, that’s written about you. I’m definitely at the point where I’m not interested in Googling ‘Vampire Weekend.’ ”
He also seems reluctant to accept the group’s status as a “blog band” with a rep fueled primarily by online buzz.
“You’ll hear about bands on blogs now,” he observes, “because that’s just a new form of media. Yeah, some bloggers really got behind us, which is awesome. But I think that before, like, 90% of any blogs wrote about us, we had a piece in the New York Times. So does that make us, like, ‘a newspaper band’?”
Vampire Weekend is often listed alongside the many increasingly popular bands incorporating “ethnic” styles, such as L.A.-based Cambodian psych-rock group Dengue Fever, Denver’s gypsy-folk punk band DeVotchKa and British rapper M.I.A., who draws from Indian, African and many other diverse styles.
The intentions vary as much as the sounds: M.I.A.'s work is highly political, for example, while “Vampire Weekend” is playfully experimental and revolves around the upper-class Ivy League world of its players. Still, both M.I.A. and Vampire Weekend -- whose frontman once had a rap duo called L’Homme Run -- engage in the mashing together of styles that’s a hallmark of hip-hop.
Not that Vampire Weekend should be put in the same bag as, say, Lupe Fiasco. Mainly, critics compare its album to Paul Simon’s 1986 icon of pop-African fusion, “Graceland” -- which isn’t all that accurate either.
“I take it as a compliment,” says Koenig, who admits that, thanks to the many comparisons, he’s probably listened to that musical artifact more lately than ever before. "['Graceland’] is a good album. But people sometimes make it sound like we set out to make another version of ‘Graceland.’ Which, when you actually listen to our album, doesn’t make that much sense.”
Global ingredients
Indeed not. At the height of the South African apartheid era, Simon drew from black South African styles and collaborated with musicians from that country -- and was criticized in some quarters for breaking the cultural embargo of the time. Although Simon may not have had overtly political motivations, he did bring artists, including vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, to broader attention.
But, despite the class-warfare jabs in a tune such as “Oxford Comma,” the group’s 11-song album isn’t really political. Also, as reflected in the around-the-world-in-NYC swirl of “M79,” the collection is a broader global stew of music the band members enjoy: soukous and calypso, ska and new wave, harpsichord and classical strings. (But there’s also a dash of synth-fueled neo-rock a la Interpol, in numbers including “I Stand Corrected” and “Walcott.”)
Koenig finds it odd, even “borderline offensive,” that “Graceland” is still “the go-to comparison for music that references any kind of African sound. I mean, in some ways, [Simon] gave those African musicians a whole new platform to show their music.” So, 20-plus years later, “that you would hear a kind of chimy, South African-style guitar line, and the first thing you think of is Paul Simon? It’s a little bit pathetic.”
As for his own band, it was formed in 2005 and named after a horror-movie spoof that Koenig made with friends a few years ago. Both he and Batmanglij (a music major who does film scores) separately became enamored of different African pop: Koenig was drawn to a compilation of Madagascar music, while Batmanglij got into South African singer Brenda Fassie. For Koenig, the attraction wasn’t about culture, but about the sound of the guitars.
“It reminded me a lot of the kind of reverb-y but clean surf music that I liked,” he says. He loves guitar music but has “always felt really disconnected from that whole, like, guitar-god tradition. Eric Clapton is an amazing guitar player, but I never could listen to a Clapton guitar solo. I just found it really boring.”
Koenig adds that he never felt very strongly about most of rock’s venerated ax men. “So to find some guitarists [who came from] a different tradition was kind of exciting,” he says. “And especially when we were starting a band with an electric guitar.”
United by guitar
On “Vampire Weekend,” that clean guitar style is more of a unifying factor than the music of any one place -- or tradition.
“Mansard Roof” mixes reggaeton and strings to vaguely recall the Decemberists, while “Oxford Comma” has the exuberance of ska, and the sardonic, reggae-tinged “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” feels a bit like early Police. The band is more preoccupied with coed sex (“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”) or the agony of a student-teacher fling (“Campus”) than with any message of global unity. Still, in a way, even Koenig’s more conventional musical touchstones reflect a one-world outlook.
“I’ve always been interested in how the riff from [The Smiths’] ‘This Charming Man’ sounds so, like, Afro-pop,” says Koenig, noting that ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr is a favorite of his. “I always thought that was cool, that there is a tradition of pop guitarists getting inspiration from these places.
“Clearly, the Smiths are not an Afro-pop band, but it’s sort of exciting to realize that they do have something in common, in the production and the sound, with, like, Nigerian high life,” Koenig says. “And there’s nothing political there; it’s just nice just to see a little connection like that. That things aren’t so separate.”
--
Vampire Weekend
Where: El Rey Theatre,
5515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
When: Today, 8 p.m.
Price: $14
Contact: (323) 936-6400
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5de206bc7a3222125bf318905e59982f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-20-fi-fcc20-story.html | FCC ruling bans landlord phone deals | FCC ruling bans landlord phone deals
Landlords can no longer force tenants to subscribe to a particular phone service, regulators decided Wednesday.
The five-member Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to ban exclusive contracts between apartment owners and phone companies.
The ban, which applies to existing exclusivity agreements, will make it easier for tenants to sign up with a competing phone company or to buy bundled packages from cable companies that include telephone, entertainment and Internet services.
“This decision will help provide Americans living in apartment buildings with the same choices as people that live in the suburbs,” FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said.
The commission estimates that 100 million Americans are renters.
“We think the FCC did the right thing,” said Regina Costa of the Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco consumer group. “Apartment building owners may not be too happy about it, but the people who live in these buildings now have the ability to choose what services are best for them rather than what’s convenient for the landlord.”
Or profitable. Apartment owners grant exclusive rights to phone companies in return for discounts ranging from 10% to 30%, according to Alex Winogradoff, telecom analyst with technology research firm Gartner Inc. Most of those savings went in the owners’ pockets, not the tenants’, he said.
Winogradoff estimates that as many as 60% of apartments nationwide now have exclusivity agreements with phone companies, compared with 15% five years ago.
Big phone companies like AT&T; Inc., the biggest telephone service provider in California and the U.S., supported the FCC’s decision. Groups representing apartment owners opposed it, saying the commission acted without doing enough research.
“If you take away the right of an apartment owner to bargain with various telecom providers to get the best price and service, only the big, dominant providers are going to prevail and you’re not going to have better prices or better services because of that,” said Jim Arbury, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Multi Housing Council, which represents large building owners.
The ranks of independent phone companies have dwindled in recent years, shrinking the options for tenants freed from exclusivity arrangements.
Last fall, the FCC banned similar agreements between landlords and cable companies. That decision is facing a legal challenge from the cable TV industry.
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martin.zimmerman@latimes.com.
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818a97b6bc2104d5eac186fb1ca90380 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-20-hm-dougherty20-story.html | Branching in | Branching in
LOOKING like children’s building blocks tossed by giant hands, the assemblage of woven-willow cubes and rectangles conveys kinetic energy. Titled “Catawampus,” the installation by Patrick Dougherty beckons from the main path at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia, sunlight slipping between the warp and weft of twigs. The tactile quality of each thread-like branch appeals to me: the in-and-out, the over-and-under. I run my hand along the twisted surface, marveling at the density of 4-inch-thick walls. My fingers stroke the soft tips, velvet against the rough bark.
Like a student of art, I try to deconstruct the organic sculpture in my mind. Is it a modernist bird’s nest? Is it a commentary on the fragile balance between nature and architecture? Or is it pure folly, meant only to delight the eye?
I enter and move from one interconnected space to the next. Peering out of window-like openings, I glimpse a maple tree, its new green leaves about to unfurl. Through another portal I see an early-blooming magnolia. And through the “skylight” at the top? The pure blue sky of spring.
-- Debra Prinzing
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506f9b45ad175cdb4c127beda2453e6f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-20-me-laslomas20-story.html | L.A. stops 5,553-unit home plan | L.A. stops 5,553-unit home plan
A divided Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to halt its review of the 5,553-home Las Lomas project, dealing what could well be a fatal blow to the mega-development planned for north Los Angeles County.
“This project would have put 15,000 cars a day in an already heavily impacted area,” said City Councilman Greig Smith, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley. “The people of L.A. said we can’t take that anymore. We’re tired of it.”
The 10-5 vote, which instructed the Planning Department to stop processing the application, represented a huge victory for Smith, who had argued that the council had no need to review a project that would flood the region with traffic and yet is outside city limits.
The decision also reflected the heightened anxiety over growth and traffic felt by some of the city’s elected officials, who almost never issue an outright rejection of a development proposal.
For weeks, Las Lomas Land Co. had been waging an uphill battle to keep the project viable, arguing that Los Angeles should process an environmental impact report and then annex the firm’s land from unincorporated Los Angeles County. The company said it had spent $20 million since 2002 trying to get its project approved.
In many ways, Los Angeles had been the development’s last resort.
The site, just north of where the Golden State Freeway intersects the 14, is in territory represented by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who opposed the project. Much of it borders Santa Clarita, which also had fought the project.
That left Los Angeles, where Smith introduced a proposal last month to stop all work on the project, partly to avoid wasting the Planning Department’s time over the next two years.
Even Las Lomas’ defenders on the council said they did not like the proposal, which would have placed a small city on a chaparral-covered hillside. But they argued that the city already had made a promise to review it -- and that stopping would leave Los Angeles vulnerable in court.
“Our city attorney has said that if we fail to move forward, he believes we are in great jeopardy of being sued,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose San Fernando Valley district borders the Las Lomas site.
Alarcon, along with Councilmen Ed Reyes, Jose Huizar, Herb Wesson and Bernard C. Parks, voted to keep the project alive.
Wednesday’s vote delivered the council’s most direct repudiation of a major developer since 2003, when it sued to stop the 3,050-home Ahmanson Ranch development in Ventura County that was ultimately dropped.
Within the city’s borders, the council in recent years has approved more than 5,800 homes at Playa Vista, just north of Westchester, and more than 2,500 homes in Hollywood in separate projects on or near Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
The next major residential project to reach Los Angeles officials will be Ponte Vista, a 1,950-home subdivision planned in San Pedro, which could receive a Planning Commission review by late summer. A 2,900-home development planned for Universal City could receive its first public hearing by the end of the year.
Dan Palmer, president of Las Lomas Land Co., said he has not decided on his next move.
But he voiced disappointment with the council’s decision, saying his company had worked hard to make Las Lomas environmentally sound and in keeping with the city’s strategy of “smart growth” -- building greater density along transit corridors and filling in gaps in existing urban areas.
“We believe that Las Lomas is a fine project providing many benefits to the community,” he said.
Opponents had a dramatically different view, saying Las Lomas represented more urban sprawl, albeit on especially steep terrain.
“A proposal to build a mini-city on the side of a mountain in the middle of a wildlife corridor doesn’t begin to meet the definition of smart growth,” said Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Diane Trautman.
Trautman said she believes the council’s decision effectively kills Las Lomas. Still, she said, her city’s position on Las Lomas does not necessarily mean that Santa Clarita would oppose other developments planned for the Santa Clarita Valley. That list includes the upcoming Vista Canyon Ranch, which would have up to 1,600 homes.
Santa Clarita played a significant role in the Las Lomas fight, retaining veteran lobbyist Steve Afriat to make its case in Los Angeles. Las Lomas relied on several lobbying firms, including one headed by Fernando Guerra, a Loyola Marymount University professor, and Weston Benshoof, a law firm that has aggressively raised money for council members over the last year.
Weston Benshoof was a co-host of fundraisers last year for Alarcon, Wesson, Parks, Huizar and Reyes -- all of whom sided with Las Lomas -- as well as council members Janice Hahn, Tom LaBonge and Bill Rosendahl. The firm also held events for City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo’s officeholder account and anti-recall effort.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, the City Hall maneuvering over Las Lomas intensified, with Alarcon and Smith each seeking the upper hand.
When Smith wrote his proposal for killing the project, he handed a copy to Alarcon on the council floor. Before Smith had finished gathering signatures for the motion, an Alarcon aide had faxed the motion to alert the Las Lomas Land Co. Alarcon said his aide was wrong in doing so. “It would have been in the public record anyway,” he said.
Alarcon’s biggest boost came in December, when Delgadillo’s office issued a legal opinion stating that the city should continue processing the Las Lomas application, because the Planning Department had been handling the case for years.
That confidential opinion fell into the hands of neighborhood council leaders, who immediately posted it on their website. Alarcon demanded an investigation into the source of the leak.
Smith called for a criminal investigation to determine if Las Lomas had behaved fraudulently when representing itself as the owner of the land. While Smith pointed out that some of the site is owned by a Van Nuys resident, Las Lomas said it had an option to buy the land -- and had behaved properly.
To strengthen his case against the project, Smith hired a onetime lawyer for Los Angeles County who advised the agency that approves annexations. And on Wednesday, Smith tried to sway his colleagues against Las Lomas by pointing out other Delgadillo legal opinions that turned out to be wrong.
Smith reminded Rosendahl that the city attorney’s office was wrong in a case involving Lincoln Place, a complex in Venice where hundreds of tenants were evicted.
He also reminded Alarcon that Delgadillo had advised the council not to pursue Proposition R, the 2006 ballot measure that weakened term limits and allowed Alarcon to return to City Hall.
“Mr. Alarcon, you wouldn’t be here today if we had listened to the city attorney,” Smith said.
--
david.zahniser@latimes.com
Times staff writer Ann Simmons contributed to this report.
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Begin text of infobox
Building boom
North Los Angeles County is considered one of the fastest-growing parts of Southern California. Las Lomas is one of several mega-developments proposed for the area. Here are some others either proposed or built:
Centennial Village
About 25 miles northwest of Santa Clarita, Centennial, a master-planned new town, is being planned for a site on Tejon Ranch. The new development would sit near the junction of Interstate 5 and California 138. The 20-year phased plan is for about 23,000 homes, with an average of 1,000 homes being constructed per year, beginning in late 2009.
Landmark Village
Landmark is the first of four planned villages intended to form the master-planned community of Newhall Ranch, which would ultimately have about 21,000 new homes on 12,000 acres. Situated between California 126 and the Santa Clara River, Landmark’s 300 acres would include 1,444 new homes and 37 acres of commercial and mixed-use areas.
Skyline Ranch
Situated in the northeastern Santa Clarita Valley, Skyline is slated to cover 2,196 acres and accommodate 1,325 single-family units. It will feature a park of up to 10 acres and a school site.
Vista Canyon Ranch
The project would cover 217 acres and have 1,200 to 1,600 detached units, 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, 80 acres of open space, four miles of trails and 12 acres of park. It’s on the east side of Santa Clarita.
Anaverde
About 1,000 units have been built in the 5,000-home Anaverde master-planned community. The Palmdale development would ultimately include houses on sprawling lots ranging from 4,000 square feet to more than 7,000 square feet. Work is at a standstill on the project.
Ritter Ranch
Work is also temporarily halted at Ritter Ranch, a master-planned community of 7,200 homes, that broke ground about three years ago. Grading has been completed and most of the infrastructure installed, but homes have yet to be built in this community of more than 10,000 acres in the hills above Palmdale at the western edge of the Antelope Valley.
-- Ann M. Simmons
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fffa3466546c1dc2202663a76634b24b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-20-na-milassess20-story.html | It’s a Pentagon divided | It’s a Pentagon divided
By many important measures, the U.S. military has reason to feel better about Iraq. Violence has declined, casualties are down, the president is touting the current strategy and the public’s anguish has ebbed.
But inside the Pentagon, turmoil over the war has increased. Top levels of the military leadership remain divided over war strategy and the pace of troop cuts. Tension has risen along with concern over the strain of unending cycles of deployments.
In one camp are the ground commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who have pushed to keep a large troop presence in Iraq, worried that withdrawing too quickly will allow violence to flare. In the other are the military service chiefs who fear that long tours and high troop levels will drive away mid-level service members, leaving the Army and Marine Corps hollowed out and weakened.
President Bush, in marking the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion Wednesday, said he would not approve any U.S. troop withdrawals that could jeopardize security gains already made there. Indeed, top leaders at the Pentagon emphasize that any withdrawals must be done with that in mind, and few are pushing for a complete pullout.
Still, there are sharp differences that carry broad implications for the U.S. involvement in Iraq.
In the short run, supporters of Petraeus would like to see about 140,000 troops, including 15 combat brigades, remain in Iraq through the end of the Bush administration.
Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their advisors favor a faster drawdown. Some are pushing for a reduction to 12 brigades or fewer by January 2009, which would amount to approximately 120,000 troops, depending on the configuration of forces.
The discord deepened with last week’s announcement that Adm. William J. Fallon, who served as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, would retire. Fallon was seen as a key ally of the Joint Chiefs and at odds with Bush because of his support for a speedier drawdown in Iraq.
“Fallon wanted to withdraw forces from Iraq much faster than Gen. Petraeus,” said one former Defense official who remains involved in Iraq policy. “Fallon was in sync with what the Joint Chiefs’ desires were. And that enhanced the Joint Chiefs’ position, because Fallon was a real war fighter, like Petraeus.”
The officer, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because neither the Joint Chiefs nor Petraeus have made their Iraq recommendations public.
Next month, Petraeus and other military leaders will present their advice for the next phase of the war. The U.S. troop buildup is scheduled to wind down by July. The upcoming recommendations will determine whether troop reductions continue, as the Joint Chiefs would prefer, or “pause,” as Petraeus has advocated. If withdrawals are halted, military leaders must decide how long that pause should last.
In part, the disagreements between Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs -- and in particular their chairman, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen -- are a function of their differing responsibilities. Petraeus’ main task is to win the war in Iraq. Mullen and the Joint Chiefs have the primary responsibility of ensuring the long-term strength of the military and preparing for contingencies.
But the differences are exacerbated by the circumstances under which the men were chosen for their jobs. Bush picked Petraeus because he had new strategies for Iraq. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tapped Mullen because of his deep concern for the health of the military.
Mullen, an experienced Pentagon hand, holds a key position in the debate as the nation’s top uniformed officer. Of late, the Joint Chiefs chairman has rarely made a public speech without mentioning the need to reduce the strain on the Army.
Military officers note that the Joint Chiefs do not advocate pulling all troops out of Iraq. The Joint Chiefs agree with Petraeus on the importance of maintaining security gains. But Mullen thinks that the threat of violence in Baghdad must be weighed against the risk of damaging the Army through repeat deployments that lead mid-level personnel to quit.
“The chairman is wrestling very hard with the issues of sustaining success in Iraq versus recognizing the strain on the force,” a military officer said. “There is a balance.”
The Joint Chiefs continue to have doubts about the troop buildup strategy, some officers said, citing the disparity between security improvements in Iraq and the absence of any meaningful political progress by the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
“We injected positive things at the tactical level by putting 30,000 more troops on the ground,” said an officer who has advised the Joint Chiefs. “But how does 30,000 more people make the Maliki government more competent and promote reconciliation between the factions?. . . We can have success on the ground, but it doesn’t translate to success with the government.”
The turmoil at the Pentagon is not new, but it has been inflamed by the next phase of troop deployments. Last fall, Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs agreed to a plan to wind down the “surge” but quelled debate over further troop cuts by putting off that discussion until this spring.
Some military officers think that compromise was upended when Petraeus proposed a temporary halt in further troop cuts in the second half of this year. Those officers believe the command in Iraq did an end run around the process, effectively cutting the Joint Chiefs out of this spring’s debate.
Supporters of Petraeus, on the other hand, argue that the Joint Chiefs are putting pressure on Gates to resume troop withdrawals after a short break later this year. Officials in Washington have spoken of a pause of about six weeks. But in Iraq some want to see a much longer delay before more troops are pulled out.
“I think it is unfortunate we put a timeline on it. I am not sure we can get much of an answer in six weeks,” the former Defense official said. “I think an appropriate timeline would be four to six months to make the proper assessment.”
Petraeus and other officers in Baghdad downplay the difference of opinion.
A senior military official in Iraq said that Petraeus had begun to make inroads with skeptics. Over the course of the last year, Petraeus has worked to convince Fallon of the merits of his strategy, the senior officer said. And in a brief interview last week, Petraeus dismissed the idea that the two “didn’t see the world the same way, or something like that.”
“You know, we had different jobs and it’s understandable that we might come at an issue a little bit differently, but it was always a constructive relationship,” Petraeus said.
But some current and former officers said they would be surprised if Petraeus agreed to more than a token drawdown in the second half of 2008. These officers think pulling out too quickly could lead to a repeat of mistakes the U.S. made in 2005 and 2006, when military leaders planned for sharp reductions despite rising violence.
“We have to remember these are the very areas where we have made mistakes in the past,” the former official said. “We underestimated the enemy and overestimated the Iraqis’ capacity to hold without us. Those two mistakes led to a failed strategy.”
But officers skeptical of the surge think putting off cuts for too long is misguided.
“If the surge has been as successful as it purports to be, this is an ideal time to start the drawdown,” said the officer who has advised the Joint Chiefs. “Violence is at an all-time low. We have turned the corner at the tactical level, so now is the time to redeploy those forces. So people are saying, ‘Why wait four months?’ ”
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julian.barnes@latimes.com
Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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3662ae0525d90f328694ec812af9573b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-20-na-protest20-story.html | Protests mark Iraq war’s 5th anniversary | Protests mark Iraq war’s 5th anniversary
Entrances to the Internal Revenue Service were blocked by “war crime-scene” tape. Traffic couldn’t pass through parts of downtown. And families sightseeing near the White House shielded their children from a demonstration against torture.
On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, as many as 1,000 people held marches, rallies, sit-ins and blockades throughout the nation’s capital. The demonstrations, organized by the nonviolent coalition United for Peace & Justice, were aimed at government agencies and private companies that promote, condone or profit from the war in Iraq.
In cities and at military installations across the nation, antiwar protesters gathered to mark the anniversary.
In Washington, more than 30 people were arrested for blockading three entrances to the IRS building, said Frida Berrigan of the War Resisters League.
While about 1,000 protested in Washington on Wednesday, larger rallies were organized in Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
Antiwar demonstrators gathered in downtown Chicago’s Federal Plaza on Wednesday evening for a rally and march. Organizers were expecting thousands of demonstrators.
At one event in New York City, women sang and counted the war dead outside the Times Square military recruiting station, which was recently the target of a bomb.
In Miami, half a dozen antiwar protesters dressed in black placed flowers outside the U.S. Southern Command during the morning rush hour.
In San Francisco, police arrested about 100 protesters by early afternoon for blocking traffic and chaining themselves to buildings, police said.
The rallies, which drew hundreds to the city’s busy financial district, were mostly peaceful, though some demonstrators threw glass Christmas ornaments filled with paint at police, said Sgt. Steve Mannina of the San Francisco police.
In Southern California, dozens of nighttime events -- called “New Priorities Vigils” -- were organized by MoveOn.org, a grass-roots organization that has been vocally antiwar.
“People want the troops to be brought home, and would rather have money invested to fix domestic problems than to fight the war abroad,” said Tiare White, a MoveOn.org member.
Events were planned in Beverly Hills, Echo Park, West Los Angeles, North Hollywood, Pasadena, Culver City and Malibu.
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The Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and Times staff writer Tami Abdollah contributed to this report.
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b121f3f819cb610417700a107693e8e4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-21-fg-colombia21-story.html | Colombia civilians caught in war against insurgents | Colombia civilians caught in war against insurgents
Street vendor Israel Rodriguez went fishing last month and never came back. Two days later, his family found his body buried in a plastic bag, classified by the Colombian army as a guerrilla fighter killed in battle.
Human rights activists say the Feb. 17 death is part of a deadly phenomenon called “false positives” in which the armed forces allegedly kill civilians, usually peasants or unemployed youths, and brand them as leftist guerrillas.
A macabre facet of a general increase in “extrajudicial killings” by the military, “false positives” are a result of intense pressure to show progress in Colombia’s U.S.-funded war against leftist insurgents, the activists say.
Rodriguez’s sister Adelaida said he had served three years in the army and was neither a guerrilla nor a sympathizer. “He never made any trouble for anyone,” she said, adding that she believed the army killed her brother to “gain points.”
Such killings have spread terror here in the central state of Meta. Last year the state led Colombia in documented cases of extrajudicial killings, with 287 civilians allegedly slain by the military, according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human rights group. That’s a 10% increase from the previous year
Although there appear to be no official -- or unofficial -- tallies of “false positives,” human rights activists say they believe such incidents are on the rise, along with the overall increase in killings by the military, based on their discussions with victims’ families and analyses of circumstances surrounding individual cases.
“It’s quite likely, because the same scenario appears over and over again in the cases I review,” said John Lindsay-Poland of the New York-based Fellowship of Reconciliation. “Victims last seen alive in civilian clothing later are found dead dressed in camouflage and claimed as guerrilla casualties.”
The killings have increased in recent years amid an emphasis on rebel death tolls as the leading indicator of military success, the human rights groups say. Even Colombian officials acknowledge that soldiers and their commanders have been given cash and promotions for upping their units’ body counts.
Since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002, the military has scored notable successes in winning back territory from leftist rebel groups and improving security, buoyed by billions of dollars in military aid from the United States under Plan Colombia, the program that fights drug trafficking and terrorism.
But at the same time, the military’s human rights record is getting worse, charged a coalition of Colombian and international human rights groups.
And new research by two U.S. peace groups into the killings raises serious questions about whether the United States is doing enough, as required by law, to bar U.S. funding to Colombian military units that have elicited allegations of killings and other human rights violations.
Amnesty International USA and the Fellowship of Reconciliation have found that the U.S. government “vetted” or approved military assistance to at least 11 Colombian armed forces units last year despite “credible allegations regarding killings, disappearances and collaboration with outlawed paramilitary forces,” Renata Rendon of Amnesty International USA said in Washington this month.
“It’s outrageous this is happening. It’s up to the [U.S. government] to ensure that we are not providing aid to abusive units,” Rendon said.
While not responding specifically to the claims, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota said this month that Colombian armed forces’ killings of civilians were a “serious problem, a serious concern.”
“It’s something we take very seriously. If you’re going to win a war like this, a big part is establishing rule of law and winning the people’s confidence in your legitimacy and commitment to legal institutions,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak for attribution. He defended the vetting process but said it was complicated by the fact that allegations of human rights abuses often were “not sufficiently specific or verifiable.”
To address the issue of impunity, Colombia’s attorney general last year set up special investigative teams in Meta and Antioquia states, which had the highest numbers of alleged abuses by the military. In November, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos sent a directive to military commanders ordering major changes, including giving civil courts more jurisdiction in investigating incidents.
But the killings are still spreading terror here in Meta state. Ramiro Orjuela Aguilar, a Bogota human rights attorney representing 20 families of suspected “false positive” victims in Meta, blamed the military’s use of paid informants or demobilized guerrillas for many of the killings.
“They have an incentive to name people as rebels because they are paid for information whether it’s correct or not,” Orjuela said.
Several of the Meta victims last year were youths living in and around Granada, the hub of a cattle and farming region that has been fiercely contested in recent years by leftist guerrillas, the armed forces and right-wing paramilitary troops. It is also home to the army’s 12th Mobile Brigade, a unit that Orjuela says is implicated in many of the killings.
Orjuela alleges that the army is engaging in “social cleansing” in Meta, home to four of the five municipalities that made up the so-called neutral zone occupied by Colombian guerrillas from 1998 to 2002. Killings and mass displacements of residents here are efforts to deprive guerrillas of sympathizers, Orjuela said.
“They are trying to deprive the fish of its water,” he said.
Kidnapped on an outing to the Ariari River, Rodriguez, the street vendor, may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, relatives theorize, caught by a band of police officers or soldiers who were on a “fishing trip” of their own for victims.
Orjuela said cases involving alleged “false positives” seemed to decline after the Colombian army issued the November directive to all commanders ordering that officers and the rank and file be made aware that the most important standards of success are demobilizations and captures of guerrillas, and then body counts. But he said he had noticed a resurgence lately, noting the Rodriguez killing.
Adelaida Rodriguez said that despite the government’s initiatives, she and her family were reluctant to press for an investigation. Referring to her brother, she said, “If we make noise, we’ll end up like him.”
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chris.kraul@latimes.com
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61342fef6b6b651b38fb43a40028d31d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-21-me-arnold21-story.html | Toll road foes off of parks panel | Toll road foes off of parks panel
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has dropped his brother-in-law, Bobby Shriver, and fellow action hero Clint Eastwood from the state parks commission after their vigorous opposition helped derail a plan for a toll road through San Onofre State Beach in San Diego County.
The decision not to renew the commissioners’ terms, which expired last week, surprised observers and sent a strong signal that the governor expects loyalty from political appointees.
“This is a warning shot from the governor’s office to all of his appointees: Do what I say, no matter how stupid it is,” said Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles. “And I know of no project more destructive to the California coast than this toll road project.”
Shriver, a Santa Monica City Council member and environmentalist who is the brother of California First Lady Maria Shriver, said he received a telephone call Monday from an aide to the governor saying he would not be reappointed.
Shriver and Eastwood had been appointed to the State Park and Recreation Commission under former Gov. Gray Davis and were previously reappointed by Schwarzenegger. A 60-day extension of their terms expired last week.
In an interview, Shriver said he and Eastwood had sought to remain on the board, where they were chairman and vice chairman, respectively, and that their removal would have “a chilling effect” on political appointees.
Eastwood could not be reached for comment. The governor’s office confirmed that he would not be reappointed.
Although the board had no power to quash the Foothill South toll road project, it passed a resolution in November 2005 opposing it and joined a lawsuit pending in state court. Last month, the California Coastal Commission, including some other Schwarzenegger appointees, defied the governor and voted to reject the toll road.
After learning that he would not be reappointed, Shriver spoke to his brother-in-law and had “a spirited disagreement” on the issue.
“It’s a public-protection commission,” Shriver said. “There are jobs that politicians appoint people to that they are not then supposed to do whatever a politician wants.”
He added, “A big road in a park is a hard sell.”
Asked about the toll road Thursday at a public event in Anaheim, Schwarzenegger reiterated his support for a project that is touted by supporters as a means to relieve traffic congestion in Orange County.
“I know the environmentalists are sensitive about it, and they say it is going through a park, but the road has to go through somewhere,” Schwarzenegger said. “We can’t stop progress.”
Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger, said the toll road issue did not precipitate the governor’s decision not to reappoint his relative and the fellow actor. He said the governor wanted new appointees, though none have been chosen.
“The governor believes that both Mr. Shriver and Mr. Eastwood did an outstanding job, and he’s grateful for their service,” McLear said.
Shriver and Eastwood join a list of other spurned appointees.
Bilenda Harris-Ritter, a former member of the state Board of Parole Hearings, said she received a call from a member of the governor’s office a little more than a year ago asking her to resign, six months after she had been appointed. No explanation was given, she said.
The call coincided with an Internet campaign from a crime victims group asking the governor’s office to remove her for granting parole to too many prisoners. Harris-Ritter, a lawyer whose parents were murdered in 1981, is an advocate for victims and said she had followed the law in giving parole.
“When people get yanked off suddenly in situations where it appears it’s just because somebody in the governor’s office doesn’t like the fact that they’re following the law, or a particular vote, that hurts the impression that the governor’s office is being run professionally,” Harris-Ritter said.
In June, the chairman of the state’s Air Resources Board, Robert F. Sawyer, was fired by Schwarzenegger for pushing for antipollution measures beyond what the governor’s office wanted, Sawyer said. The executive director, Catherine Witherspoon, quit in the aftermath.
In September, R. Judd Hanna quit the Fish and Game Commission at the request of an aide to the governor, after Republican lawmakers urged his ouster because he had sought to ban lead bullets in condor territory.
McLear said the governor’s appointees take many actions that probably go against his wishes.
“I think it is far-fetched to suggest that there is a pattern of him removing people or not appointing people to boards or commissions simply because they don’t agree with him,” McLear said.
Caryl O. Hart, a member of the state parks commission from Sebastopol, lamented losing Shriver and Eastwood, who have been strong advocates of parks, at a time when the governor has proposed to drastically cut the parks budget.
“It isn’t only this amusing thing about the Terminator,” she said.
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michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
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d3de6267cf40b90e452955a600a64067 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-22-fg-rage22-story.html | Tales of horror from Tibet | Tales of horror from Tibet
On a cloudless day near the top of the world, Swiss tourist Claude Balsiger had just finished a late-morning cup of tea and stepped out onto the streets of Tibet’s capital. Buddhist monks had been marching against Chinese rule all week, but today seemed calmer.
Suddenly, Tibetan youths started hurling paving stones at police, who tried to protect themselves with their riot shields.
Over the next few hours, the odor of tear gas and fires replaced the scent of incense wafting from backpacker cafes. The intense Himalayan light was blacked out by smoke. And in the days that followed, violence would spread beyond Lhasa to ethnic Tibetan villages deep inside China and to Chinese embassies worldwide.
China has barred Western journalists from entering Tibet and ethnic Tibetan areas. But interviews with foreign witnesses and Chinese residents, as well as blog postings by Tibetans too frightened to be interviewed, show that during three crucial hours on March 14, woefully unprepared police fled, allowing rioters to burn and smash much of Lhasa’s commercial center.
Tibetans randomly beat and killed Chinese solely on the basis of their ethnicity: a young motorcyclist bludgeoned in the head with paving stones and probably killed; a teenage boy in school uniform being dragged by a mob. When authorities did regroup, paramilitary troops fired live ammunition into the crowds. Witnesses did not see protesters armed with anything other than stones, bottles of gasoline or a few traditional Tibetan knives.
Despite a massive deployment of Chinese forces, the protests show no signs of abating. In New Delhi on Friday, Tibetan exiles stormed the Chinese Embassy. And China posted a “most wanted” list of 21 alleged rioters, featuring grainy photographs taken from video shot by a hidden camera.
The death toll of Tibetans had risen to 99 as of Friday, with a 16-year-old girl being shot by police in China’s Sichuan County, the Tibetan government in exile said.
Chinese authorities say 19 Chinese have been killed in Lhasa: one police officer and the rest civilians.
Since their homeland was invaded by Chinese communists in 1951, Tibetans have risen up periodically against Beijing’s rule. Led by the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, their movement has been largely nonviolent. There hadn’t been a substantial uprising in Lhasa since the late 1980s, giving the city a reputation as a laid-back Shangri-La.
“Tibetans usually are so calm and friendly, but suddenly they were insane,” said Balsiger, 25, a teacher. “They were howling like wolves. . . . It was so brutal, so violent.”
March 10, Monday
Everybody is girded for demonstrations today. It is the 49th anniversary of the failed Tibetan revolt in which their leader, the Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India. This year the protests are expected to be bigger because activists hope to use the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing to press their case.
Tibetan demonstrations are well-choreographed: Monks, who ran Tibet in pre-communist times, usually take the lead while laypeople try to protect them.
At 6 p.m., a parade of about 300 red-robed monks leaves the 15th century Drepung Monastery, five miles west of downtown Lhasa. Blocked by police from reaching the city, the monks sit for several hours at a checkpoint before dispersing.
At dusk, students and monks stage a second demonstration in the center of Lhasa, making a circle around Barkhor Square and joining hands. The square is filled with uniformed and plainclothes security officials. A young Dutch couple watch police take away six or seven demonstrators.
“Everybody is afraid to speak,” the Dutch tourists, Steve Dubois and Ulrike Lakiere, write later on a blog. “Even us, free-born people, not for our sake, but for that of the Tibetans who can get in trouble just by speaking with us.”
Balsiger recalls meeting a young Tibetan brother and sister at a cafe. Although he and they have no common language, he understands that they live in fear of Chinese undercover police. They nervously show him that they wear images of the Dalai Lama, which are banned, on strings around their necks, hidden under their clothes.
March 11, Tuesday
Nine monks emerge from the Sera Monastery north of Lhasa carrying a banned Tibetan flag and are almost immediately dragged away by police.
Several hundred more monks come out to demand their release. The paramilitary Chinese People’s Liberation Army police disperses the crowd with tear gas.
March 12, Wednesday
Many stores in Lhasa are closed. Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan poet who writes a blog, says two monks at Drepung Monastery slit their wrists in suicide attempts, and monks at Sera Monastery start a hunger strike. Water supplies are cut to many of the monasteries.
A foreign tourist wanders into Sera Monastery at 3 p.m., just as hundreds of monks are rushing out, their hands in the air and in obvious distress. Police surround them.
“They were grabbing monks, kicking and beating them. One monk was kicked in the stomach right in front of us and then beaten on the ground,” the tourist later tells BBC.
Paramilitary forces block roads leading out of the remote Ganden Monastery. The Chutsang Nunnery is also surrounded.
March 13, Thursday
Roadblocks are in place around Lhasa. Thousands of paramilitary forces are reported to be searching houses for photographs of the Dalai Lama.
March 14, Friday
Stores reopen. The trouble appears to have passed. But about 11:30 a.m., as the morning prayer finishes at Ramoche Temple, a small Buddhist shrine up a pedestrian street from the main square, police block monks from marching. This time, onlookers start throwing stones at police.
Trucks carrying reinforcements speed down Beijing East Street, the main drag. As soon as police climb out, the stones start flying again. About 20 protesters in their teens and 20s are cheered on by several hundred older Tibetans.
Rioters use their bare hands to pry paving stones loose and hurl them with such ferocity that they crack police shields. The police officers, some of them teenagers themselves, hurry into an alley for cover. The enraged crowd begins to vent its anger on ethnic Chinese passersby.
“At first it was sort of a game. You throw the rocks and you run away,” Susan Witmore, a Canadian business consultant who had given herself a trip to Tibet as a 60th birthday present, later recalls. “But then the scene turned incredibly ugly.”
A young Chinese motorcyclist is struck by stones. Witmore utters a silent scream to the man, “Keep moving!” but the motorcyclist stops, as if to reason with the mob. Soon his flashy gold helmet is off and the mob is pounding his head with stones and pipes. Witmore, who was watching from the lobby of her hotel, retreats into the courtyard in horror. Other tourists say later that they believe the man was killed.
Balsiger sees the crowd pull a Chinese-looking man off a bicycle. A teenage boy is bludgeoned on the head, but as he staggers, bleeding on the pavement, barely conscious, a tall foreign man steps in and pulls him to safety.
Police flee, and by early afternoon the mobs have the run of the city. They go after Chinese shopkeepers, who these days dominate the commercial life of Lhasa.
“They thought we Han Chinese people were coming to steal from their rice bowls,” says the manager of Top of the World Hotel on Ramoche Street, near the temple. She cowers in her courtyard as the crowd sets fire to many of her neighbors’ businesses.
The mob is more interested in destroying than looting. Witnesses see cellphones, bicycles, clothing, food and furniture smashed along Beijing East Street. Cars are overturned and set on fire, often topped with burning Chinese flags.
Riots spread to the Muslim quarter, targeting the Hui, Chinese Muslims who have been opening businesses in Tibet. Rioters smash holes through metal shop gates and pour in gasoline. A Muslim family later describes to Chinese journalists how they hid in a bathroom as flames spread around them. The main gate of the mosque is set on fire, but the mob doesn’t get inside.
It is not until 4 p.m. that Chinese authorities venture back into the center of Lhasa. What happens next is unclear, because by this time the city is under a strict curfew. According to Tibetan sources, the Public Security Bureau lifts an order restricting the use of live ammunition by the paramilitary forces.
Tibetans say many people are killed in front of the main temple, the Jokhang, and that families come to collect the bodies late at night, offering prayers and strewing traditional white prayer scarves.
“Many of those killed were young Tibetans, both boys and girls,” a rioter tells Radio Free Asia. “Those who are dead sacrificed their lives for 6 million Tibetans. My disappointment is that we were not armed.”
Amid the raging violence, some Tibetans do step in to help the beleaguered ethnic Chinese.
A 24-year-old Chinese assistant at an optometry shop recalls how a teenage neighbor escorted her home, only to be chastised by a Tibetan security guard who asked, “How can you come back with a Han Chinese?”
The Tibetan girl “was horrified,” recalled her Chinese friend. “In her eyes were confusion, perplexion, sorrow and mostly astonishment.”
March 15, Saturday
Overnight, soldiers move into the center of Lhasa. By the end of the day, they have the city under control. But protests break out elsewhere. At Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, 750 miles to the northeast, more than 1,000 Tibetans march against the Chinese.
March 16, Sunday
Protesters carrying photos of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan flag stage protests in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces. In remote Aba County in Sichuan, Tibetans attack a police station and set fire to a market, firetrucks and police cars. Police reportedly fire into the crowd, killing at least eight.
March 17, Monday
Protesters try to storm Chinese embassies and consulates around the world.
“Chinese people have to realize we can’t bear any more,” says Tenzin Lama, 25, a Tibetan student demonstrating in London. “We will give up our lives to fight for our beliefs. Tibetans won’t stop.”
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barbara.demick@latimes.com
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Jia Han, Cathy Gao and Eliot Gao of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
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82b37a92c7239b67d52752052f33674f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-22-na-veep22-story.html | McCain’s No. 2: Who? | McCain’s No. 2: Who?
On the eve of Bob Dole’s announcement of his vice presidential running mate in 1996, John McCain knew he was under serious consideration. But he was on an ill-timed trip to Hawaii -- without a cellphone.
As he tells it, he spent most of the time worried about missing a call to his hotel room, which never came. He learned Dole had passed him over for Jack Kemp when he flipped on the television news.
Now, with the Republican nomination virtually sewn up, McCain is facing a barrage of questions about who he might choose as a running mate. Perhaps because of his own public vetting years ago, the Arizona senator is being uncharacteristically tight-lipped.
He frequently waves off queries with a joke that the vice president has just two duties: casting tie votes in the Senate and inquiring daily about the health of the president. But that hasn’t stopped feverish speculation about his frequent companions on the campaign trail and those who have made the invitation list for weekend retreats to the candidate’s cabin outside Sedona.
Many believe that voters’ concern about McCain’s age -- he will be 72 on inauguration day -- means his choice for the No. 2 spot will carry a great deal of weight.
“By the time this election gets around, everyone is going to know he [would] be the oldest president ever sworn in,” said Republican consultant Scott Reed. “It’s a concern and it has to be addressed.”
But there is little consensus within the party about what issue will define McCain’s choice. Should his team look to a candidate who could shore up his economic credentials? Should he choose a partner who could allay suspicions among some conservatives that McCain is too liberal? Or does he have the latitude to choose a candidate who might broaden the appeal of the Republican Party?
McCain’s most obvious task is finding someone the American people would view as a suitable stand-in as commander in chief.
Reed, who was Dole’s campaign manager and helped orchestrate the surprise choice of Kemp in 1996, said McCain will look for “a good, strong conservative” with a record of governing who could complement the ticket “both from a generational standpoint [and] a geographical standpoint.”
Many conservatives view the selection process as McCain’s opportunity to earn their confidence, said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.
“A lot of conservatives fear he’s going to change [the party] in some way and redraw it with them on the outside looking in,” Keene said. “If you select the right person, you go a long way toward solving that problem.
“You can hit a grand slam home run, which might be a [Gov.] Mark Sanford of South Carolina, or a home run with Mitt Romney, or a double or a triple with a [North Carolina Sen.] Richard Burr, or a [Wisconsin Rep.] Paul Ryan . . . . Or you can screw it up.”
Others, like Ken Duberstein, a chief of staff to President Reagan, say the field is open: “Does the right wing have veto power? The answer is no. Conservatives have a role to play, but it is not to dictate who the vice presidential candidate is.”
Many believe McCain will consider Romney -- whose experience as a CEO could add economic heft to the ticket -- even though the two had a testy relationship when they were rivals for the nomination. McCain also is expected to consider onetime White House hopeful Mike Huckabee, a skilled campaigner who could draw evangelicals. Huckabee, however, was widely derided by economic conservatives over his record on taxes when he was governor of Arkansas.
Several charismatic governors with close ties to McCain are getting attention as well: Charlie Crist of Florida, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and South Carolina’s Sanford.
Reed predicted Crist is likely to be “on McCain’s short list of three or four.” With approval ratings topping 70%, he “would about put a nail in it for the general election” by helping McCain win Florida, Reed said.
Crist, 51, styled himself as “the people’s governor” after winning a tough-on-crime reputation in the Florida Legislature and serving as the state’s attorney general and education commissioner. His last-minute endorsement is widely credited with helping McCain win the Florida primary.
“He’s got the credentials in a lot of key policy areas,” said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. Crist, she said, is a fiscal conservative who is “very populist, people-oriented, kind of a sunny personality -- it’s probably a nice complement to McCain.”
But, MacManus noted, he is viewed with suspicion in some conservative circles in Florida because of his views on abortion and his support for civil unions and for the expansion of stem cell research. Crist ran campaign ads in 2006 casting himself as “pro-life”; several Florida newspapers have reported that he does not support overturning Roe vs. Wade. His spokeswoman did not return e-mails seeking clarification on this position.
Pawlenty, 47, is an early McCain supporter who won the Minnesota governorship in 2002, after saying that the Republican Party should represent “Sam’s Club, not just the country club.” His unassuming demeanor -- he likes to play in pickup hockey games as he travels around the state -- and commitment to fiscal restraint have led to strong approval ratings.
University of Minnesota political science professor Lawrence Jacobs said Pawlenty was “one of the most capable politicians for presenting himself as reasonable and likable.” He won accolades in his party by taking a no-tax pledge when he ran in 2002 (though he did not repeat the pledge last cycle) and has vetoed a number of popular bills, including a recent transportation bill because of his opposition to tax hikes, Jacobs said.
“He’s battling the Legislature and yet his approval ratings are pretty strong,” Jacobs said.
Pawlenty will host the Republican convention in the Twin Cities later this year, but Jacobs and others have questioned whether the governor would be able to deliver Minnesota for McCain in November. Pawlenty won the 2006 election by just 1%.
There is much lobbying among conservatives for Sanford, 47, who served three House terms. He is known for his stunts -- sleeping in his congressional office to save taxpayer money (he sent his housing allowance back to the federal treasury), for example, and carrying two piglets into the statehouse to protest “pork barrel” spending in 2004.
But he has also been politically divisive.
Time magazine ranked him as one of the nation’s worst governors in 2005, in part because of South Carolina’s high unemployment rate. At the same time, Sanford’s zeal for limited government led the libertarian Cato Institute to rank him as one of the nation’s best governors.
Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C., said Sanford had spent most of his time as governor “at war with the Republican-controlled state House and state Senate over spending.”
“He hasn’t had hardly any accomplishments in the years he’s been in office because of this continual quarreling with the Legislature,” Thigpen said. “This guy’s record has been as a party divider in this state.”
Besides, Thigpen said, McCain is unlikely to pick a running mate from a state that he could “carry away in a handbasket.”
Another possible vice presidential choice popular in conservative circles is fiscal hawk Rob Portman, 52, a former Ohio congressman who served for 14 months as President Bush’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“Portman probably brings a lot to the table -- congressional experience, executive experience, somebody who has been focusing on the economy [who is] from a swing state,” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. But a drawback for Portman and a number of the candidates mentioned, she said, is that none are “known quantities.”
On several occasions, McCain has been asked if he might consider Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison as his No. 2.
“She’s attractive and well-spoken, but she’s not got much executive experience,” said Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Hutchison, 64, is thought to be interested in running for governor in 2010: “I think that would be, in her heart of hearts, her first choice,” Buchanan said.
One disadvantage McCain has in narrowing his list of possible running mates is not knowing who his Democratic opponent will be. Behind the scenes, the campaign will be doing a great deal of research and polling to weigh the drawbacks of various candidates.
But at this early stage, Reed said, it’s “premature for McCain and team to really know what they need.”
One of the most daunting tasks will be vetting the candidates to avoid any surprises.
“You have to look around every little corner and in every nook and cranny,” Duberstein said.
It will be important for McCain, he said, to choose a search leader who’s “been around the track several times and who knows where skeletons usually are -- what to ask and how to ask.”
McCain strategist Charles Black said the campaign planned to “drag the net widely” and to keep the process secret to avoid “humiliating” candidates who weren’t chosen.
“You just don’t want to start talking names and just sort of shoot from the hip,” Black said. “It’s more important to take your time and do it right.”
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Contenders in the GOP veepstakes
If John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, wins the race for the White House, he would be the oldest president ever sworn in. For voters, many analysts say, that makes his choice of a running mate especially important. Here are some of the possibilities being talked about:
Mitt Romney
Background: Former governor of Massachusetts.
Strength: Well-liked among conservatives, and his business experience could strengthen the ticket.
Problem: Had a testy relationship with McCain during the primaries, although Romney later endorsed him.
Mike Huckabee
Background: Former governor of Arkansas.
Strength: He’s seen as a strong campaigner who could draw evangelical voters.
Problem: Has been criticized for his tax record in Arkansas.
Charlie Crist
Background: Current governor of Florida.
Strength: A fiscal conservative, he could help McCain in Florida -- a state both parties say may be crucial to winning the general election.
Problem: In the past, he has taken positions on abortion, civil unions and stem cell research that trouble conservatives.
Tim Pawlenty
Background: Current governor of Minnesota.
Strength: An early McCain supporter, Pawlenty made a no-tax pledge that was popular with conservatives.
Problem: He won reelection very narrowly in his home state, which calls into question his ability to secure it for the Republican Party in November.
Mark Sanford
Background: Current governor of South Carolina.
Strength: Popular with conservatives because of his spending policies. He once brought piglets to the statehouse to protest pork-barrel spending -- a longtime issue for McCain.
Problem: He would not bring much geographical heft to the ticket, because McCain is already expected to carry South Carolina in the general election.
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d9b078f7446cbd6ce0d254bd65267ae2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-23-me-olson23-story.html | Ex-SLA fugitive sent back to prison for one more year | Ex-SLA fugitive sent back to prison for one more year
California authorities rearrested Sara Jane Olson at noon Saturday, just hours after she was prevented from flying home to Minnesota from Los Angeles, and said she must serve one more year in prison because they miscalculated her release date.
The former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army had been paroled Monday from a California women’s prison after serving about six years for her role in a 1975 plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars.
Officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said at a news conference that they had made a mistake in computing the amount of time Olson should serve in a separate case in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for participating in a Sacramento-area bank robbery in which another SLA member killed a customer.
“The department is sensitive to the impact that such an error has had on all involved in this case and sincerely regrets the mistake,” Scott Kernan, the agency’s chief deputy secretary of adult operations, said at a Saturday afternoon news conference. “The department has launched a full investigation.”
Kernan called the case “extremely complicated, given the amount of changes to the sentencing laws that have occurred over the last 30 years.”
Olson should have been sentenced to 14 years, not 12, for the two crimes, Kernan said. He said state officials had failed to account for the bank robbery. The earliest possible release date for Olson now is March 17, 2009, he said. At that point, she will have served half of the 14-year term.
Like most California inmates, Olson has earned credit against her sentence for working while in prison. She served on a maintenance crew that swept and cleaned the main yard of the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, according to prison officials.
She was taken to a prison in Chino on Saturday but will be moved back to Chowchilla, Kernan said.
When news organizations reported Olson’s release Friday, law enforcement officials reacted with dismay and raised questions about whether she had been let out too early.
Jon Opsahl, son of Myrna Opsahl, the woman killed in the bank robbery, called the Sacramento County district attorney’s office and said he believed Olson had not served enough time.
Corrections department officials acknowledged that they began an intensive review of their internal calculations of the sentence after getting questions from the Sacramento County district attorney’s office and a local television reporter, but they denied that they had bowed to pressure.
After Olson was taken back into custody, Los Angeles Police Protective League President Tim Sands issued a statement, saying, “We are relieved that Sara Jane Olson has been returned to prison for another year.”
But Sands said the organization was “far from satisfied. Parole shouldn’t even be an option for terrorists who are convicted of murdering innocent bystanders and attempting to murder police officers. Anyone who tries to kill police officers should get significant jail time and serve their full sentence.”
Olson’s attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, said she was outraged by the rearrest and asserted that her client had been illegally arrested and is now being “illegally imprisoned.”
Holley said she was surprised to receive a phone call late Friday night from Olson, who told her that law enforcement officials at Los Angeles International Airport “were telling her her travel pass was rescinded and they would escort her back to her mother’s home in Palmdale.”
After midnight, Holley said, she got another call from Olson, telling her that Olson had been taken to her mother’s home in a law enforcement convoy and that although she was not under arrest, law enforcement officials had stationed a car in front of the house and told her she would be followed if she left.
Holley said she planned to file a writ of habeas corpus seeking Olson’s release within the next few days.
She scoffed at the suggestion that there had been “a computation error.”
“We received an order from the state parole board more than a month ago informing us that she would be released on March 17,” Holley said.
She referred to a decision of the board, saying that on Oct. 12, 2007, the panel had notified a Los Angeles Superior Court judge that “it did not intend to impose” a one-year enhancement that had been challenged by Olson’s attorneys. The decision went on to say that Olson’s “earliest possible release date has been recalculated to March 17, 2008.”
Noting that the decision had been made months ago, Holley said: “The idea that suddenly they discovered an error is untrue. What appears to be the truth is they are bowing to pressure from the Police Protective League or someone else.”
But Opsahl, the son of the slain woman, said he was “definitely glad” that corrections department officials “caught the mistake and they are going to insist she serve her full sentence. . . . She is no threat to society, but criminals have to pay their debt to society.”
Olson changed her name from Kathleen Soliah when she went underground after the bank robbery.
She had lived in Minnesota for a number of years before being arrested on charges related to the 1975 plot to plant pipe bombs beneath police cars in retaliation for a May 1974 shootout with Los Angeles police that left six SLA members dead.
Olson married Dr. Gerald Peterson, an emergency room physician.
The couple lived for a while in Zimbabwe before settling in St. Paul, Minn. Olson lived the quiet life of a homemaker and mother of three daughters in an upscale neighborhood and appeared in local theater productions.
She was apprehended in 1999 after being featured on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted.” Her case was moving toward trial on Sept. 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, she struck a plea deal in the bombing attempt, saying she feared she would not get a fair trial.
She pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing a destructive device with the intent to murder and struck a deal in the bank case, pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
For the murder conviction, she was given a one-year sentence. For the botched bombings, she was initially sentenced to five years and four months, but that was extended to 12 years after a state prison board designated her a serious offender.
Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen said he found it “hard to imagine” that state officials made a calculation error. The executive director of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice said he had never heard of an instance in which a prisoner was mistakenly released early.
However, Uelmen said he believed that “if she was erroneously released, they can take her back into custody until she serves her sentence” in full.
Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman, who runs a widely read blog on sentencing issues, said, “There is a lot more uncertainty about the legal formalities of when someone is entitled to be released and how that can be enforced” than about many other areas of the law.
“If you look hard enough at the criminal justice system, you can find a lot more errors than you would think,” including prison officials keeping someone incarcerated for longer than they should. “In a lower-profile case,” he said, “no one is likely to find out.”
henry.weinstein@latimes.com
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andrew.blankstein@latimes .com
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Times staff writer Joel Rubin contributed to this report.
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b73e146553e49994a6c83a12a132532b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-23-me-silverado23-story.html | Cuts could close books on O.C. school | Cuts could close books on O.C. school
Tucked away in a fold of Orange County’s canyons, Silverado Elementary is an anachronism, a small-town school in a big-city district. With just 93 students and four teachers, the school is small by Wyoming standards, let alone Southern California.
It’s been this way for generations. Whether it will last, though, is in doubt.
While the state budget crisis has educators across California bracing for painful cuts in teachers and programs, the tight-knit communities in and around Silverado and Modjeska canyons fear a worse fate: the closing of their only school.
Silverado Elementary’s future is far from sealed; the Orange Unified School District says shutting the campus is a worst-case scenario.
But as the district begins to grapple with how it would deal with a potential $16.5-million cut in its $250-million budget, the outsized cost of teaching Silverado’s small student body is drawing scrutiny. Public meetings on the budget crisis are scheduled for Monday and Wednesday.
“Right now we’re subsidizing the school by taking funds from other programs,” said Jon Archibald, Orange Unified’s assistant superintendent for business services. “While we’ve tried to maintain that school, ultimately the decision will depend on what the state is going to give us.”
The district spends about 70% more per Silverado student than its average. The markup is due to the school’s poor economy of scale. No matter its size, a school needs a principal, someone to answer the phones, and custodial and food services, among other basics.
The school’s staff already stretches to make ends meet. Silverado’s principal wears two hats: She’s also in charge of the preschool program. And its four teachers handle combination classes that shift with each year’s demographics. One class combines second- and third-graders, while another has third-and fourth-graders.
“We’re already operating pretty bare bones,” Archibald said.
The trade-off for students, parents say, is a school experience unlike any other.
“Talk to anyone who has gone there, and they’ll tell you it was always such a cherished time,” said Chay Peterson, whose two boys attended Silverado Elementary. “Being on a first-name basis with all the teachers and bus drivers. Having the same teacher that your parents had.
“The children, when they gear up to go to junior high or high school, a lot of them are scared,” she said. “They know they’re going to a school with over a thousand kids and they’ll be part of the shuffle of human bodies and will lose the personal identity and security they have at this school.”
Silverado Canyon has had a school since the 1880s. It has survived fires, floods and wildly fluctuating enrollment. Daily attendance in 1905 was seven; in 1950 it was 98. The school became part of Orange Unified in 1954, and three years later the current campus was built on 11 acres.
Several years ago the district considered closing the school, Archibald said, but kept it open in anticipation of enrollment growth from a 4,000-home development slated for East Orange.
Under the plan, a new elementary and junior high school would eventually replace Silverado.
“We initially expected homes to be built there by the 2006-2007 school year,” Archibald said. “But until the housing crisis sorts itself out, it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen quickly.”
Even though it will be months before the district knows how deeply it needs to cut, Silverado’s supporters are already at work collecting petition signatures and looking into whether it could become a charter school with a focus on the environment.
Doing that would cost the school the additional per-student subsidy it gets from Orange Unified but would also allow it to apply for outside grant money.
“We have such a unique location here, surrounded by nature,” said Laura Bennett, whose two children attend Silverado.
An environmental program could be a resource used by students throughout the district, she said.
The county’s canyon communities have a history of banding together, whether to survive natural disasters or to oppose large-scale development.
Saving Silverado Elementary, Bennett said, would elicit support not just from parents but from people without school-aged children who see the school as a cherished local institution.
“They say closing the school is only a worst-case scenario,” she said. “But if it does happen, I’m sure all the residents here are ready to fight.”
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mike.anton@latimes.com
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250270fe058799c08af6941d89952f5b | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-23-na-mccainiraq23-story.html | McCain betting big on Iraq | McCain betting big on Iraq
As America’s war in Iraq enters its sixth year, Sen. John McCain is hoping that his long effort to send thousands more U.S. troops -- a “surge” that has helped lower casualties -- will propel him into the White House.
But McCain’s record on Iraq is decidedly mixed. If the Arizona Republican proved prescient in his calls for a military buildup, many of his other predictions and prescriptions turned out wrong.
Before the war, McCain predicted a quick and easy victory, not a vicious insurgency. He issued dire warnings about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction but didn’t read the full 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that showed gaps in the intelligence.
Soon after the March 2003 invasion, however, he began criticizing the Bush administration’s management in Iraq and clashed repeatedly with then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In mid-2003, he started advocating a larger U.S. force to battle the insurgency, a strategy the White House finally approved last year.
McCain did not publicly embrace or join the hard-core neoconservatives who pushed hardest to unleash the U.S. military against Baghdad before the war. But McCain backed many of the same policies.
He repeatedly urged backing Iraqi emigre groups, internal dissidents and other proxy forces to overthrow Hussein. His hawkish views carried weight as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Pentagon.
In 1998, he was among the cosponsors of the Iraq Liberation Act. The law set “regime change” in Baghdad as U.S. policy and mandated support to opposition groups seeking to overthrow the dictator.
Among the major beneficiaries was the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi.
The CIA had initially sponsored the group but broke with the controversial leader in 1997, saying he could not be trusted. Under the new law, Chalabi’s group received almost $33 million from the State Department, until U.S. officials found financial improprieties and ended the arrangement.
McCain and Chalabi met several times but were not close allies, aides to both men said. “Sen. McCain wasn’t pushing one group over another,” said Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy advisor.
Asked by The Times this month if he regretted backing the 1998 law, which produced few discernible results other than bolstering Chalabi, McCain said he did not. Chalabi, though initially touted by neoconservatives as a future leader of Iraq, failed to garner significant support in elections.
McCain said that by 1998, U.N. sanctions against Iraq were “breaking down” and Hussein had defied numerous Security Council resolutions. “Every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction,” he added. “The policy was not successful.”
McCain cited the same reasoning when asked why he and nine other congressional leaders urged President Bush in a letter dated Dec. 6, 2001, to next target Iraq since the Taliban regime had collapsed in Afghanistan.
It is “imperative that we plan to eliminate the threat from Iraq,” the lawmakers wrote. “We believe that we must directly confront Saddam sooner rather than later.”
Later that day, McCain told MSNBC that it is “possible, if not probable, that internal opposition forces can prevail over time.” Asked if it wouldn’t require 100,000 U.S. soldiers as occupation troops, McCain demurred. “Oh, no,” he said. “I don’t think so at all.”
Those predictions proved inaccurate. Worse, U.S. forces and local militias then were searching in vain for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora redoubts of eastern Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence later concluded that Bin Laden had escaped the dragnet in early December, prompting criticism that the White House ignored the Al Qaeda chief to focus on Hussein.
McCain doesn’t buy it.
“I know of no one who believes attention to Iraq at that point diverted our attention from Tora Bora,” McCain said, when asked about the timing of the letter. “We should have put more boots on the ground there to apprehend [Bin Laden]. Everyone agrees. But I have no reason to believe that because we urged attention to Iraq, it had any tactical effect on the battleground.”
No Al Qaeda link
By the following fall, McCain offered unstinting support to the Bush administration as it sought to rally the nation for war. In September 2002, McCain told CNN that he expected “an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.”
But McCain openly disputed Bush administration claims that Hussein appeared linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “I doubt seriously if there’s this close relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein,” he told CBS News in September 2002.
Postwar investigations, including the 9/11 Commission Report and a report this month financed by the Pentagon, found no evidence of a “collaborative relationship” between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime.
In October 2002 McCain again rose to back the Bush administration when it sought congressional approval for a resolution to use force if necessary to disarm Iraq. The Iraqi tyrant, McCain repeatedly warned his colleagues, was “a clear and present danger” to U.S. security.
“He has developed stocks of germs and toxins in sufficient quantities to kill the entire population of the Earth multiple times,” McCain said, according to the Congressional Record. “He has placed weapons laden with these poisons on alert to fire at his neighbors within minutes, not hours, and has devolved authority to fire them to subordinates. He develops nuclear weapons with which he would hold his neighbors and us hostage.”
Like all but a few members of Congress, McCain read only the summary of the National Intelligence Estimate sent to Congress that month, according to longtime aide Mark Salter. Asked why, Salter said in an e-mail that the summary was “pretty informative.”
The summary, which was later declassified, warned with “high confidence” that Saddam was building a fierce array of illicit weapons. But CIA officials say the full classified text contained numerous caveats about the intelligence.
In fact, none of the weapons existed. After the invasion, the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group concluded that Hussein had abandoned or destroyed his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, a dozen years earlier.
When the invasion began, McCain told MSNBC that he had “no doubt” U.S. forces “will be welcomed as liberators” in Baghdad. But he changed his views after his first visit to Baghdad, in August 2003, as the insurgency was beginning.
Returning home, McCain began calling for the deployment of thousands more troops. The policy set him sharply at odds with the White House, his party and military commanders. Virtually alone in Congress, McCain pushed for a larger force with growing urgency over the next 3 1/2 years as casualties mounted and public support plummeted.
The Bush administration finally agreed to send nearly 30,000 additional troops early last year, bringing the current total to about 155,000. The so-called surge has helped curb both the sectarian slaughter and anti-U.S. attacks, according to the Pentagon.
“I give the guy a lot of credit on this issue,” said Kenneth Pollack, who headed Persian Gulf affairs in the Clinton White House and now works at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington. “He figured out the right answer. And the administration was dead set against it.”
Expertise challenged
But McCain’s claim to expertise came under attack Tuesday after he had completed a two-day visit to Iraq, his eighth tour of the war zone. During a news conference and in a separate radio interview, he charged that Iran was training Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq. He quickly apologized after he was advised that the Teheran regime supports militant Shiite groups, not the rival Sunnis who make up Al Qaeda. “I’m sorry,” McCain said. “The Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.”
McCain’s aides said he merely misspoke when he mixed up America’s adversaries, but the Democratic National Committee immediately challenged his supposed knowledge and judgment on Iraq.
Democrats contend that McCain’s support for Bush’s unpopular war policies outweighs any differences he has had with them. In New Hampshire this month several dozen protesters loudly chanted “Bush, McCain, more of the same” when the presumptive Republican nominee arrived for a town-hall meeting in Exeter.
U.S. troops must remain until Iraq is secure, no matter how long that takes, McCain told the crowd. He ridiculed promises by his Democratic rivals, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, to quickly pull troops out. “A date for withdrawal would be a date for surrender,” he said.
The key to victory -- and probably the White House next fall -- McCain said, is whether American casualties start to rise again. If the surge is seen as failing, McCain warned, support for the war will evaporate.
“I am confident about this strategy,” he declared. “I will stick with it under any circumstances. But I don’t know if the American people will stick with it.”
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bob.drogin@latimes.com
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09826109cd483fc45e12a4434e665bf7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-23-op-skinner23-story.html | Slavery’s staying power | Slavery’s staying power
One hot june day in 2006, I saw what slavery really meant. In a rundown mansion in a slum of Bucharest, Romania, a pimp offered to sell me a young woman he described as “a blond.” She had bleached hair, hastily applied makeup, and she apparently suffered from Down syndrome. On her right arm were at least 10 angry, fresh slashes where, I can only assume, she had attempted suicide. The pimp claimed that he made 200 euros per night renting her out to local clients. He offered to sell her outright to me in exchange for a used car.
It wasn’t the first time I had encountered a slave in bondage. It wasn’t even the first time I had been offered a slave for sale. Over five years on five continents, I had infiltrated trafficking networks and witnessed other negotiations to buy and sell human beings. Worldwide, I’d met more than 100 current and former slaves.
Many people are surprised to learn that there are still slaves. Many imagined that slavery died along with the 360,000 Union soldiers whose blood fertilized the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Many thought that slavery was brought to an end around the world when most countries outlawed it in the 19th century.
But, in fact, there are more slaves today than at any point in history. Although a precise census is impossible, as most masters keep their slaves hidden, baseline estimates from United Nations and other international researchers range from 12 million to 27 million slaves worldwide. The U.S. State Department estimates that from 600,000 to 800,000 people -- primarily women and children -- are trafficked across national borders each year, and that doesn’t count the millions of slaves who are held in bondage within their own countries.
Let me be clear: By “slaves” I mean, very simply, those who are forced to work, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence. That is the nice, neat, horrible definition I have used since I began studying the subject in 2001. It was brought home to me more vividly than ever by the tears of that young woman in Bucharest.
In the United States today, we tend to use the word “slave” loosely. Merriam-Webster offers as its first definition of the word, “drudgery; toil.” Well-intentioned activists will say that a worker at a shoe factory in Indonesia is “paid a slave wage” of $1.25 per hour, despite the fact the worker can walk away from the job at any time. An investment banker in New York will claim to be “worked like a slave” because, despite his six-figure salary, he is required to work up to 18 hours a day on occasion. During his last few years with Warner Bros. Records, Prince wore the word “slave” scrawled across his face to protest a binding contract he couldn’t get out of -- even though it paid him $10-million advances for each album.
But that’s not what slavery is, as Rambho Kumar can attest. Kumar was born into wilting poverty in a village in Bihar, the poorest state in India, the country with more slaves than any other, according to U.N. estimates. In 2001, desperate to keep him and his five brothers from starving, his mother accepted 700 rupees ($15) as an advance from a local trafficker, who promised more money once 9-year-old Rambho started working many miles away in India’s carpet belt.
After he received Rambho from the trafficker, the loom owner treated his new acquisition like any other low-value industrial tool. He never allowed Rambho and the other slaves to leave the loom, forcing them to work for 19 hours a day, starting at 4 in the morning. The work itself tore into Rambho’s small hands, and when he whimpered in pain, the owner’s brother stuck his finger in boiling oil to cauterize the wound -- and then told him to get back to work. When other boys attempted escape or made a mistake in the intricate designs of the rugs, which were destined for Western markets, the owner beat them savagely.
On July 12, 2005, local police, in coordination with activists supported by Free the Slaves, an organization based in Washington, liberated Rambho and nine other emaciated boys.
I’ve met and talked with slaves and former slaves like Rambho in a dozen countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Romania, India, Sudan and Haiti. The International Labor Organization of the United Nations estimates that in Asia alone, there are about 10 million slaves.
Even in the United States, low-end Justice Department figures estimate that there are about 50,000 people languishing in hidden bondage at any one time. On March 4, for instance, two south Florida women were convicted on charges of enslaving and torturing a teenage Haitian girl named Simone Celestine. The two women face 10 years in prison. Celestine was freed by the FBI last year after being held as a domestic slave for six years, during which time she said she was beaten with closed fists, forced to shower outside with a garden hose, rented to other homes and not allowed to attend school.
Celestine’s case is eerily similar to that of Williathe Narcisse, a courageous young woman I got to know after she escaped a life of domestic slavery in suburban Miami. Narcisse, who was 12 when she was freed in 1999, had been smuggled into the U.S. from Haiti to work as a domestic servant. During her three years in slavery, she was required to keep the family’s home spotless, eat garbage and sleep on the floor. She was repeatedly raped by the family’s adult son.
In its first term, the Bush administration spoke out strongly against human trafficking, laying out the most aggressive anti-slavery agenda since Reconstruction. But politics hamstrung its implementation. Pressed by a coalition of academic feminists and evangelical conservatives, American officials focused mainly on eliminating prostitution, despite overwhelming evidence that, worldwide, more than 90% of modern-day slaves are not held in commercial sexual slavery.
Before his reelection, President Bush spoke frequently about slavery, including two rousing speeches he gave before the U.N. General Assembly. But in each case, the president only detailed his concern for those in the commercial sex industry, never mentioning debt bondage (in which a person is forced into slavery in order to pay off an initial debt) or labor trafficking. Over the last two years, the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons has dedicated four times as much of its budget to fighting sex slavery as it did to combating other forms of slavery.
“It is a vicious myth that women and children who work as prostitutes have voluntarily chosen such a life for themselves,” asserted a 2005 State Department fact sheet. Thus the victimization of Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the high-priced call girl frequented by Eliot Spitzer, who until Monday was New York’s governor, is equated to the slavery of the young woman in the Bucharest brothel.
Even though there are more slaves in the world today than ever, as a percentage of world population, there are fewer than ever. In a generation, bondage could be eradicated. But for this to happen, the U.S. must lead the way.
First, however, it must define the terms carefully. A current legislative fight is underway about just what slavery means. Over the objections of a few anti-slavery stalwarts in the Justice Department, the House of Representatives passed a bill in December that expands the current anti-trafficking legislation to cover most forms of prostitution, coerced or not. If approved in its current form by the Senate and signed by the president, the law will no longer address slavery exclusively and will instead become a federal mandate to fight prostitution on a broad scale.
Prostitution is always degrading, and it is often brutal -- but it is not always slavery. Equating the scourge of slavery with run-of-the-mill, non-coerced prostitution is not only misleading, it will weaken the world’s efforts to end real forced labor and human trafficking.
Slavery in all its forms is a crime against humanity. Rambho’s bondage is no more or less tolerable than that of the young woman offered to me in Bucharest. Both are abominations, and both are our collective burden to abolish.
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be12c897850f03c53251af80a37b3315 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-24-et-batmanviral24-story.html | Bat infiltration | Bat infiltration
The billboards arrived without fanfare or explanation in more than a dozen major cities last May. Bearing two simple catch phrases, “Harvey Dent for district attorney” and “I believe in Harvey Dent,” they featured a photo of a stately Dent (imagine Eliot Spitzer with a shock of blond hair) against an American flag.
But within 72 hours, each billboard had been defaced by identical graffiti: The candidate’s eyes were scrawled over with black rings, his lips crudely rouged with a smeary, clown-like grin. As well, each of the placards’ messages had been altered to read: “I believe in Harvey Dent TOO.”
Although not outwardly advertising anything other than Dent’s political aspirations (never mind the impossibility of running for D.A. in more than one city), the billboards were in fact the opening salvo of one of the most interactive movie-marketing campaigns ever hatched by Hollywood: a multi-platform, hidden-in-plain-sight promotional blitz for the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” which stars Christian Bale and Heath Ledger and reaches theaters on July 18.
By employing a variety of untraditional awareness-building maneuvers and starting the film’s promo push strategically, more than a year before the film’s release, marketers at the firm 42 Entertainment (subcontracted by the film’s distributor, Warner Bros.) seem to have struck a chord with “The Dark Knight’s” core constituency: fanboys and comic-book geeks. The promotional efforts -- part viral marketing initiative, part “advertainment” -- fit into an absorbing, nascent genre-bending pastime called alternate reality gaming that have been the toast of movie and comic blogs for months.
“The Dark Knight” is hardly the only summer action flick to step up its Internet game in anticipation of the tent-pole season: Trailers for “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” are spreading across the Web like kudzu since being turned into “widgets” -- small, portable applications that can be posted on social networking sites and blogs by marketers for its distributor, Paramount. Earlier this month, HarperCollins Children’s Books launched a “read it before you see it” global digital campaign tying in the film “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” with the C.S. Lewis children’s classic from which it was adapted.
And then there’s good, old-fashioned movie salesmanship: The trailer for “Iron Man” has been streamed 3.7 million times on Yahoo Movies since it was launched in September.
So to stand out, “The Dark Knight’s” alternate reality game (ARG for short) is mashing up advertising, scavenger-hunting and role-playing in a manner that variously recalls “The X-Files” and the play “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding,” “The Matrix” and the board game Clue -- all in the name of galvanizing a community of fans to bond (with the new Batman and each other) over the course of a wild goose chase.
Or to be more precise, a wild Joker chase -- one that so far has involved clues spelled out in skywriting, secret meeting points, cellphones embedded inside cakes, Internet red herrings, DIY fan contests and even fake political rallies. Moreover, last week several players were nearly arrested in Chicago while engaging in civil disobedience to promote the movie; others have even been “kidnapped” and “murdered” over the course of the game.
Befitting the campaign’s covert-ops M.O., neither Warner Bros. nor 42 Entertainment would comment for this story. But as Jonathan Waite, founder of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network (www.argn .com) sees it, “The Dark Knight’s” multifaceted promo push transcends marketing to exist as a standalone cultural event.
“This is looked upon as viral marketing, but you have to look at it as an engrossing experience -- you have people getting very attached to the game,” Waite said. “You’re not a passive onlooker, you’re taking an active role. And any time you take an active role, you’re emotionally connecting. That’s why people keep coming back: You make personal connections with others and a community gets built.”
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‘Take back Gotham City’
As any Bat-fanatic will tell you, the Dent propaganda is meant to conjure Batman’s “Dark Knight” nemesis, politician turned crime kingpin Two Face (a role memorably embodied by Tommy Lee Jones in 1995’s “Batman Forever;” Two Face is played by Aaron Eckhart in the new movie). Early in the “Dark Knight” marketing campaign, an official website for the film redirected viewers to www.ibelieveinharveydent .com -- a URL notably lacking any references to Batman that urges “concerned Gotham citizens” to “take back Gotham City” by backing the candidate’s run for district attorney.
More specifically, it tells them how to get involved in a faux grass-roots political campaign through initiatives such as filming videos, writing “Take Back Gotham” songs and coming out to meet the “Dentmobile,” now touring several dozen American cities.
On March 12, however, a rally for the fictional D.A. candidate was broken up by Chicago police who seemed perplexed in the face of a group of volunteers handing out Harvey Dent bumper stickers, buttons and T-shirts.
Taking the self-referentiality a step further, another website, www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com provides a tantalizing clue about some connection between the Joker and Two Face that will presumably be explained in the film.
But discovering it takes some work. Call up the site and you’ll see a blacked-out page with the message: “Page not found.” But pull down “select all” from your browser’s edit menu and a none too subtle shout-out to the killer clown is revealed: a pages-long sequence of repeating Ha ha ha’s.
“I’ve never been a fan of the Batman series,” writes a poster on the the marketing-analysis blog “Catch Up Lady,” “but this sort of thing makes me want to go see it.”
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A ‘top-secret’ trailer
Of course, moviedom’s paradigm has been shifted by high-impact, low-cost viral marketing campaigns before. Promos for the 1999 indie thriller “The Blair Witch Project” led viewers to believe the movie was a student film gone horribly wrong, resulting in the disappearance and possible murder of a group of Maryland college students. Likewise, stealth Internet marketing for this year’s alien-invasion hit “Cloverfield” tantalized moviegoers by keeping them guessing about the movie’s subject matter -- and even, initially, its title.
Wired magazine contributing editor Frank Rose has extensively covered the world of alternate reality gaming and credits the “Cloverfield” ARG campaign with helping the film surpass all box office expectations (hauling in nearly $50 million in its opening weekend). The debut of its “top-secret” trailer last July caused a sensation, compelling moviegoers to take to the Net to uncover a host of interlinking websites and viral tie-ins. But Rose feels “Cloverfield” marketers failed to sustain that early critical mass of interest through the film’s January release, ultimately squandering its full viral potential.
“It had what looked like was going to be an ARG behind it, but then it fizzled out,” Rose said. “Although there was a lot of comment about ‘Cloverfield’ online, with people looking for clues and debating the clues, things died down and didn’t start to heat up again until before the movie was released. It got a pretty big opening weekend, but then ticket sales fell off a cliff. That’s an example of what a not terribly well-executed ARG can do.”
To date, however, the “Dark Knight” campaign’s master stroke has to be its clown-cake giveaway.
In July, specially defaced dollar bills advertising yet another “Dark Knight” Web domain, at www.whysoserious .com were handed out to fans at San Diego’s Comic-Con. On the website, the Joker (Ledger in the film) offered Bat-aficionados the chance to become his henchmen with special prizes tempting those willing to carry out his off-line demands. These players gathered at a physical location to obtain a phone number that was written in the sky by a plane, and from there, they embarked on an elaborate scavenger hunt around the city. It all ended with a scene taken from the “Dark Knight” trailer -- a fan being abducted by “thugs” in a Cadillac Escalade and getting symbolically “murdered” by armed men who mistook the player for the Joker.
Before you could say “Holy meta-narrative, Batman!,” fan bulletin boards and chat rooms went wild with news after players posted about the staged event online. “I’m staying glued to this ARG until its end,” wrote blogger Matt Keyser, “and definitely seeing ‘The Dark Knight’ when it comes out.”
In December, conscientious followers noted a mysterious countdown on WhySoSerious.com that instructed viewers to travel to 22 real-world addresses in cities from coast to coast to pick up a “very special treat” under the name “Robin Banks” (get it?).
Turns out the addresses were bakeries in possession of a number of cakes bearing phone numbers spelled out in icing. Many of those who called the number recoiled in confusion when the cake in front of them began to ring -- cellphones encased in “Gotham City Evidence” bags had been baked directly inside, each containing a phone charger, Joker paraphernalia and explicit instructions to keep the phone with them at all times. In addition to enlisting the players as the Joker’s minions, the devices conveyed invitations to special screenings of newly cut “Dark Knight” Imax trailers.
“Wow. You really took the cake! Now put the icing on it,” the note says, continuing: “Let’s hope your fellow goons come through as well as you. Once all the layers are in place, you’ll all get your just desserts.”
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Similar campaign
Players can thank 42 Entertainment, the marketing firm behind “The Dark Knight” ARG that famously concocted a similar campaign for Nine Inch Nails’ chart-topping 2007 album “Year Zero.” That well-received alternate reality game involved a dystopian vision of the fictional “year 0000,” USB drives left at various concert venues for fans to find, interconnecting websites, murals and recorded phone messages.
Although 42 Entertainment’s principal creative executive Jordan Weisman would not comment for this story, Frank Rose got him to explain the operative ideas behind ARGs for an article that appeared in Wired in December.
“His outlook is that people are so bombarded by advertising messages, they automatically tune them out,” Rose said. “So he figured out the way to get people’s attention was to not shout the message but to hide it and let people discover it. That’s been the basis of this genre from the start.”
So, how are ARGs going to affect the future of movie marketing? “It’s a very powerful marketing tool for a certain kind of product -- especially for a tent-pole like the ‘Batman’ films,” said Rose.
Or, as ARGN.com’s Waite couches the debate: “A movie experience is an hour and 45 minutes, you watch it, you can talk about it, you’re done. But wouldn’t it be cool if you could explore more of it with others and expand the universe yourself? This stuff is tailor-made for movie fans.”
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chris.lee@latimes.com
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93dd6e6334c14702b36fea5872dbd383 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-25-et-goldstein25-story.html | John Hughes, candle-lighter | John Hughes, candle-lighter
John HUGHES hasn’t set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse -- he doesn’t have an agent, doesn’t give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago’s sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set.
But he has an entire generation of fans in the industry who grew up infatuated with his films, especially a string of soulful mid-1980s teen comedies that helped capture the eternal drama of modern teenage existence. They include “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club,” which no less an authority than Courtney Love once called “the defining moment of the alternative generation.” Any number of successful actors and filmmakers, from Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith to Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Wes Anderson, are fans, having soaked up Hughes’ keen observational humor, love of mischief and shrewd dissection of social hierarchies.
“John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time,” says Apatow, the writer-director-producer whose new film, “Drillbit Taylor,” is loosely based on an old Hughes story idea. “It’s pretty ridiculous to hear people talk about the movies we’ve been doing, with outrageous humor and sweetness all combined, as if they were an original idea. I mean, it was all there first in John Hughes’ films. Whether it’s ‘Freaks and Geeks’ or ‘Superbad,’ the whole idea of having outsiders as the lead characters, that all started with Hughes.”
Hollywood is full of older masters who’ve been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who’s disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since.
“He’s our generation’s J.D. Salinger,” says Smith, whose film “Dogma” shows its heroes, Jay and Silent Bob, on a pilgrimage to Shermer, Ill., a mythical town that only exists in Hughes’ films. “He touched a generation and then the dude checked out. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. Basically my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words.”
Smith says whenever he’s in Chicago promoting a film he asks his local publicist if they know how to find him, to no avail. The one person who made contact was Vaughn, who grew up in the North Shore suburbs and met with Hughes when shooting “The Break-Up” in the area in 2005. It’s in keeping with this aura of mystery that while Hughes came up with the idea for “Drillbit Taylor,” the Owen Wilson comedy that opened Friday to lackluster reviews, his name isn’t anywhere on the film. But his handprints are everywhere.
The story evokes memories of Hughes’ teen sagas, being a comic tale about a trio of nerdy high-school freshmen who recruit a supposedly fearsome bodyguard to protect them from a nasty school bully. As the film’s scruffy hero, Wilson is something of a throwback to John Candy’s character in “Uncle Buck,” Hughes’ 1989 comedy that stars Candy as a bedraggled bachelor forced to look after his brother’s three smart-aleck kids.
Based on a treatment Hughes wrote some years ago, the “Drillbit” story is credited to frequent Apatow collaborators Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown, who also wrote the screenplay, and Edmond Dantes, a favorite Hughes pseudonym. Susan Arnold, who produced the film with Apatow and her partner, Donna Arkoff Roth, is married to producer Tom Jacobson, who is one of the few people in Hollywood still in contact with the reclusive filmmaker.
“Tom is the unsung hero here,” says Roth. “He’d always remembered the story and knew there was a great movie in there. He got permission from John to use it and got us involved.” Arnold and Roth were fans of Apatow, who once had offices on their floor at Revolution Studios. “We’d always felt we were lucky to get Judd involved,” says Arnold.
If anyone is a repository of Hughes lore, it is Jacobson, who calls him “one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met” but is scrupulously tight-lipped when it comes to offering any speculation about the filmmaker’s retreat from view. When Hughes was looking for someone to produce “Ferris Bueller,” Paramount executive Dawn Steel introduced him to Jacobson, who spent a decade working on various Hughes films.
Jacobson says Hughes could write the first draft of a script in a week. “Once he had the characters and a strong idea, it would carry him all the way through,” he recalls.
Hughes’ method of shooting comedy has become virtually an industry standard. He’d often let the camera roll through four or five takes in a row, looking for the right tone and rhythm for a scene. “He loved his actors and loved language, so he’d shoot a lot of film,” says Jacobson. “It became a big thing in comedy after John did it -- listening to the actors and looking for those great moments. John would hear a line and get the actor to go with it. It really wasn’t the actors who were improvising. It was John improvising.”
No one who knows Hughes is eager to theorize about why he dropped out of sight. It’s possible that the filmmaker, who gave studio executives headaches when he was riding high, simply grew tired of the messy business of making movies and chose to pursue a simpler life.
Still, it’s hard to find a thirty- or fortysomething writer or filmmaker who doesn’t credit Hughes as a seminal figure in their movie education. “You see Hughes’ influence on all TV comedy, especially the stylized single-camera comedy,” says Apatow. “His great film characters, starting with Anthony Michael Hall in ‘Sixteen Candles,’ were big inspirations. When we were growing up, we were all like Hall -- the goofy skinny kid who thinks he’s cool, even if nobody else does. ‘Superbad’ has that same attitude, that mix of total cockiness and insecurity.”
Hughes’ influence remains so lasting that when Paramount Vantage needed an iconic image for the poster for “American Teen,” a documentary due out this summer that chronicles the lives of five high school seniors, it re-created the look of the poster from Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club.”
It’s interesting that for all of Hughes’ identification with teen films, some of his biggest fans, notably Apatow and “Wedding Crashers” director David Dobkin, cite his “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” as a favorite film. The 1987 picture offers a distinctive Hughesian riff on the odd-couple buddy picture, pitting Steve Martin’s sophisticated marketing executive against John Candy’s garrulous salesman when the two are thrown together trying to get home for Thanksgiving after their flight to O’Hare is canceled.
It is perhaps Hughes’ most grown-up film, especially in the way it shows how the caste system in his teen films could carry over to adult life. Stuck in a dumpy motel far from home, Martin erupts, making no secret of his contempt for Candy’s mindless chatter. Though clearly wounded, Candy throws us off guard with his response. “Yeah, I talk too much” he says. “I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. [And] I’m not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article.”
Dobkin says scenes like that are great examples of what he calls Hughes’ “clear voice. That argument in the motel is pitch-perfect. . . . It’s the great thing about Hughes’ films. He made them for himself, but when you watch them, you always feel that he made them especially for you.”
This sense of personal attachment is a big part of the Hughes mystique. Producer Scott Stuber was such a fan that, as a teenager, when he wanted to impress a girl, he’d get her a soundtrack from a Hughes film. “He somehow knew we were all struggling with the same things,” Stuber says. “Whenever I watch a Hughes film now, I remember the euphoria of being 13 and falling in love with movies.”
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The Big Picture runs Tuesdays in Calendar. E-mail ideas or criticism to patrick.goldstein @latimes.com.
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bb8f5d4d75be915822d84e25e25c3647 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-25-fg-food25-story.html | World food aid falls short | World food aid falls short
With food and fuel prices soaring, the United Nations agency charged with feeding the world’s hungry has launched an “extraordinary emergency appeal” to cover costs and avoid having to cut aid, a senior official said Monday.
The World Food Program called on donor nations for urgent help in closing a funding gap of more than $500 million by May 1. If money doesn’t arrive by then, Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a letter to donors, the WFP may be forced to cut food rations “for those who rely on the world to stand by them during times of abject need.”
The poorest face hunger as people around the world are being “priced out of the food market,” Sheeran told reporters Monday in a conference call.
Citing food prices that had ballooned 55% since June, the WFP disclosed a $500-million shortfall Feb. 25, and the gap has continued to grow ever since, Sheeran said.
WFP officials declined to put a figure on the current shortfall, saying it was a moving target, but experts estimated it in the range of $650 million.
The Rome-based WFP feeds at least 73 million people in nearly 80 nations with an annual operating budget of $2.9 billion.
“We’ve never quite had a situation where aggressive rises in food prices keep pricing operations out of our reach,” Sheeran said.
The WFP has issued emergency appeals in the past for natural disasters or wars, but never for a market-generated crisis, she said.
Letters to donors containing the new appeal for an “emergency allocation” were dated March 20 and sent over the weekend. Copies were made available to journalists.
Although the WFP has been sounding an alarm for a couple of months, the appeal to the donors made the warning a stark reality.
In the letter, Sheeran noted that the WFP had attempted to reduce its costs by turning to local and regional markets to buy up to 80% of the food it disburses, a share that grew by 30% over the previous year.
“This not only saves on food and transport costs but is a win for local farmers, helping to break the cycle of hunger at its root,” she wrote. “But even with our mitigation efforts, the cost of our food purchases has risen 55% since June 2007" and an additional 20% since Feb. 25. “Such increases show no sign of abating any time soon.”
In addition to being hit by spiraling costs of grains and other staples, WFP operations have been hurt by record-high fuel prices and other transport costs.
Food commodities are becoming more expensive because of rising demand in developing countries, natural disasters and climate change, and the shift of millions of tons of grains to the production of biofuels.
The United States is the largest single contributor to the WFP, accounting for about 40% of the agency’s food and money donations, followed by the European Union. U.S. officials have already warned that it is likely they will be cutting donations to global humanitarian organizations because of higher costs.
Sheeran said that the people at greatest risk are those who live on $1 a day or less, but that officials are also bracing for what the U.N. is calling the “new face of hunger.” These are people who may have access to food but can no longer afford to buy it.
The shortfall does not take into account the anticipated swelling in the number of people in need. Eventually, if prices continue their ascent, the WFP crisis will grow even more critical.
Thus far, only one nation, Afghanistan, has made a formal request for additional assistance.
President Hamid Karzai in January asked the WFP to help feed an additional 2.5 million people.
Numerous countries, however, have inquired, Sheeran said.
“We have yet to speak to any country that does not have concerns,” she said.
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wilkinson@latimes.com
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bcd7b48ada41d8d43986bc929523de91 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-25-fi-nbc25-story.html | NBC Universal is dividing TV studio | NBC Universal is dividing TV studio
NBC Universal, in a bid to retain a key executive, has split its television production studio into two separate operations.
Bonnie Hammer, who has been president of both NBC Universal’s USA Network and Sci Fi Channel, on Monday was named president of cable entertainment and the cable studio. In her new position, Hammer will oversee making shows for cable channels.
The move significantly reduces the scope of Universal Media Studios, one of Hollywood’s biggest suppliers of network and cable programming.
Universal Media Studios will now focus solely on supplying shows for broadcast networks, primarily NBC, such as “Law & Order,” “The Office” and “30 Rock.” Meanwhile, the newly formed NBC Universal Cable Studio will provide shows for cable channels, including “Monk,” “Psych” and “Battlestar Galactica.”
Hammer also will oversee NBC’s new digital networks, including Sleuth, Chiller and Universal HD, which are available on some cable systems.
Executives close to the situation said NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker facilitated the reorganization to keep Hammer in the NBC Universal fold.
Zucker said in an interview last week that he planned to expand Hammer’s duties, but declined to elaborate at that time.
“Look, obviously, she’s done a terrific job overseeing USA and Sci Fi and we like to add on responsibilities to our strongest executives, and certainly Bonnie would qualify,” he said.
For her part, Hammer said she wasn’t looking to leave NBC Universal, even though she had been approached by others.
“It’d be very hard to leave and to create the kind of chemistry that’s taken me many years to create,” Hammer said. “And they’re pretty good to me here.”
Giving Hammer a higher profile underscores how the cable division has become the new star at NBC Universal, overshadowing the higher-profile broadcast network, which just a few years ago was ranked No. 1. Underscoring that shift, NBC last month said that instead of spending a day in New York touting its new fall shows to advertisers, as it has for decades, it would now use that time to showcase programming from all its channels.
The reorganization also reduces the responsibility of two powerful executives who, for the last nine months, have been running the NBC television network and production studio: co-Chairmen Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff.
Only last year, NBC combined its network and studio operations as a way to attract Silverman to the top programming job. Of 25 shows produced by Universal Media Studios, seven run on USA and Sci Fi.
Another executive affected is Katherine Pope, who as president of Universal Media Studios will now oversee a smaller roster of shows.
Hammer has been running USA since 2004 and the Sci Fi Channel since 2001. She spearheaded a deal to get professional wrestling on USA and worked to come up with a cohesive message to unify USA’s disparate programming, including such shows as “Monk.”
The result: a USA marketing campaign around the theme “Characters Welcome.”
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meg.james@latimes.com
Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this report.
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d81bacada41f4dd1eb2898a2274f0f33 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-25-na-kevorkian25-story.html | Kevorkian announces a run for Congress | Kevorkian announces a run for Congress
Jack Kevorkian, the assisted-suicide advocate who served eight years in prison for second-degree murder, announced Monday he’s running for Congress as an independent.
Kevorkian, 79, is jumping into a competitive House race, challenging incumbent Republican Joe Knollenberg for a district in suburban Detroit. Democrat Gary Peters is also running.
“I’m not a politician,” Kevorkian said, adding he is not tied to anybody or any special interests. “My mind is free. So I can say what I think.”
Kevorkian, who was nicknamed “Dr. Death,” said that if he was elected, his priority would be promoting the 9th Amendment, which protects rights not explicitly specified elsewhere in the Constitution. Kevorkian said he interprets it as protecting a person’s choice to die through assisted suicide or to avoid wearing a seat belt.
He said the government is tyrannical.
“You’ve been trained to obey it, not fight for it, because the tyrant doesn’t like that,” Kevorkian said.
Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, claims to have helped at least 130 people die from 1990 until 1998.
He said he was proud to serve his prison term for helping Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old Michigan man with Lou Gehrig’s disease, die in 1998. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999.
Just 10 months out of prison, Kevorkian said he did not plan to actively raise money but said he will accept it if someone donates to his campaign.
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bf40d50e4fbfc210b928df67a73471be | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-26-et-rutten26-story.html | Owner of the LAPD | Owner of the LAPD
Joseph WAMBAUGH is one of those Los Angeles authors whose popular success always has overshadowed his importance as a writer.
His fans will find “Hollywood Crows” -- the second novel in two years set in that surreal neighborhood’s police station -- as entertaining as ever, while readers who have followed Wambaugh’s fascinating 37-year career will savor a book whose flaws are not only engaging but also redolent with promise. At 71, the author appears to have tired of picking up lifetime achievement awards and to have opened a new chapter in his own literary story.
That’s an entirely welcome event, because Wambaugh is an important writer not simply because he’s ambitious and technically accomplished, but also because he “owns” a critical slice of L.A.'s literary real estate: the Los Angeles Police Department -- not just its inner workings, but also its relationship to the city’s political establishment and to its intricately enmeshed social classes. There is no other American metropolis whose civic history is so inextricably intertwined with the history of its police department. That alone would make Wambaugh’s work significant, but the importance of his best fiction and nonfiction is amplified by his unequaled ability to capture the nuances of the LAPD’s isolated and essentially Hobbesian tribal culture.
The reforming chief William H. Parker set out to make his department a unique institution, one separate and apart from both the city’s political institutions and the communities it policed. He succeeded spectacularly. As a former detective sergeant who spent 14 years on the force, Wambaugh comes by his knowledge of that success -- and its consequences -- the hard way. Thus, his books on the department instinctively and, therefore, unobtrusively convey the way in which LAPD patrol officers seem constantly at odds with their commanders and the whole force appears locked in never-ending antagonism with City Hall. Meanwhile, for the officers on the street, the day-to-day grind of policing remains a nearly run race between stubborn but well-concealed idealism and far-too-intimate contact with far too much of badly fallen mankind.
Like Irish playwright John Synge, Wambaugh is “a rooted man” -- though, uniquely, he’s rooted not just in a place, Los Angeles, but also in one institution critical to that geography, the LAPD.
Most writers would be content to make a career from that franchise, but Wambaugh’s formal ambitions always have set him apart from even the top-flight of police procedural and “true crime” writers. Born a policeman’s son in East Pittsburgh, he joined the Marines at 17 and the LAPD soon after he left the Corps. Ex-Marine, Catholic, married young, a cop’s pedigree, Wambaugh was straight from Central Casting -- except for the string of night school college degrees that culminated in a master of arts from Cal State LA.
Starting in 1971, while still on the force, Wambaugh published “The New Centurions” and “The Blue Knight” in quick succession. Together, they marked a turning point in so-called “hard-boiled” and “police procedural” novels. Wambaugh’s characters were cops but they were also entangled in civil service with all the soul-abrading frictions that such contact entails. They were “tough” but not invulnerable in the old hard-boiled sense. They experienced terrible things and paid for it in a variety of credible ways.
Other, similarly innovative books followed. “The Onion Field,” clearly written under the influence of Truman Capote’s nonfiction classic, “In Cold Blood,” was and remains a masterpiece. That book “made me a real writer,” Wambaugh once said. Three more LAPD novels -- “The Choirboys,” “The Black Marble” and “The Glitter Dome” -- took a compelling turn toward black comedy, which Wambaugh frankly credited to his reading of Joseph Heller. As Wambaugh put it, “Heller enabled me to find my voice.” Eleven other novels and works of nonfiction followed, including one involving a celebrated English murder case that was among the first to point to the emerging importance of DNA evidence. Finally, in 2006, Wambaugh returned to LAPD with his first novel in more than a decade, “Hollywood Station.”
Fans of that book will find many of their favorite characters back for a series of star turns in “Hollywood Crows,” including the two surfer cops dubbed “Flotsam” and “Jetsam” by their comrades as well as Hollywood Nate Weiss, who still is hoping to leave LAPD behind for an acting career.
This time, the action focuses on the station’s community relations officers -- CROs, which inevitably becomes “crows.” This is a new kind of police work for Wambaugh: time spent at meetings with angry landlords and street people, or picking up complaints from hillside residents worried that the homeless encampment upslope will ignite a brush fire. Most of the plot centers on the ways in which various Hollywood station cops and a full cast of beautifully drawn petty criminals intersect with a nightclub owner of Middle Eastern origin, Ali Aziz, and his soon-to-be ex-wife, the beautiful Margot. (The real-life Eddie Nash clearly is the model here.) Wambaugh is fond of that sort of roman a clef, and Hollywood Nate breakfasts at the Farmers Market every morning so that he can read the trades and eavesdrop on a bunch of writers and directors who bear an uncanny resemblance to the legendary breakfast group that includes David Freeman, Roger L. Simon and other writers and directors. It’s a nice touch and one of the many knowing social and geographic ones Wambaugh weaves through his narrative. Aziz’s home, for example, is on Mount Olympus in the Hollywood Hills, home to many upwardly mobile Russian, Armenian and Middle Eastern entrepreneurs.
It would spoil the plot to give too much of the back and forth away, but let’s just say there’s a tragic story of loss and one of redemption at the end of a darkly convoluted and murderous path -- and neither is expected. There’s also a new enemy for Wambaugh’s cops, the federal consent decree under which the LAPD has been working since the Rampart scandal. The author doesn’t like it and neither do his cops and their resentment is part of the story’s background noise -- as it is, in fact, in many LAPD stations today. Still, Wambaugh is too honest and careful an observer not to represent the LAPD as a changed institution and three of this novel’s best cops are women, one of them a Korean American. Clearly, this isn’t Parker’s department, Daryl Gates’ nor even Bernard Parks’.
An ensemble of wonderfully drawn characters, both major and minor, always has been a strength of Wambaugh’s novels and, if “Hollywood Crows” has a shortcoming, it’s that the author seemed unwilling to assign any of this book’s characters the major role. The narrative suffers somewhat because it lacks a single dramatic persona to act as its focus, as if the author was unwilling to choose between his characters. It’s a flaw only in the sense that it slows the narrative propulsion -- though hardly the enjoyment of a well-told and emotionally moving story.
This preference for the ensemble over the single main character simply may reflect Wambaugh’s success with and fondness for television and screen writing. A careful reader, however, may wonder if a full-blown comedy of manners might not be in the offing?
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timothy.rutten@latimes.com
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987869dd1064ba4b5cf5e6c92b2d684d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-26-fg-cheney26-story.html | Cheney disputes Iran nuclear goal | Cheney disputes Iran nuclear goal
Vice President Dick Cheney charged in an interview released Tuesday that Iran is trying to develop weapons-grade uranium, though international inspectors and U.S. intelligence services have not found evidence of such an effort.
“Obviously, they’re also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels,” Cheney said, according to a transcript released by the White House of an interview done Monday in Turkey with ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful energy production, but the U.S. and other Western countries fear Tehran will eventually develop nuclear weapons.
In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, says Iran is enriching uranium at its plant in Natanz to less than 3.8%, which is the level necessary to create fuel for a civilian reactor. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 80% or 90%.
Cheney’s comment also contradicted the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies, which concluded in a report revealed late last year that Iran had halted its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2003.
The vice president’s statement was the second time in a week that a White House official has made an allegation regarding Iran’s nuclear program and its intentions that did not square with publicly known facts.
President Bush said last week that Iran’s leaders had “declared” they were seeking nuclear weapons. Iran has always denied the charge, and the White House later backpedaled, calling the president’s remarks “shorthand.”
Cheney made the remarks at the end of a 10-day tour of Middle East countries to discuss high oil prices, the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the subject of Iran was never far from his agenda.
In addition to Israel and the Palestinian territories, his route took him to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey, in effect encircling the country that has become the greatest U.S. rival in the region. And at almost every stop, he brought up the subject of Iran and its role in disrupting U.S. efforts in the region.
Before the first stop of his visit to Oman, a Cheney aide told Agence France-Presse news service that Iran “has got to be very high” on the agenda for the talks.
“The Omanis . . . are concerned by the escalating tensions between much of the world community and Iran and by Iran’s activities, particularly in the nuclear field,” the news agency quoted the aide as saying.
In Saudi Arabia, Cheney also brought up the Iran issue. According to the Jidda-based English-language Arab News, the Saudis oppose any war with Iran. Saudi King Abdullah also raised the issue of Israel’s undeclared nuclear program, saying that the Middle East should be free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
In Jerusalem on Monday, Cheney accused Iran and Syria of “doing everything they can to torpedo the peace process,” a reference to the teetering talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
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daragahi@latimes.com
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a15b795193c9dc11d95da5a6eb2081b7 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-26-na-mccain26-story.html | McCain talks economics in Southland | McCain talks economics in Southland
John McCain said Tuesday that he understood Americans’ anger about the mortgage foreclosure crisis and was open to ideas for addressing the problem, but he rejected the sort of activist approaches proposed by his Democratic rivals for the presidency.
In a speech at a small printing business in Santa Ana, the presumptive Republican nominee said he was “committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”
McCain cited the $30-billion plan by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to aid homeowners and communities threatened by foreclosures, saying that it sounded “very expensive” and that he would “like to know how it’s paid for.”
His remarks came as the mortgage crisis and related economic troubles increasingly are moving to the forefront of the presidential campaign. Clinton and the Democratic front-runner, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, have criticized mortgage-lending practices and called for government intervention to provide relief to homeowners.
By contrast, McCain -- who has been trying to shore up his economic credentials -- placed some of the blame on homeowners themselves, while also scolding “complacent” lenders.
He also said government assistance should be limited to homeowners who intend to stay in their homes, not to those who bought second homes hoping to profit from them as rental properties. He added that aid should be temporary “and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.”
“I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis,” he said at C&H; Letterpress Inc. in Santa Ana, addressing a group of Latino small-business leaders. “I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now.”
The Arizona senator’s remarks came on a busy campaign swing through the Los Angeles area, where he picked up the endorsement of former First Lady Nancy Reagan. McCain also attended a fundraiser hosted by former Univision Chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio and his wife, Margaret.
Reagan greeted McCain in the late afternoon during a brief meeting in front of her Bel-Air home. In a prepared statement, she called McCain “a good friend for over 30 years.” She said she and her husband got to know McCain after his 5 1/2 -year imprisonment in North Vietnam, and “were impressed by the courage he had shown.”
“I believe John’s record and experience have prepared him well to be our next president,” her statement added.
Reagan was not expected to speak to reporters, but she spoke up when McCain was asked about the timing of the endorsement. “Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed. Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party,” she said, looking up at McCain and patting his arm several times.
In his remarks on the economy earlier in the day, McCain alluded to the recent intervention by the Federal Reserve and the Bush administration in the controversial rescue of Wall Street brokerage firm Bear Stearns Cos. McCain said government assistance to the banking system, which has been hit hard by the mortgage crisis, “should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.”
When asked later whether federal officials had gone too far with the rescue, he said it was a “close call” but necessary because the near-collapse could have had “very harmful effects to our economy.”
Calling for more transparency and accountability in home-lending, McCain said the down-payment requirements for Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgages should be raised over time. He called for a meeting of the nation’s top mortgage lenders, and said they should “pledge to do everything possible to keep families in their homes and businesses growing.”
At one point, he cited the example of General Motors Corp., which offered no-interest financing for car buyers after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We need a similar response by the mortgage lenders,” McCain said. “They’ve been asking the government to help them out. I’m now calling upon them to help their customers, and their nation.”
Officials at the Democratic National Committee immediately denounced McCain’s speech as evidence that he did not understand the impact of the mortgage crisis on American families. In a statement e-mailed to reporters, Chairman Howard Dean accused McCain of taking “the same hands-off approach that President Bush used to lead us into this crisis.”
Clinton, campaigning in Pennsylvania, told reporters that McCain’s speech sounded “remarkably like [former President] Herbert Hoover,” and said inaction had contributed to the current problems.
“Further inaction would exacerbate those problems,” she said, according to a transcript provided by her campaign. “I don’t think it’s an adequate response to say the government shouldn’t be helping either banks or people, because I think that would be a downward spiral that would cause tremendous economic pain and loss in our country.”
A spokesman for Obama, who has proposed a foreclosure prevention fund to help Americans refinance their mortgages, said McCain’s speech was essentially “suggesting that the best way to address the housing crisis is to sit back and watch it happen.”
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
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b4a15ca538cead1e3b02876800d0f06d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-26-na-obamataxes26-story.html | Obamas’ tax returns show a sharp rise in pay | Obamas’ tax returns show a sharp rise in pay
Barack Obama released seven years of tax returns Tuesday, providing a financial profile of a public official whose family income soared eightfold after he signed lucrative book contracts in 2004, following his election to the Senate.
The Obama family’s newfound wealth -- they reported income of $1.65 million in 2005 and nearly $1 million in 2006 -- led the couple to contribute substantially more to charitable causes than they had before. Over two years, the couple gave $27,500 to Trinity United Church of Christ, where their former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., preached fiery and sometimes controversial sermons. The donation was part of $137,622 in charitable donations reported by the couple during the period.
In releasing his 2000 through 2006 returns, Obama continued to challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same. The “transparency” debate has been continuing between Clinton and Obama, whose finances are simpler and for the most part less controversial than the Clintons’. They made tens of millions of dollars in their book deals and former President Clinton’s speaking and consulting fees since leaving the White House in 2001.
Obama has repeatedly touted his willingness to disclose his tax returns. And in the area of tax returns and federal earmarks, he has been more open than Clinton. But until Tuesday, he has provided only piecemeal release of the returns. Previously he had put his 2006 returns on the Internet but other years had been provided only occasionally to select reporters.
Clinton said Tuesday that she would soon release her post-White House tax returns.
“I am pleased that Sen. Obama has released his tax returns,” Clinton said Tuesday while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “I think that’s a good first step. Now he should release his records from being in the state Senate and any other information that the public and press need to know from his prior experience.”
The returns released by Obama contained few big surprises, but did recall some noteworthy changes in the family’s financial status through the years.
For example, Michelle Obama’s salary at the University of Chicago Hospitals jumped almost threefold in the year after her husband was elected to the Senate. Her title changed from executive director for community affairs to vice president for community and external affairs -- and her salary jumped from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005, the tax returns show.
Previous press reports quoted hospital officials saying that Michelle Obama’s duties increased substantially that year and that the amount included a one-time bonus payment. The salary is not out of line with those paid by other university hospitals, hospital officials have said.
Until 2005, the Obamas reported little or no dividend or interest income, despite salaries in excess of $200,000 a year. In addition to Michelle Obama’s salary from the hospital, Barack Obama earned money as a part-time state senator as well as a law school lecturer and lawyer for a Chicago firm.
In his most recent book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Barack Obama describes the financial trouble he faced after losing a 2000 race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He said that the campaign’s demands “had left me more or less broke,” and he described difficulty renting a car when in Los Angeles for the 2000 Democratic National Convention because his credit card was initially rejected.
The income pattern and the list of interest, dividends and charitable donations changed after his 2004 election, suggesting that the Obamas previously had little capital to spare for savings, investment or charity.
Although the Obamas had more money in 2005 and 2006, their returns show that they did not check off the $3 voluntary donation to the presidential election campaign fund, which helps underwrite the costs of campaigns. Obama has said in the past that he supports public financing of presidential campaigns.
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chuck.neubauer@latimes.com
tom.hamburger@latimes.com
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4176c3299d6039769990141499e6e566 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-26-sci-adapt26-story.html | Climate change: Just deal with it? | Climate change: Just deal with it?
The disastrous hurricanes of recent years have become the poster children of global warming.
But Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wondered whether the billions of dollars of damage was caused by more intense storms or more coastal development.
After analyzing decades of hurricane data, Pielke concluded that rising levels of carbon dioxide had little to do with hurricane damage. Rather, it boiled down to a simple equation: Build more, lose more.
“Everything has been put on the back of carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide cannot carry that weight,” he said.
Pielke’s analysis, published last month in the journal Natural Hazards Review, is part of a controversial movement that argues global warming over the rest of this century will play a much smaller role in unleashing planetary havoc than most scientists think.
His research has led him to believe that it is cheaper and more effective to adapt to global warming than to fight it.
Instead of spending trillions of dollars to stabilize carbon dioxide levels across the planet -- an enormously complex and expensive proposition -- the world could work on reducing hunger, storm damage and disease now, thereby neutralizing some of the most feared future problems of global warming.
Hans von Storch, director of the Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, said that the world’s problems were already so big that the added burdens caused by rising temperatures would be relatively small. It would be like going 160 kilometers per hour on the autobahn when “going 150 . . . is already dangerous,” he said.
Consider a United Nations estimate that global warming would increase the number of people at risk of hunger from 777 million in 2020 to 885 million by 2080, a 14% rise, if current development patterns continue.
That increase could be counteracted by spending on better irrigation systems, drought-resistant crops and more-efficient food transport systems, said Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in England.
“If you’re really concerned about drought, those are much more effective strategies than trying to bring down greenhouse gas concentrations,” he said.
Downplaying the importance of emissions reductions has raised hackles among scientists around the world, who say that the planet-wide effects of global warming will eventually go beyond humans’ ability to deal with it.
“You can’t adapt to melting the Greenland ice sheet,” said Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University. “You can’t adapt to species that have gone extinct.”
Other scientists say that time is running out to control carbon dioxide emissions and that the call to adapt is providing a potentially dangerous excuse to delay. If adaptation were so simple, they say, it would have already been done. But the developing world remains wrought with hunger and disease and vulnerable to natural disasters.
Pielke acknowledges that there are enormous political hurdles to overcome with his strategy, and he recognizes that his views have made him and like-minded researchers the new pariahs of global warming.
“I’ve been accused of taking money from Exxon or being a right-wing hack,” he said.
But unlike those who argue that humans are not warming the globe, the new skeptics accept the scientific consensus on the causes and effects of climate change. Their differences are over what to do about it.
“The radical middle -- that’s how we talk about ourselves,” said Daniel Sarewitz, a public policy expert at Arizona State University who has collaborated with Pielke on climate policy studies.
Pielke, whose career has focused on the politics of science, likes to describe the scattered collection of scientists and policy wonks as the “non-skeptic heretic club.”
The science of global warming was laid out in a series of reports last year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. The reports said that temperatures were likely to climb 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit by century’s end if emissions continued to grow.
They detailed a likely future of worsening famine in Africa, expanding floods as sea levels rise as much as 23 inches, and accelerated species extinction. To avoid the worst, the reports warned that emissions must be reduced 50% to 80% by mid-century, keeping temperature rise below 2 degrees.
The cost, according to the U.N. panel, would amount to as much as 3% of world gross domestic product over the next 20 years, or more than $20 trillion.
The heretics support emissions cuts too, but warn that they have been oversold as a solution to coming catastrophe.
Exhibit A is hurricanes.
The spate of recent storms, particularly Hurricane Katrina in 2005, has come to be seen as a harbinger of a warmer world -- a view popularized by Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Pielke’s new analysis considered 207 hurricanes that hit the United States between 1900 and 2005. He looked at their strength and course and then overlaid them on a modern map that included all development over the years.
He found that the most devastating storm, had it occurred today, would be the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, popularly known as the Big Blow. Its path through the now heavily developed southern tip of Florida would have caused $157 billion in damage, followed by Katrina, whose toll was $81 billion. Six of the top 10 most damaging storms occurred before 1945.
Pielke and his colleagues determined that with each decade, the damage potential for any given storm doubled, on average, because of development.
Malaria, another problem that may worsen with global warming, also has solutions.
Higher temperatures could allow malaria-carrying mosquitoes to move into Africa’s highland regions, where people have little natural immunity from the parasite. Still, the extra burden would be a fraction of the millions of cases that afflict the continent each year.
“If you look at Africa, only 2% is above 2,000 meters,” said Paul Reiter, an expert on mosquito-borne disease at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He said that far more deaths would come from the malaria parasite’s growing resistance to drug treatments.
“We should be more concerned with controlling the disease than trying to change the weather,” said Reiter, who recommended heavier use of pesticides to kill mosquitoes -- the same strategy that eradicated malaria in the United States and elsewhere.
The World Health Organization estimates that over the next decade annual malaria deaths could be cut from 1 million to 250,000 for $3.2 billion a year.
But critics say a major flaw in the adaptation strategy is that the effects of global warming will be unpredictable. It may be possible to adapt to some easily identifiable effects, but when the ecology of an entire planet is altered by rising levels of carbon dioxide, nobody understands the full range of potential perils.
Dealing with the effects without cutting emissions is “like mopping up the floor while keeping one of the faucets still running,” said Dr. Jonathan Patz, an environmental health scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a member of the U.N. climate panel.
Other scientists say that some changes could be so catastrophic -- such as sudden changes in the ocean currents that control regional climates -- that it would be impossible to adapt to them.
The only way to prevent the unexpected is cutting emissions, said U.N. climate panel member Gary Yohe, an economist at Wesleyan University.
Although most scientists agree that adaptation should play a major role in absorbing the effects of climate change, they say that buying into the heretics’ arguments will dig the world into a deeper hole by putting off greenhouse gas reductions until it is too late.
The heretics believe that time works to their benefit, arguing that technological advances over the next 50 years will ultimately make reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affordable.
Pielke says that even if his critics are right, it is becoming clear that the world lacks the political will to enact global emissions cuts.
China’s growing emissions are on pace to double those of the United States in a decade, and the country shows little interest in slowing down. The United States has refused to cap its emissions, and much of Europe is failing to satisfy even the modest terms of the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 landmark treaty on greenhouse gases.
“I would characterize us as realists,” Pielke said. “Realists on what is politically possible.”
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alan.zarembo@latimes.com
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063fb2c4ab0c90bfbac6b5362ba9135e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-fi-american27-story.html | U.S. airline fleets showing their age | U.S. airline fleets showing their age
The nation’s aging airline fleets, already struggling with high fuel costs and growing passenger demand, delivered another blow to travelers Wednesday as American Airlines and Delta Air Lines canceled hundreds of flights while planes were reinspected for compliance with federal maintenance rules. More disruptions are expected today.
Experts said the airlines’ decision to voluntarily ground the planes didn’t signal that they were unsafe. But the episode is the latest indication that a combination of aging aircraft and schedule reductions are leaving the industry with fewer options.
U.S. airlines, beset by financial woes that have forced them to postpone capital investments, operate some of the oldest fleets in the world, noted Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group.
Older aircraft need more upkeep, which can result in more down time.
“This isn’t a safety issue,” he said. “But reliability is becoming a concern due to the age of the fleet.” And with fewer planes, the carriers also are hard-pressed to re-book passengers onto other flights when there are cancellations for inspections or other reasons.
American, which was forced to cancel more than 320 flights Wednesday as it performed maintenance checks on its MD-80 jetliners, said it may have to cancel more flights today as it completes wiring inspections and repairs.
Maintenance issues have been high profile at America’s airports for weeks as carriers scramble to bring maintenance inspections up to date after a recent Federal Aviation Administration crackdown. On March 6, the FAA assessed a $10.2-million fine against Southwest Airlines.
Since then United Airlines, American Eagle, American and Delta have conducted voluntary inspections, and more may be ahead.
At Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, American canceled 10 of 92 domestic flights, affecting about 1,000 passengers.
“It’s good to know that they’re taking precautions, but I’m still nervous that there are problems in the first place,” said Amy Isenberg of Los Angeles, who was waiting for an American flight to Nashville. American has more flights into and out of LAX than any other carrier.
American said it also canceled a flight at Ontario International Airport and four flights at San Diego International Airport.
The cancellations did not affect passengers at other local airports, including Burbank’s Bob Hope and John Wayne in Orange County, the airline said.
American had inspected about 200 planes by Wednesday afternoon and found that 80 required being taken out of service while modifications were being made to wiring bundles near the landing gear, spokesman Tim Wagner said.
The cancellations represented about 13% of the day’s schedule for the nation’s largest carrier and between 25,000 and 30,000 passengers were affected as flight schedules were disrupted across American’s domestic route system.
“This was not related to an incident or issue that would have endangered passengers,” Wagner said, adding that the inspections were carried out in cooperation with the FAA.
American said 95 MD-80s that flew normal schedules Wednesday still needed to be inspected Wednesday night and today. Those checks probably would require an unspecified number of flight cancellations today, the airline said.
Delta added to travelers’ woes when it said it would have to cancel some flights today while it inspects the wiring bundles on its fleet of 133 MD-80 and MD-90s. Delta said it hoped to re-book passengers when necessary. The inspections are expected to be completed by Saturday.
Among big U.S. carriers, American operates the second-oldest fleet, with an average age of 14 years, according to a new study by AirlineForecasts, a Washington-based consulting firm. Many of American’s 300 MD-80s were built in the late 1980s, according to the study.
Northwest Airlines has the nation’s oldest fleet of planes, with an average age of about 20 years, the study found.
Flying older planes puts U.S. carriers at a disadvantage when competing with foreign carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa that are adding new planes at a faster pace, said Vaughn Cordle, chief analyst at AirlineForecasts.
Aging planes burn more fuel -- an important consideration as oil prices hover near record highs -- and lack many of the amenities passengers demand, such as state-of-the-art entertainment systems.
American carriers “can’t compete on the global playing field given the kind of low-cost competition coming to our shores with newer fleets,” Cordle said.
The U.S. has recently entered into so-called open skies agreements with the European Union, Australia and other nations.
The pacts, which open the world’s major airports to more competition, will make it easier for U.S. carriers to enter foreign markets and clear the way for more foreign airlines to offer service to more destinations in the United States.
The effect of pulling airplanes out of service for unscheduled maintenance inspections was demonstrated two weeks ago when Southwest had to ground dozens of planes while they were inspected for fuselage cracks.
The inspections forced the carrier to cancel 126 flights.
American Eagle, a corporate sister of American Airlines, later grounded 25 planes and canceled a handful of flights while inspection paperwork was updated.
And United Airlines reinspected instruments on seven of its 747 jumbo jets, although no flights were canceled.
The flurry of maintenance issues also has focused attention on the out-sourcing of aircraft maintenance.
Southwest dropped plans to move some of its aircraft maintenance from the U.S. to El Salvador after the FAA fine was announced.
In the case of the United 747s, FAA inspectors discovered that Korean Airlines, which contracts with United to perform maintenance, had failed to calibrate an instrument used to check the jetliners’ altimeters.
Whatever the competitive landscape, travelers at LAX on Wednesday made it clear that they didn’t want airlines to cut corners on maintenance, even if it resulted in delays.
As a frequent business traveler, Boston-based insurance executive Linda Wentworth, 44, said she was used to flight delays, like the one that pushed her flight to Massachusetts back more than an hour.
“I wish the maintenance could be done on a pro-active basis, and it’s always frustrating to wait when you’re trying to get home,” she said. “But safety is key.”
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martin.zimmerman@latimes.com
tiffany.hsu@latimes.com
Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.
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Begin text of infobox
Recent inspections ordered for U.S. airlines
March 26: Delta Air Lines
133 planes undergo inspections, leading to flight cancellations.
March 26: American Airlines
320 flights canceled due to wiring inspections.
March 21: American Eagle Airlines
25 planes have maintenance records inspected; 15 flights canceled.
March 20: United Airlines
7 planes inspected for calibration of altimeters; no flights canceled.
March 12: Southwest Airlines
44 planes checked to verify compliance with inspection rules; four surface cracks found; 126 flights canceled
Source: Times research
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b4025631b7abea1dc5e68de0c9a0e31c | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-fi-paulson27-story.html | Paulson warns Wall Street of new oversight | Paulson warns Wall Street of new oversight
Signaling a willingness by the Bush administration to expand its oversight of Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said Wednesday that investment banks should submit to greater supervision if they want regular access to Federal Reserve loans.
With Congress increasingly inclined to consider additional regulation of the mortgage industry -- including Wall Street firms -- Paulson’s statement, though limited, marks a significant shift from the position the administration held before the current credit crisis.
The Treasury chief spoke amid fresh congressional scrutiny of the government’s role in JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s agreement last week to acquire troubled brokerage Bear Stearns Cos.
The Fed underwrote the Bear Stearns deal by agreeing to lend JPMorgan $30 billion. The central bank then said it was temporarily allowing other major Wall Street firms to also borrow directly from the Fed via its “discount window,” which since the 1930s has been restricted to banks that accept traditional deposits.
Two leading senators sent a letter Wednesday to Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the chief executives of JPMorgan and Bear Stearns asking for detailed information on the arrangement agreed to by the two financial giants and the Fed.
“It’s the Finance Committee’s responsibility to pin down just how the government decided to front $30 billion in taxpayer dollars for the Bear Stearns deal,” Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a statement. “Economic times are tight on Main Street as well as on Wall Street, and we have a responsibility to all taxpayers to review the details of this deal.”
The letter was cosigned by the committee’s top Republican, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
Meanwhile, Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scheduled hearings on the transaction for next week.
When it opened the discount window to non-banks, the Fed said it would continue to make such loans available for six months. In a speech Wednesday before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Paulson insisted that if investment banks wanted the right to borrow from the Fed after that six-month period, they should open their books.
“Access to the Federal Reserve’s liquidity facilities traditionally has been accompanied by strong prudential oversight of depository institutions,” Paulson said. speech"Certainly, any regular access to the discount window should involve the same type of regulation and supervision.”
Paulson heads an administration task force that is expected soon to release recommendations for regulating the financial markets, which have been unsettled by the credit crunch and housing downturn.
Because bank deposits are insured by the federal government, traditional banks submit to federal regulation so taxpayers are not unfairly exposed to risk from irresponsible business practices. Similarly, Paulson argued, if investment banks want the backing of the Federal Reserve, the central bank needs to “protect its balance sheet and ultimately protect U.S. taxpayers.”
“The Federal Reserve should have the information about these institutions it deems necessary for making informed lending decisions,” he said.
The Fed’s discount window makes loans to banks that face short-term needs for liquidity. The discount rate is generally higher than the federal funds rate, which banks charge one another for overnight loans to meet reserve requirements. The Fed last week cut the discount rate to 2.5% and the federal funds rate to 2.25%.
Paulson, who used to head Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs Group, said he considered the Fed’s move to lend to non-banks temporary.
“Despite the fundamental changes in our financial system, it would be premature to jump to the conclusion that all broker-dealers or other potentially important financial firms in our system today should have permanent access to the Fed’s liquidity facility,” he said. “Recent market conditions are an exception from the norm.”
The turmoil in the financial markets has spurred debate in Washington over new regulations to prevent a repeat of incautious lending practices that inflated and eventually popped a speculative bubble in the housing market.
“A correction was inevitable, and the sooner we work through it, with a minimum of disorder, the sooner we will see home values stabilize, more buyers return to the housing market, and housing will again contribute to economic growth,” Paulson said.
Paulson reiterated the Bush administration’s opposition to permitting homeowners who owe more than their houses are worth to have their debts reduced.
“Negative equity does not affect borrowers’ ability to pay their loans,” he said. “Homeowners who can afford their mortgage payment should honor their obligations, and most do.”
Paulson noted that negative equity has become common because recent lending practices permitted borrowers to get mortgages with small or no down payments. He said that people who lived in their homes for the long term would eventually make up the lost equity.
“Any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator,” he said. “Washington cannot create any new mortgage program to induce these speculators to continue to own these houses, unless someone else foots the bill.”
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maura.reynolds@latimes.com
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c2ad1fa3a71f928e75b183f8ab1b4ef3 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-fi-solar27-story.html | Projects to amp up solar power | Projects to amp up solar power
Solar energy is getting a big boost in Southern California with the unveiling of two projects that will be capable of generating a total of 500 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve more than 300,000 homes.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Southern California Edison plan to announce today the country’s largest rooftop solar installation project ever proposed by a utility company. And on Wednesday, FPL Energy, the largest operator of solar power in the U.S., said it planned to build and operate a 250-megawatt solar plant in the Mojave Desert.
The projects would help California meet its goal of obtaining 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. In 2006, about 13% of the retail electricity delivered by Edison and the state’s other two big investor-owned utilities came from renewable sources such as sun and wind, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
Energy experts were struck by the size of the two projects, which would bolster the state’s current total of about 965 megawatts of solar power flowing to the electricity grid.
“Five hundred megawatts -- that’s substantial,” said spokesman George Douglas of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Projects of that size begin to show that solar energy can produce electricity on a utility scale, on the kind of scale that we’re going to need.”
The Edison rooftop project will place photovoltaic cells on 65 million square feet of commercial building roofs in Southern California. The cells will generate as much as 250 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power about 162,500 average homes, based on the utility’s estimate that one megawatt would serve about 650 average homes.
“These are the kinds of big ideas we need to meet California’s long-term energy and climate change goals,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “If commercial buildings statewide partnered with utilities to put this solar technology on their rooftops, it would set off a huge wave of renewable-energy growth.”
The project, subject to approval by state utility regulators, will cost an estimated $875 million and take five years to complete, Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said. The utility, a subsidiary of Edison International, plans to begin installation work immediately on commercial roofs in San Bernardino and Riverside counties and spread to other locations in Southern California at a rate of one megawatt a week.
The first of the solar rooftops, which will use advanced photovoltaic generating technology, is expected to be in service by August.
“This is a breakthrough. This is hugely accelerating to a scale that is the largest in the country -- a kind of virtual solar generation facility,” John E. Bryson, chairman and chief executive of Edison International, said in an interview. “It’s a big deal for the state of California; it’s a big deal for the renewable-energy sector.”
Rosemead-based Southern California Edison provides power to 13 million people in a 50,000-square-mile area of Central and Southern California.
FPL Energy’s proposed 250-megawatt plant, dubbed the Beacon Solar Energy Project, will be situated on about 2,000 acres in eastern Kern County.
More than half a million parabolic mirrors will be assembled in rows to receive and concentrate the sun’s rays to produce steam for a turbine generator -- a process known as solar thermal power. The generator will produce electricity for delivery to a nearby electric grid. Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2009 and will take about two years to complete, the Juno Beach, Fla.-based company said.
“At a time of rising and volatile fossil-fuel costs and increasing concerns about greenhouse gases, solar electricity can have a meaningful impact,” FPL Energy President Mitch Davidson said in a statement. “We believe that solar power has similar long-term potential as wind energy, and we are well positioned to play a leading role in the growth of this renewable technology.”
Longer term, the company aims to add at least 600 megawatts of new solar by 2015. FPL Energy currently has facilities with a capacity to produce 310 megawatts of solar power.
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andrea.chang@latimes.com
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d9c89e2020ba929cbe3366045fcca04e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-me-lynch27-story.html | An L.A. goal just beyond his grasp | An L.A. goal just beyond his grasp
Patrick Lynch has racked up one of the worst losing streaks in the world of sports. He’s 0 for 13 years.
That’s how long Lynch has tried -- and failed -- to lure an NFL franchise back to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the beloved but benighted venue that he runs as general manager.
Lynch has been told “No” so often that the word seems to echo in his wake, like his own footsteps. In their hunt for professional football, Lynch and his employer, the Coliseum Commission, have been outfoxed by lower-tiered locales such as Houston, and have taken more hits than a blocking dummy from team owners, fans, media commentators and politicians.
But there’s another side of the story, which many Coliseum-bashers might find surprising. Despite all the rejected NFL plans and all the talk that the 85-year-old property at Exposition Park is unmarketable, the yawning stadium and its companion Sports Arena actually make money.
“We’re doing very well,” Lynch said while standing at the Coliseum’s peristyle, its iconic columns lined with plaques commemorating past triumphs. “Nobody could ever say that we’re not fiscally aggressive.”
Plenty of less flattering things have been said. It’s gotten so ugly that two state legislators from Irvine and Merced have proposed selling the land out from under the Coliseum, the site of two Olympiads.
Even the Coliseum’s sole remaining tenant, USC football, threatened to bolt to Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, never mind that the school is just across the street.
“I have the toughest skin,” said Lynch, 50.
An accountant by training, he keeps the nonprofit commission in the black by booking the Coliseum with more futbol than football, and by leasing out the Sports Arena to giant rave parties, Bruce Springsteen concerts and an ongoing shoot of “American Gladiators,” not to mention ice shows and used car sales.
The whole enterprise -- jointly and awkwardly owned by the state, county and city -- is netting about $2 million annually in operating income, according to its financial statements. It was bleeding cash early in Lynch’s tenure, which began the year before the Los Angeles Raiders left for Oakland, the blow that launched him on his fruitless campaign to win back the NFL.
“The vast majority of municipal venues do not make money,” he said, noting that the “Gladiators” filming alone will dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into the commission’s coffers. “We’ve had some tough times. We’ve had bad years when we’ve lost money. But we’ve slowly rebounded and we’re fine now.”
Trojan football accounts for well over half of the Coliseum’s revenues, although nearly two-thirds of the commission’s total -- Sports Arena receipts included -- comes from non-USC events, Lynch said.
Among last year’s draws were a Mexico vs. Guatemala soccer match, Latin dance performances, a Cinco de Mayo festival and a robotics contest.
“We’ve maintained our competitiveness even when people didn’t believe in us,” Lynch said. “People say, ‘What goes on down there? How are you even alive?’ ”
In other words: How could the Coliseum continue to survive without the NFL?
After a nasty public relations fight, the commission and USC recently reached a tentative 25-year lease agreement that gives the school veto power over any bid to return the NFL to the Coliseum. USC administrators have long complained that the commission allowed the stadium to deteriorate, its concourses shedding chunks of concrete, as it chased its NFL dream.
The university has negotiated a key provision that requires the Coliseum to retain at least 90,000 permanent seats -- a number that the Trojans have little trouble filling but that is perhaps 20,000 more than an NFL team would want.
USC insists that it would consider sharing quarters with the pros, but Lynch and others say the pact makes landing a franchise a Hail Mary pass at best.
Lynch adds that he never really bought the notion that USC would uproot itself for Pasadena.
“The Rose Bowl?” he sniffed. “The Rose Bowl loses $2 million a year.” As he walked through the peristyle, the Massachusetts native said he was focusing on a future for the Coliseum without the NFL, complete with a top-to-bottom stadium upgrade, a naming-rights deal to pay for the improvements and as many as 15 international soccer showcases.
“We’re moving ahead,” Lynch said.
And yet he couldn’t resist casting a wistful gaze across the empty Coliseum stands, toward what could have been a mirage of good times gone. A baseball diamond was taking shape at the far end of the gridiron. The infield was in place and cranes were hoisting a towering frame for netting along the shallow left field fence.
On Saturday, the makeshift ballpark will host an exhibition game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox to mark the blue crew’s arrival at the Coliseum 50 years ago. The team stayed until Dodger Stadium debuted in 1962.
Back then, the Coliseum was also home to the Los Angeles Rams, and the USC and UCLA football teams. The Los Angeles Chargers of the old American Football League set up shop at the Coliseum in 1960 on their way to San Diego.
Meanwhile, the Sports Arena reigned as the house of the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Those were the glory days,” Lynch said as he watched the cranes under the midday sun.
He said he knew the commission expected him to scramble when it hired him away from a Philadelphia-based management firm, for which he had helped build a basketball and hockey arena in Albany, N.Y. At the time, the Raiders were making noises about abandoning the Coliseum if the commission did not install luxury boxes.
Exposition Park already had a legion of ghosts. The Rams left for Anaheim after the 1979 season (they moved to St. Louis 15 years later). UCLA decamped for the Rose Bowl in 1982, the same year the Raiders relocated here from Oakland. The Lakers had departed for the Forum in Inglewood in late 1967.
Tall and affable, Lynch is a football fan first and foremost; he co-owns a sports bar in Redondo Beach, where he still roots for the Raiders “to a certain extent.” So it stung when the team carried out its ultimatum to retreat to Oakland just as he was settling into his job.
He tried in vain to dissuade the Los Angeles Clippers, a Sports Arena presence since 1984, from joining the Lakers and Kings at the new, glammed-up Staples Center in 1999.
“This building could have been Staples,” Lynch said, lifting his hands as he sat in his cluttered office in the tired, dim-windowed Sports Arena, which opened in 1959. He shook his head at what might have been.
Replacing the Sports Arena with a state-of-the-art basketball palace was among the many projects he pitched -- unsuccessfully -- when he wasn’t busy pursuing the NFL.
The commission also informally offered to turn the arena, as is, over to the resident USC basketball team. The school elected instead to build the Galen Center, and the team moved there in 2006.
Many of the commission’s former tenants have said they were happy to part company with the panel because of its unwieldiness -- its nine members represent three levels of government -- and its penchant for turf battles.
For the most part, Lynch has been spared in the attacks on the commission and is given high marks for nimbly serving so many masters.
“They’ve stumbled and fumbled over and over again,” state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), whose district includes the Coliseum, said of the commissioners.
A former panel member, he has been pushing for an NFL team since the Raiders left, but doesn’t blame Lynch for not getting into the end zone.
“He’s a very bright guy, he’s very dedicated, he understands economic development,” said Ridley-Thomas, who wants to create an Exposition Park authority to supplant the commission and sell the Sports Arena. “He has a lot of audiences to deal with.”
USC’s Kristina Raspe, who handled the negotiations for the lease, is less effusive about Lynch.
“He was pleasant to deal with,” she said.
Lynch’s face darkens when he is asked about USC. He says the Trojans blindsided him with their Rose Bowl threat because he had been working on the school’s demands all along, with or without the NFL.
“We didn’t think it was a classy move,” he said of USC’s tactic.
Commissioners say their reputation for being rudderless is largely undeserved but they acknowledge some institutional shortcomings, which Lynch has had to live with.
Pieced together in the 1940s, the commission has been hamstrung by a lack of government subsidies that could finance improvements to the Coliseum and Sports Arena. It is a self-supporting operation that depends on lease fees, ticket purchases and concession sales to pay the bills. (In lean years, the commission has been forced to take out bank loans, but is now debt-free.)
Complicating its efforts to woo the NFL is the fact that the Coliseum has been a National Historic Landmark since 1984, the year of its second Olympic Games (the first was in 1932). The designation could prohibit a NFL team from razing the Coliseum to erect the sort of glitzier stadium that teams prize.
Nevertheless, Lynch did come close to bagging a franchise. Two years ago, he and his bosses cleared a welter of land-use and jurisdictional hurdles to present the NFL with a plan for a thoroughly remodeled Coliseum that met the league’s design needs.
After more than a decade of false starts, everything finally had appeared to be in place. Media reports indicated that it had become a question of when, not if, professional football would be back in Exposition Park.
Then the NFL walked away, blanching at the blueprint’s estimated $800-million to $1-billion price tag.
It was another no, and endures as a painful memory for Lynch. During his courtship of the NFL, he has logged tens of thousands of travel miles and untold hours in brainstorming and negotiating sessions, working through a roster of prospective investors in a team.
He counted some of the moguls on the list: “Eli Broad, many, many meetings. Ed Roski, many, many meetings. Mike Ovitz, many, many meetings.”
Many, many noes.
But there’s always international soccer, whose popularity in Los Angeles has grown in step with Latino immigration. Last month, a Coliseum match between Argentina and Guatemala drew 35,000.
That hardly compares to a USC homecoming game, or the crowds an NFL team could bring.
And the commission did make more money when the Raiders were in town.
Lynch, however, is glad for the yeses he hears from the foreign version of football.
“It’s turned out to be a very, very good business for us,” he said.
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paul.pringle@latimes.com
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040a187350833ea9bad2bb788a8f807e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-me-widmark27-story.html | Actor played both heavies, heroes | Actor played both heavies, heroes
Richard Widmark, who made an indelible screen debut in 1947 as a giggling sadistic killer and later brought a sense of urban cynicism and unpredictability to his roles as a leading man, has died. He was 93.
Widmark died Monday at his home in Roxbury, Conn., after a long illness, his wife, Susan Blanchard, told The Times on Wednesday. She said a fractured vertebra that Widmark suffered in a fall last year was the beginning of his illness.
“I lost a dear friend, and you don’t have friends like him,” said Karl Malden, who first met Widmark in New York when they were both “hustling for radio work” in the early 1940s and later appeared in five movies with him.
“He was a damn good actor,” Malden told The Times. “He knew what he was doing, he could do it well, and he hated anyone he worked with who wasn’t prepared, because he came ready to go.”
Sidney Poitier, who acted in three films with Widmark, told The Times that Widmark “left his mark as a very fine actor.”
“His creative work is indelible on film and will be there to remind us of what he was as an artist and a human being,” Poitier said.
Equally believable playing heavies and heroes, Widmark portrayed a broad range of characters in a film career that spanned more than 70 theatrical and television movies from the late 1940s to the early ‘90s.
He played a rabid racist in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “No Way Out” (1950), an obsessed prosecutor in Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), an authoritarian Navy destroyer captain during the Cold War in James B. Harris’ “The Bedford Incident” (1965) and a tough New York City police detective in Don Siegel’s “Madigan” (1968).
The lean and rugged Widmark, who director Samuel Fuller once said “walks and talks like no one else,” was known to be equally at home astride a horse -- in films such as William Wellman’s “Yellow Sky,” John Ford’s “Cheyenne Autumn” and “Two Rode Together,” John Wayne’s “The Alamo” and the star-studded epic “How the West Was Won.”
But it’s as Tommy Udo, the sadistic New York City gangster in Henry Hathaway’s 1947 film noir classic, “Kiss of Death,” that Widmark made what may be his most enduring on-screen impression.
Widmark had been working nearly a decade as a successful New York radio and Broadway actor when he was cast in the memorable supporting role that set him on the path to stardom.
“Kiss of Death” starred Victor Mature as a small-time crook and family man who reluctantly informs on his ex-partners to gain parole from prison. But Widmark stole the show as the revengeful Udo, who gleefully ties up an older woman in her wheelchair with a lamp cord and then pushes her down a flight of stairs.
The chilling performance prompted film critic James Agee to write of Widmark’s character: “It is clear that murder is one of the kindest things he is capable of.”
Widmark received his only Oscar nomination -- as best supporting actor -- and he won a Golden Globe as “most promising [male] newcomer” for the role.
If his giggling killer in “Kiss of Death” made a big impression on movie audiences, his performance also had an effect on the actor.
“I’d never seen myself on the screen, and when I did, I wanted to shoot myself,” he told the New Yorker in 1961. “That damn laugh of mine! For two years after that picture, you couldn’t get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh, the guy was such a ridiculous beast. I was doing ‘Inner Sanctum’ on radio at the same time, and I remember reading the ‘Kiss of Death’ script to some of the guys and saying, ‘Hey, get a load of this!’ and I’d laugh, it was so funny.”
And that, he said, is the way he played the part in the movie.
“I don’t think we’d seen quite that level of anti-social behavior in movies, and he never repeated villainy at that level in the movies,” film critic Richard Schickel told The Times in 2002.
But, he said, even when Widmark played a leading man, “there was a kind of hard-core urban cynicism about him that was really different than previous urban bad guys in the [James] Cagney or John Garfield vein, where there was a kind of sweetness lurking there.”
“He’s, to me, one of those people I was always glad to see on the screen because it promised some edge that wasn’t entirely conventional. There was something slightly mysterious about his behavior, and you felt a slight unpredictability about him.”
Widmark, Schickel said, later became a much more conventional leading man, but even then his portrayals conveyed “sort of an awareness that the world didn’t always work out for the best, that you had to be somewhat wary of people.”
Widmark was born Dec. 26, 1914, in Sunrise, Minn., where his father ran a general store before becoming a traveling salesman. Growing up, Widmark moved frequently before his family settled in Princeton, Ill., where his father acquired a bakery and the family lived in the apartment above.
In high school, Widmark played football, acted with the dramatic club and wrote for the student newspaper.
He enrolled in a pre-law course at Lake Forest College in Illinois, where he won awards in oratory contests. But he also was active in the drama department and, after playing the lead in Elmer Rice’s “Counselor-at-Law” in his sophomore year, began to think seriously about becoming an actor.
After graduating in 1936, he became an instructor in the college’s drama department and directed and acted in numerous campus productions over the next two years.
“I suppose I wanted to act in order to have a place in the sun,” he told the New Yorker. “I’d always lived in small towns, and acting meant having some kind of identity.”
In 1938, he moved to New York City, where his college sweetheart and future wife, Jean Hazlewood, was studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. They married in 1942.
Widmark didn’t have any trouble finding acting jobs. A former classmate, who was producing radio soap operas, gave him a part on a show. And from then on, Widmark worked steadily in radio.
A perforated eardrum kept him out of the service during World War II, but Widmark served as an air raid warden and entertained servicemen under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing.
In 1943, he made his Broadway debut playing a young Army lieutenant in the comedy “Kiss and Tell.” Roles in other Broadway plays followed, along with his continuing work in radio.
Then came “Kiss of Death,” which required him to sign a seven-year contract with one-year options with 20th Century Fox.
At Fox, which had promoted Widmark in “Kiss of Death” by advising theaters to have local printers make up “Wanted” posters of the actor, he found himself typecast playing psychotic tough guys and “nutballs.” In a review of “The Street With No Name,” one critic wrote of Widmark: “The timbre of his voice is that of filthy water going down a sewer.”
Off screen, Widmark was a cordial and thoughtful gentleman who abhorred guns and violence. The one time he went fishing, he once recalled, “I caught a little trout. I took him to the basement to scrape him. I called him George. It broke my heart that I had caused his death.”
But Widmark played so many heavies early in his screen career that audiences had difficulty separating the man from the despicable characters he portrayed.
“It’s weird the effect actors have on an audience,” he told Parade magazine in 1987. “With the roles I played in those early movies, I found that quite a few people wanted to have a go at me. I remember walking down the street in a small town and this lady coming up and slapping me. ‘Here, take that, you little squirt,’ she said. Another time I was having dinner in a restaurant when this big guy came over and knocked me right out of my chair.”
While trying to avoid playing more low-life villains, Widmark was offered what he once called “this terrible, awful racist character” in “No Way Out,” the 1950 film that marked the big-screen debut of Poitier as a doctor in a county hospital who must deal with Widmark’s character. Widmark later said he would apologize after almost every scene they had together for the bigoted lines he had to deliver.
But Widmark, who had been a “nut” for films since he saw his first one at age 3, said he loved making movies.
“When I finally came to Hollywood, I thought I was in seventh heaven,” he told The Times in 1987.
While under contract to Fox, Widmark made about 20 movies between 1947 and 1954. And although he had achieved variety in characters such as a businessman father who is too busy for his young son in the comedy-drama “My Pal Gus,” he didn’t like not having a chance to do films of his choice.
When his contract at Fox expired, he decided to work independently. He also formed his own company, Heath Productions, to do projects he liked and retain greater artistic control.
Among the films he produced and starred in were “Time Limit” (1957), directed by Malden; and “The Secret Ways” (1961), a Cold War thriller with a script written by Widmark’s wife, Jean.
One of his biggest hits came in 1968 when he played the title role in the New York cop story “Madigan.” In 1972, Widmark reprised the role in a TV series of the same name that ran on NBC for a year.
He continued to show up in films such as “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Rollercoaster,” “Coma” and “The Swarm,” but his stardom began to wane.
In the 1980s, he worked periodically in films and television, including “Against All Odds” on the big screen in 1984 and “Cold Sassy Tree,” a 1989 television movie in which he played opposite Faye Dunaway as a man who married a younger woman.
In 1991, he made his final screen appearance, as a senator in “True Colors.”
In his later years, Widmark divided his time between a ranch in Hidden Valley, Calif., and a farm in Connecticut. Widmark enjoyed not working.
“A lot of actors don’t know what to do with themselves when they retire; they have no other life. Me, I love just living,” he said. “I read a lot, play tennis, work outside, see friends.”
As one of Hollywood’s elder statesmen, Widmark would periodically be asked for interviews in his later years. And whenever reporters came to call, they inevitably asked about his role in “Kiss of Death.”
“It’s a bit rough priding oneself that one isn’t too bad an actor and then finding one’s only remembered for a giggle,” he told one interviewer.
Widmark’s wife Jean died in 1997. He married Blanchard, a longtime friend who was once married to Henry Fonda, in 1999.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, who was once married to Los Angeles Dodgers pitching legend Sandy Koufax.
No funeral will be held.
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dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
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8a92afd3f5eaa6c1cbdca918540079c9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-na-mccain27-story.html | McCain tempers his war message | McCain tempers his war message
Sen. John McCain, carefully distancing himself from President Bush and seeking to sound a moderate tone, called Wednesday for stronger ties with allies and cautioned that American power “does not mean we can do whatever we want, whenever we want.”
In his first major foreign policy speech since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, McCain told the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles that to end terrorism and pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States must lead by “attracting others to our cause” and “defending the rules of international civilized society.”
The speech showed McCain in a political pivot as he emerges from a Republican primary battle and looks ahead to a general election campaign in which he must win over independents and moderates. In his primary addresses, McCain has frequently accused Democrats of waving “the white flag of surrender” on Iraq and of lacking the resolve necessary to forcefully confront Iran.
By contrast, his address Wednesday at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel omitted such strong language and instead tapped themes meant to appeal to moderates and potential Democratic crossover voters.
He said the government should close its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and “work with our allies to forge a new international understanding” on how to treat detainees. He said Americans needed to be “good stewards of our planet,” and urged steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Recalling his military experience -- and that of his father and grandfather, who were admirals -- McCain declared: “I detest war. . . . It is wretched beyond all description.” When Americans believe military or diplomatic action is needed, he said, “we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we in return must be willing to be persuaded by them.”
He said the struggle against terrorism was not primarily about military force, but instead about winning over moderate Muslims through development aid, diplomacy and trade.
Though McCain’s speech did not contain his toughest language, there were unmistakable references to beliefs that long have made the Republican senator from Arizona an attractive figure to neoconservatives. He called the confrontation with Islamic militancy “the transcendent challenge of our time,” and said the nation’s security in the future could not be assured through “passive” defensive measures.
In discussing Iraq, he avoided restating his belief that the U.S. was “winning” the war but stressed the need for a substantial troop presence.
“We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq,” he said. “It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleaning and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal.”
On Iran, McCain said that the United States and allies must do “all in our power” to keep the country from developing nuclear weapons. But he notably stopped short of saying that the United States should consider using military force, as he has in the past.
He also said America and China were “not destined to be adversaries.” In response to a question later, he said any U.S. response to recent unrest should be limited to urging Beijing to begin conversations with Tibetans “to give them a better and freer life.”
Democrats, who have sought to portray McCain as a reckless militarist, charged after the speech that his embrace of diplomacy was fraudulent.
“John McCain’s empty rhetoric today can’t change the fact that he has steadfastly stood with President Bush from Day One, and is now talking about keeping our troops in Iraq for 100 years,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement. “His new appreciation for diplomacy has no credibility.”
McCain’s positions on foreign policy are diverse and include some with a neoconservative bent and others more in tune with more moderates and pragmatic voters.
McCain has said that because of his appeal to independents and some Democrats, he believes he can be competitive in California, a state last won by a Republican presidential contender in 1988, when former President George H.W. Bush ran.
Speaking with reporters after the speech, McCain advisors pointed out the candidate’s self-description as a “realistic idealist” -- a phrase that reflects the combination of his “realist” and “neoconservative” impulses.
They singled out as particularly significant portions of the speech that dealt with the need for more collective international action, his distaste for war, his call for nuclear disarmament and his declaration that the war on terrorism is not primarily a military effort.
McCain endorsed the idea of promoting democracy in the Muslim world, a cause adopted with fanfare by Bush but later set aside after it complicated the president’s search for practical solutions.
The candidate also rejected the idea of dealing with the Middle Eastern autocrats who are some of America’s closest allies. “We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on those outdated autocracies is the safest bet,” he said.
McCain favors creation of a world organization he calls a “league of democracies” that would work to put political, economic and possibly military pressure on countries considered undemocratic. Such an organization could move in ways the United Nations can’t because of resistance from Russia and China, among others.
For instance, the league could join together to increase economic pressure in Iran, where U.N. measures are seen as lacking the necessary force to bring about change, he said.
Such a league, which has been embraced by others, has been controversial because critics fear it would drive countries such as Russia and China further from the West. And McCain has yet to fully explain his views on how the league might work with the United Nations and NATO.
Walter Russell Mead, a historian at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that while McCain’s speech sent mixed signals, it seemed crafted “to reassure audiences in Europe,” where McCain traveled last week.
Mead said it was striking that McCain did not mention the use of military force against Iran, even when discussing the need to halt nuclear proliferation, and did not dwell on allegations of Chinese human rights violations in Tibet.
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Reston reported from Los Angeles and Richter from Washington.
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e6c5162c334c02256e246664da2bd249 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-oe-brooks27-story.html | Resist the princesses | Resist the princesses
Mothers of America, Disney wants to destroy you.
You hoped your little girl’s Disney princess obsession was harmless, didn’t you? You chuckled over the picture of Sleeping Beauty on your toddler’s pull-ups, and you told yourself it was “just a phase” when your 5-year-old insisted that she needed at least 63 Disney princess dress-up costumes.
But don’t be fooled by the sparkly magic wands, the pint-sized tiaras and those cute little “animal friends.” The Disney princesses aren’t sweet and innocent. They’re a gang of vicious hoodlums, and they’re plotting against you.
Start with some light feminist analysis. It will not have escaped you, Mothers of America, that Disney princesses -- Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the rest -- rarely slay dragons, play sports, pilot jets or do open-heart surgery. Instead, they fiddle with their coiffures, linger over invitations to the ball, flee ineffectually from evil crones and swoon.
You don’t have to be Gloria Steinem to realize that these are not, for the most part, useful professional skills in today’s world. So I was not thrilled when my 3-year-old informed me, over lunch, that she wants to be “a pwincess” when she grows up, and I was unhappier still when her 6-year-old sister expressed a similar ambition.
“Girls,” I said, “you can do anything when you grow up! You can be scientists or ski instructors or hedge fund managers -- I beg you, be hedge fund managers. Why would you want to be passive, anorexic princesses?”
They looked at me as if I had gone mad. “Because princesses wear pretty dresses, Mama,” they explained.
I tried another tack. “Not all princesses prance around in ball gowns,” I remarked, and showed them some educational photos of Britain’s 57-year-old Princess Anne, clad in hideously sensible tweeds. The girls denied that Anne was a “real” princess.
I tried again. “Girls,” I said gently, “I don’t want to shock you, but historically, princesses have not always been popular. Consider the Russian Revolution. Or the French. Does the word ‘guillotine’ ring a bell?”
“You are a commoner!” my 3-year-old shrieked, and adjusting their glittering tiaras, the little darlings ran off to watch “Disney Princess Enchanted Tales” for the 10-billionth time while I glumly cleaned the kitchen.
It was not always thus.
Sure, fairy tales have been around for centuries, little girls have always liked pretty dresses, and even most of the Disney princesses should, if there were justice in the world, be using Botox by now. (Disney’s Snow White was a teen in the 1937 film, which would put her well into her 80s). But once upon a time, the Disney princesses lived their separate lives, waiting innocuously for their princes to come. You could buy a “Cinderella” book or a “Little Mermaid” doll, but, when you did so, you were establishing an allegiance to a particular character’s story, not to an abstract “Princess concept.” The princesses lived separately and were marketed separately.
As Peggy Orenstein documented in a 2006 New York Times Magazine article, that changed in 2000, when Disney decided that, henceforth, the princesses would collude. They went from princesses to “Princess” -- as Disney execs call the fast-growing product line marketed collectively under just that logo. Merged into a sort of uber-princess, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and the older members of the gang formed a vast global conspiracy to turn a bunch of aging animated films into cold, hard cash -- faster than Cinderella’s fairy godmother could turn a pumpkin into a coach.
Like an Al Qaeda sleeper cell, the princesses were activated -- and once activated, they would quickly dominate the world. In 2001, sales at Disney consumer products were a lethargic $300 million. By 2007, Disney’s “Princess” franchise was raking in $4 billion. And who could stand in its way? With the “Princess” brand on baby bottles, sneakers, pencils, candy, T-shirts, everything, you and your little darlings don’t stand a chance, Mothers of America. Your little girls will be brainwashed -- and you -- you ... .
Ah, yes. What happens to you?
You didn’t think Disney was going to stand idly by while you engaged in those little feminist critiques, did you now? Pause for a moment to consider the fate of the princesses’ mommies in those Disney movies. “Cinderella” and “Snow White”? Mothers killed off by mysterious illnesses. “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin”? Mothers all missing; presumed dead.
Disney really has it in for mommies: Even when you leave princess-land, it’s the same pattern. Bambi’s mom? Shot dead by a hunter. Nemo’s mom? Eaten by a barracuda. Of all the major princesses, only Sleeping Beauty (a.k.a. Aurora; like all criminals, she often goes by an alias) has a nuclear family, not that it does her any good. But given Disney’s track record, I wouldn’t want to underwrite her mother’s life insurance policy.
And hey, ever notice how, in group photos, the Disney princesses never, ever meet each other’s eyes? Why won’t they look at each other? Why do they still pretend they don’t know each other? Is something troubling their consciences?
Mothers of America, watch your backs.
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8d4851f837e31408cb51116d55d1b258 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-27-sp-swim27-story.html | As swim records fall, high-tech suit faces scrutiny | As swim records fall, high-tech suit faces scrutiny
Never mind that backstroker Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe barely had time to wedge her body into the new, ultra-tightfitting swimsuit or to test the suit in warmups, let alone race conditions.
Coventry, a gold medalist in the 2004 Olympic Games, hit the water that day and smashed a world record that had stood for 16 years, swimming the 200-meter backstroke in 2:06.39, which was 0.23 second faster than the storied mark.
The new swimsuit? Speedo’s LZR Racer.
That modest meet last month in Columbia, Mo., began an unprecedented -- and controversial -- six weeks that turned competitive swimming upside down: 14 world records set as of Wednesday, 13 in the LZR suit.
“There’s going to be more fireworks,” Speedo USA executive Stu Isaac said of the records being shattered. He suggested that more would fall at the ongoing Olympic trials in Sydney, Australia, and the U.S. trials in Omaha, starting in June.
But the onslaught of new world records has ignited debate over whether high-tech apparel provides an unfair advantage.
Even before the LZR debuted, there were signs of what might come, given how technology has ramped up the race to be faster in the water, revolutionizing the sport much as high-tech metal clubs changed golf.
Not only was this suit designed with help from NASA and its wind tunnels, but Speedo made sure that each step of the development process, including ultrasonically bonded seams -- no thread and needle here -- was approved by FINA, swimming’s international governing body.
Then, at the product launch last month, Olympic star and Speedo pitchman Michael Phelps, who will attempt to win an unprecedented eight gold medals at the Olympics this summer in Beijing, said of wearing the suit: “When I hit the water, I feel like a rocket.”
One rare complaint, however, surfaced Wednesday at the trials in Australia. Jess Schipper said that the LZR filled with water as she competed in the 200-meter butterfly final and caused her to fade down the stretch.
Still, with so many records falling so fast, three-time Olympic champion Pieter van den Hoogenband captured the essence of the controversy: “This [suit] allows far less talented swimmers to go fast,” he told a French newspaper, adding that it made records meaningless.
But multiple-gold-medal-winner Gary Hall Jr., who also is a Speedo swimmer, cautioned against reading too much into the technology.
“Guys like Michael Phelps can roll out of bed in the morning in cutoffs and break the world record,” he said. “So . . . I don’t think you can give credit or fault to the suit. It is what it is. I think it’s a great suit; I think it’s an improvement. Is it the reason why records are being broken? It’s debatable.”
Speedo is not alone in crafting increasingly high-tech suits. TYR Sport Inc. of Huntington Beach is out with its own, the Tracer Light, and could face the same criticism.
FINA will be meeting with apparel manufacturers next month in Britain during the world short-course championships. The summit was scheduled months ago, according to FINA, but the timing is perfect.
“On this occasion, we’ll be jointly reviewing the procedures and regulations for approval of swimwear, namely the issue of the thickness of the swimsuits,” FINA Executive Director Cornel Marculescu said in an e-mail to The Times.
Former Olympic swimmer Steve Furniss of TYR and Isaac of Commerce-based Speedo USA confirmed that FINA had been involved throughout their suits’ development.
“For us, it’s an ongoing process because we’re spending so much more than anybody else,” Isaac said.
“It’s not a process where we’re spending several million dollars trying to come up with a suit and then going to them, and they say, ‘Sorry.’
“We are going to them on a very regular basis with each of the steps, the fundamental components with the suit, before we’re going down a way that would not be ruled legal.”
Many of the complaints so far are from national federations that have deals with other manufacturers and contend that the LZR, which costs $550, creates an uneven playing field of the haves and have-nots.
“I think the criticism is sour grapes and understandable,” said Mark Schubert, USA Swimming National Team head coach. “Speedo’s put millions into research and other companies haven’t. They’re going to be kind of left holding the bag at this Olympics.”
Speedo is no stranger to controversy. In 2000 similar criticism surfaced about its Fastskin suit, which was said to minimize drag by 3%. FINA approved the suit, and its decision was upheld by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport after a challenge from Australia.
Marculescu, asked if the governing body might consider revoking its approval of the LZR, replied:
“So far, all swimsuits are made from traditional materials such as Lycra, polyester, elastic or nylon. FINA will continue looking at this issue. However, to the best of our knowledge, the swimwear [has no added value in] achieving the best performances. We are not there yet.”
French swim officials, in particular, complain that the sport is beginning to resemble Formula One racing. The turbulent times for swimming and the focus on technology is reminiscent of the changes in tennis and golf, when wooden rackets and old-school clubs went to the back of the garage for good, replaced by their sleeker composite cousins.
“I’m an old swimmer,” said Furniss, who won a bronze medal in the 1972 Olympics. “An old guy who is old school in a lot of stuff. But the reality is you look at any sport, any equipment, whether it was a bamboo pole in the pole vault going to fiberglass. . . . In swimming we’re doing the same thing. We’re just doing it in the water.
“At the same time, you’ve still got to have fast engines to put people in it. At the end of the day, they’re all going to be wearing fast technology, but it’s still going to come down to racing.”
Hall, who will be attempting to win his third gold medal in the 50-meter freestyle, agreed, saying: “We’re in the golden age of swimming, undeniably.”
The golden age means that swimmers are spending 20 minutes contorting themselves into space-age suits. There is no stitching, and the pieces are bonded ultrasonically -- a patented process -- at a factory in Portugal. Low-drag panels are embedded into the fabric to compress the swimmer’s body.
Speedo said the suits have 5% less drag and are 4% faster in terms of starts, sprints and turns compared with last year’s model.
Eric Shanteau, a TYR swimmer who recently beat world-record-holder and former University of Texas teammate Brendan Hansen in the 200-meter breaststroke, agreed with Hall that suits are, well, suits.
“I mean, suits don’t perform miracles,” Shanteau said. “They can’t make a non-swimmer a world record holder.”
Natalie Coughlin, who broke her own world record in the 100-meter backstroke in Missouri, was not sure how much impact the suit had on her swim. But she rejected Van den Hoogenband’s assertions.
“I think that’s silly,” Coughlin said. “It doesn’t make records meaningless. . . . If that logic held, everyone would be breaking world records, and not everyone is breaking records. People like to create controversy.”
There is a line in the sand, so to speak, when it comes to the suits.
“We don’t even make it in sizes that fit 10- and 12-year-olds,” Isaac said. “This is not to take the place of coaches or workouts. If a parent comes up to me, ‘Should I be spending $500 on this to help Johnny be better?’ I’d say, ‘You’d be better off spending the money on lessons and coaching.’ ”
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lisa.dillman@latimes.com
Special correspondent Phil Hersh contributed to this report.
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d826373fd6b2f318b10ff2df44d45ff5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-28-et-barney28-story.html | Barney is far from extinct | Barney is far from extinct
Barney the Purple Dinosaur is routinely held up as the epitome of sappy children’s entertainment. Thousands of anti-Barney websites haunt the Internet.
But the children’s TV and music icon must be doing something right.
This year, the giggly T. rex is celebrating 20 years in the biz with a “Big Purple Bus Tour” rolling into multiple cities for meet-and-greet (and hug) events. (Stops include appearances at Toys R Us stores Saturday in Torrance and Sunday in Los Angeles.)
Still a highly ranked PBS preschool staple, “Barney & Friends” is one of the most downloaded shows on the network’s 24-hour PBS Kids Sprout video-on-demand service. And he’s still charming legions of little fans with his much-maligned signature “I Love You, You Love Me” song, and other Barneyisms that trigger winces (and worse) in grown-ups.
“My two rules are ‘No Barney, No Britney,’ ” Amy Trulock told the Wall Street Journal, describing the children’s music she streams on her website, Hipyoungparent.com.
Slams don’t ruffle Karen Barnes, the executive producer of “Barney & Friends.” She’s heard them all. “Children get it,” she says, “and a lot of adults get it too. He’s very popular in the DVD market. Obviously parents buy those, so they approve. I think it would be a mistake to change the essence of who he is, because for 20 years children have loved that.”
Indeed, the rights to Barney’s home videos, which have sold in the tens of millions, were snapped up from London-based owner HIT Entertainment this week by independent film distributor Lionsgate, along with other high-profile HIT children’s shows for distribution in the U.S. and Canada.
It’s been a long time, though, since Barney, who transforms in each episode from a stuffed toy into his big, pillowy self, was the hot thing in children’s entertainment.
He’s now one preschool heavyweight among many, competing with “Sesame Street,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Dora the Explorer,” “Teletubbies,” “Bob the Builder” and “Thomas the Tank Engine,” to name just a handful.
Musically, the repetitive ditties that Barney sings seem, well, positively prehistoric to many, compared to an expanding roster of adult-friendly “kindie” artists that include highly regarded former Del Fuegos rocker Dan Zanes and pop tune purveyors Kidz Bop, which cracked Billboard’s top 10 album list in February.
Yes, the songs are simple and repeated “a lot,” Barnes patiently explains, “because kids feel a sense of accomplishment at that age. They can watch something several times and then they can do it.”
Created in 1987 by former teacher Sheryl Leach, “Barney & Friends” took off on home video the following year. The show landed at PBS in 1992, and its rotund star scored a seven-figure deal with EMI Records Group in 1993. From 1996 to 1998, Barney ranked as Billboard’s top children’s artist.
In 2002, HIT Entertainment bought Barney’s producing company, Lyrick Studios, for $275 million.
Along the way, in addition to older “real” kids who appear on the show as role models for younger viewers, Barney acquired dino-kid sidekicks Baby Bop and B.J. and an expanded world that includes a park set and video footage of children in various locales.
A new music curriculum added multicultural emphasis to the show in 2006. It ushered in a new character, a music-loving hadrosaur named Riff, and a shorter format with interstitial bridges between two 12-minute episodes. (This year, the episodes returned to a 30-minute format.)
The key to Barney’s longevity is no mystery, Barnes says. “He’s a gentle soul, he’s very uncomplicated. It’s about the simple things that a child appreciates at that age.”
Tenets of child development frame the show, she stresses.
With a target age range of 2 to 4, the focus is on vocabulary, colors, shapes, numbers and the ABCs; such social skills as sharing, caring and playing together; and movement, “where a lot of the music comes in,” Barnes says. “We actually do hit all those different areas show by show.”
Dorothy Singer, senior research scientist emeritus of Yale University’s psychology department and co-director of Yale’s television research center, backs up that claim.
“We have now done a content analysis of every Barney program that’s been on the air,” she says. “Every summer we sit with a group of five psychologists and look at every show that’s about to come out.”
The purpose, she explains, is to let the producers know “what we feel is developmentally out of place -- and it’s rare that we find anything we can criticize.”
“I really think it’s a very thoughtful program,” Singer adds. “When people say he’s so sweet and saccharine, they said the same thing about Fred Rogers too. But these programs are for children.”
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lynne.heffley@latimes.com
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‘Barney’s Big Purple Bus Tour’
Where: Toys R Us, 22035 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday
Price: Free
Contact: (310) 540-2727
Also
Where: Toys R Us, 1833 La Cienega Blvd., L.A.
When: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday
Price: Free
Contact: (310) 558-1831
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91cf5df5cf5bd608e806acbcd70c737a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-28-me-mann28-story.html | Oscar-winning writer, producer and director of issue-oriented projects | Oscar-winning writer, producer and director of issue-oriented projects
Abby Mann, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 1961’s “Judgment at Nuremberg” and such acclaimed TV movies as 1973’s “The Marcus-Nelson Murders” and 1989’s “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story,” died Tuesday of heart failure in Beverly Hills. He was 80.
During his more than 50-year career as a writer, producer and director, Mann built a strong reputation for his issue-oriented, thought-provoking projects. A multiple Emmy winner, Mann was especially critical of the inner workings of the American criminal justice system. He was known for creating complex characters and was scrupulous in his investigative research.
“A writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives,” Mann said when he accepted his Oscar for “Judgment at Nuremberg,” the Stanley Kramer drama about the Nuremberg war trials in Germany in 1948. One of the film’s stars, Richard Widmark, died Monday at age 93.
Born Abraham Goodman in Philadelphia on Dec. 1, 1927, Mann was the son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant jeweler and grew up in East Pittsburgh in a predominantly Catholic working-class neighborhood. As one of the few Jews in the area, Mann always felt like an outsider, and his scripts years later focused on the world of outsiders -- the poor and racial minorities who were subjected to prejudice and injustice.
“I think he obviously was a very serious, substantive writer who was able to deal with a very strong social conscience and a very strong sense of what it was like to be an outsider, functioning within a society or system that didn’t have your best interests at heart,” said David Bushman, television curator at the Paley Center for Media in New York. “He elevated the level of television because of his skills as a writer and his devotion to taking on serious, controversial issues, . . . usually taking on the side of the underdog.”
After attending Temple University and New York University, Mann served in the Army during World War II. He began his professional writing career in the early days of live television in the 1950s, penning scripts for such popular anthologies as “Cameo Theater,” “Studio One,” “Robert Montgomery Presents” and “Playhouse 90.” “Judgment at Nuremberg” was originally presented live on “Playhouse 90" in 1959.
In a 2001 interview with the Associated Press, Mann said that when the drama first aired, “there were a lot of people who felt we really should not do it. The Cold War was at its height. Some people felt I was embarrassing the [Eisenhower] administration.”
Not only did he write the film but Mann also penned a novel based on the movie.
The movie version of “Judgment” brought him to Hollywood, where he went on to write 1963’s “A Child Is Waiting,” directed by John Cassavetes, a drama that dealt with mentally challenged children, and the 1965 adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter’s novel “Ship of Fools,” which was directed by Kramer and brought Mann a second Oscar nomination.
Mann received an Emmy and a Writers Guild of America Award for the TV movie “The Marcus-Nelson Murders,” which introduced the character of Kojak, played by Telly Savalas. The character proved to be so popular it was spun off into a long-running series.
The film was based on the 1963 rape and murder of two white professional women living in Manhattan. George Whitmore, a young black man who had been arrested previously for the murder of a black woman, signed a confession stating that he had murdered the two women. Whitmore later said that he was beaten and coerced into signing it. Mann visited Whitmore in jail and was so convinced after talking to him that Whitmore wasn’t guilty -- and that officials had ignored Whitmore’s alibi that he had been 50 miles away at the time of the murder -- that he wrote the screenplay. After the film aired, Whitmore was set free.
Mann also created and was co-executive producer of the 1975-76 series “Medical Story” and received an Emmy nomination for the pilot of “Skag,” a short-lived 1980 series starring Karl Malden as the foreman of a Pittsburgh steel mill.
Mann, though, generally concentrated on movies and miniseries for television. Among his other credits are “The Atlanta Child Murders,” “Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story” and “Sinatra,” in which he is credited as Ben Goodman, and “King,” a miniseries on the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which Mann also directed.
The home he owned with his wife, Myra, burned down on the first day of production of “Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” the HBO movie in which Mann examined the machinations of the judicial system in the controversial preschool molestation case. After the film aired in 1995, Mann said that “people seem . . . obsessed by [the trial]. I suppose they realize that they have watched and believed stories that were as incredible as the Salem witch hunt.”
Mann is survived by his wife and a son. A memorial service will be held Sunday at 11 a.m. at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
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susan.king@latimes.com
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77863c6010f5b0e1006d48531e59f6f0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-28-me-oceanside28-story.html | Oceanside police deny favoritism | Oceanside police deny favoritism
The Oceanside Police Department on Thursday defended its investigation into an incident in which an off-duty San Diego police officer shot a woman and her 8-year-old son after a traffic altercation.
Oceanside Police Capt. Tom Aguigui said investigators are still trying to figure out what led Officer Frank White to fire five shots at Oceanside resident Rachel Silva’s car in a mall parking lot.
White was not arrested or tested for drugs or alcohol. But he was questioned after the shooting, which occurred about 9:15 p.m. on March 15.
A supervisor from the San Diego Police Department, a lawyer provided by the Police Officers Assn. and a “peer support” representative from the department were with White during the questioning.
White has been put on paid administrative leave.
White’s wife, a Carlsbad police dispatcher, was with him in the car when the shooting occurred, and has been interviewed by police.
Silva, 27, has refused to be interviewed by police.
After she was treated at a hospital for her wounds, police required her to take a blood test. The results have not been released.
Silva was driving on a suspended license and had two drunk-driving convictions, according to court records. Aguigui said police had probable cause to order Silva’s blood drawn, but none to make a similar decision involving White. He said San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne was briefed about the incident as a courtesy to a fellow police department, but no similar briefing has been given to Silva’s attorneys.
On the night of March 15, both White and Silva called 911 for help.
Aguigui would not describe the traffic incident or say whether White believed that his life was in danger.
Silva was struck twice in the arm; her son, Johnny, was struck once in the leg. Silva’s ex-husband, a Marine serving in Iraq, has been given emergency leave to be with his son.
Aguigui said four bullet holes were found in the windshield of Silva’s car and one in the front passenger’s window. The driver’s window of White’s vehicle was shattered.
But Aguigui declined to describe the relative location of the two cars when the shooting occurred.
He said he could not estimate when the case would be taken to the district attorney for a decision on what, if any, charges would be filed.
Silva, who is being represented by civil rights attorney Eugene Iredale, filed a claim Wednesday with the city of San Diego for unspecified damages. The claim alleges that White, 28, who has been an officer for two years, is “manifestly unsuited” for his job and that Oceanside police are showing favoritism toward a fellow officer.
The claim also asserts that the San Diego department has been negligent in not testing its officers periodically to discover “rage tendencies.”
“It seems to me the temperament shown -- the rage -- is the kind we do not want in a police officer allowed to carry a firearm,” Iredale said.
Lansdowne, in a telephone interview, said that all officer candidates are given a thorough psychological screening before being hired.
He said that the department has psychological services available for officers and that they can either ask for help or be referred by their supervisors.
“We have a very good system,” he said.
If her claim is rejected, Silva will be able to file a lawsuit.
At the sometimes combative Oceanside news conference Thursday, Aguigui denied suggestions of favoritism toward White.
“We are doing our best to do a very fair and complete investigation,” he said.
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tony.perry@latimes.com
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f920fa9b2c1d7938622289a8a35e23fa | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-28-na-campaign28-story.html | Economy has new political capital | Economy has new political capital
The deteriorating economy took center stage in the presidential election Thursday as Democrat Barack Obama called for tighter regulation of financial markets and rival Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed more retraining for displaced workers, creating a sharp contrast with Republican John McCain over how much the government should intervene.
The economy has been the No. 1 issue for voters for months, but the candidates have embraced the issue more slowly. This week, however, all three gave major addresses that added significant detail to their prescriptions for the ailing economy.
Obama called Thursday for an overhaul of the nation’s regulatory system, immediate relief for homeowners caught in the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a $30-billion economic stimulus package. Clinton, who had proposed a $30-billion fund to help prevent foreclosures a week ago, offered a new proposal to spend $12.5 billion on job-training programs.
McCain emphasized Thursday that he thought any federal aid should be limited to “deserving American families” who were “in danger of not realizing the American dream.”
“What is not necessary is a multibillion-dollar bailout for big banks and speculators, as Sens. Clinton and Obama have proposed,” he said in a statement released by his campaign. “There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face.”
The economy has not been an easy topic for any of the candidates. None of them has business experience, and all three are more comfortable talking about their well-established views on the Iraq war -- a topic they had once assumed would drive the election.
But they have stepped up their efforts to refine and expand their proposals to deal with an economic slowdown recently underscored by the sudden collapse of a venerable Wall Street brokerage firm. On Thursday, as the candidates campaigned in three different states, the federal government confirmed that the economy all but stalled out in the final quarter of last year, with the gross domestic product posting a scant 0.6% increase.
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For a new system
Obama, speaking to a Wall Street audience at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, cited the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary intervention to save Bear Stearns Cos. from bankruptcy to bolster his call for more help for homeowners.
“If we can extend a hand to banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to Americans who are struggling through no fault of their own,” he said.
The Illinois senator argued for a new system of financial regulation designed to prevent the kind of abuses that led to the housing bubble and current credit crunch.
“Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it,” he said. “That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair and open and honest.”
Pressing for better regulation of the financial sector, Obama noted that commercial banks and thrift institutions were subject to guidelines on sub-prime mortgages that did not apply to mortgage brokers. “It makes no sense for the Fed to tighten mortgage guidelines for banks when two-thirds of sub-prime mortgages don’t originate from banks,” he said.
Accompanied by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, he also called for a crackdown on “trading activity that crosses the line to market manipulation.”
Obama criticized McCain, the expected Republican nominee, for taking a lackadaisical approach to the crisis. On Tuesday, McCain said that “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”
“John McCain recently announced his own plan, and it amounts to little more than watching the crisis happen,” Obama said. “While this is consistent with Sen. McCain’s determination to run for George Bush’s third term, it won’t help families who are suffering, and it won’t help lift our economy out of recession.”
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Tying McCain to Bush
Clinton, who was campaigning in North Carolina, also criticized McCain, tying him to what she said was Bush’s neglect of the economy and ridiculing McCain’s comment that he didn’t understand the economy as well as he should.
The Arizona senator did not step away from those comments Thursday, but told reporters during a brief news conference in the Salt Lake City airport that any aid should not go to speculators who intended to flip houses or to unscrupulous lenders.
“There are people who are sitting around the kitchen table, families today, that are saying: ‘Are we going to have to take an extra job?’ ‘Are we going to have to dig into our savings?’ ‘Are we going to have to take extraordinary measures to remain in our homes?’ ” McCain said. “Those are the people that should be the object of our attention and our care.”
In North Carolina, Clinton kicked off what her campaign bills as a three-state, six-day “Solutions for America” tour to highlight her proposals to deal with the economy.
As she has across the country on the campaign trail, the New York senator cited the economic challenges Americans face: rising gas prices, steep college tuition and the increasingly unaffordable cost of healthcare -- the mention of which generated the most applause.
Clinton also attacked the Bush administration, saying it had failed to do enough to ease the plight of displaced workers. “We’ve been stalled, I would say, for at least seven years,” she told a crowd at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh. “And you pay the price.”
She also criticized the president for giving tax breaks to oil companies, and said he was ignoring the mortgage crisis and allowing the nation’s infrastructure to deteriorate.
Clinton did not mention Obama, but campaign aides mocked him for announcing a $30-billion plan after she had announced one. They said the country needs “leadership, not followership.”
A key focus of Clinton’s economic message Thursday was her proposal to spend an additional $12.5 billion on retraining over five years to help workers who have lost their jobs or who seek higher-paying ones.
“No American should be left on the side of the road,” she said, singling out efforts by North Carolina leaders to boost job training at places like community colleges.
Clinton followed up with a detailed set of proposals for dramatically more government involvement in providing economic aid. “It is time for a president who is ready on Day One to be commander in chief of our economy,” she said.
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maura.reynolds@latimes.com
noam.l evey@latimes.com
Reynolds reported from Washington and Levey from North Carolina. Times staff writers Maeve Reston in Salt Lake City and Johanna Neuman in Washington contributed to this report. Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune also contributed.
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06ef488c917173c8b25a48109f098f47 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-29-fg-film29-story.html | Dutch film draws quiet response from Muslims | Dutch film draws quiet response from Muslims
A young Muslim girl in a head scarf calls Jews “apes and pigs.” A nonbeliever is beheaded and another is shot. Verses of the Koran are juxtaposed with horrific images, implying that one begets the other.
The new film by right-wing Dutch legislator Geert Wilders, first posted on the Internet late Thursday, had everyone from the Dutch prime minister to soldiers in Afghanistan braced for angry reactions from offended Muslims. Even before the film was released, there were protests this month by 15,000 people in Afghanistan, with many burning the Dutch flag.
And a spokesman for the Amsterdam police said Friday that the force was on alert and that extra officers would be on the streets in Muslim neighborhoods this weekend.
Before Friday’s midday call to prayer, police were busy contacting imams to gauge reaction at the city’s 50 mosques. But as of late Friday, reaction there appeared muted.
“They were all disgusted by the film, but so far there isn’t a big explosion,” said police spokesman Arnold Aben. “In fact, it’s quieter than usual here today. Sort of like a holiday.”
The 17-minute film, “Fitna,” the Arabic word for strife, was first posted late Thursday on Wilder’s Freedom Party website. The site crashed immediately with heavy traffic, but within minutes the film was available in Dutch and English on the British-based website LiveLeak, which also froze up briefly. By Friday, the film was all over the Internet -- on YouTube, Dailymotion and other shared-video sites. LiveLeak later took down the video, saying its staff had received “threats of a very serious nature.”
Wilders has said he made the film to call attention to what he sees as the Islamic threat to Europe -- which he compares to the fascism that led to World War II.
Not everyone was impressed.
“It is not very original,” Yusuf Altuntas, deputy chairman of a Muslim umbrella group based in The Hague, said in a phone interview. “We have seen many of these images before. There was no shock so we don’t think there will be problems in Holland. I can’t speak for in the Middle East.”
Altuntas had worried the film would set off riots around the world after Wilders hinted that it included images of the Koran being torn. There is the sound of paper tearing at the end of the film that a viewer might conclude is the Koran, but the text explains it is not pages from the Muslim holy book but rather from a phone book.
“It is not up to me but up to the Muslims to tear the spiteful verses from the Koran,” the text reads.
Wilders, who has full-time police protection because of assassination threats from Islamic extremists, has built a political career fighting what he calls the “Islamization” of the West.
Although his party gets less than 15% support, he is known for stirring emotion in a highly tolerant country with one of Europe’s fastest-growing immigrant populations from Muslim countries.
On Friday, Wilders, 44, told reporters that he was happy there hadn’t been violence after the film’s release. “My intention was not to provoke riots,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. “On the contrary, I want to encourage debate.”
The new video was met with several counter-videos on the Internet on Friday morning, and the blogosphere was crowded with back-and-forth. On YouTube, a man from Pakistan had put up his own video saying that “Muslims love Jesus Christ, Moses and all prophets of all religions. . . . They respect all scriptures.”
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said in a statement that “the vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence.”
“In fact, the victims are often also Muslims. We therefore regret that Mr. Wilders has released this film. We believe it serves no purpose other than to cause offense.”
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geraldine.baum@latimes.com
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ddc9e9f293954925c3e8ef6dc7a4e788 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-29-fi-treasury29-story.html | Expanded Fed power proposed | Expanded Fed power proposed
The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system, combining what is now an alphabet soup of government agencies into three streamlined regulators.
The proposal is the result of a year of study by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and has the support of the president, according to Treasury officials who spoke on condition of anonymity Friday.
Under the administration’s plan, which will be released in detail Monday, the Federal Reserve would get expanded power to promote stability in financial markets.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and a handful of other federal agencies -- all formed in the Great Depression or earlier -- would be restructured and have their responsibilities redefined.
Oversight of the mortgage industry would be stepped up, and states could lose some of their authority to regulate banks.
The aim of the realignment is to better oversee the financial markets and the banking system as they have evolved since the 1930s -- and avoid the kind of upheaval seen in recent months.
An outline of the proposal, first reported by the New York Times late Friday and confirmed by Treasury officials, includes short-, intermediate- and long-term changes in the country’s regulatory structure.
Paulson’s review began before the sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent financial market turmoil, but it was given new import by the near-collapse of investment house Bear Stearns Cos. and the Federal Reserve’s decision two weeks ago to temporarily extend its lending to include investment firms as well as banks.
Many if not most of the changes would need congressional approval, which is far from certain. Both houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats, and this is a presidential election year, so any changes could take years.
Still, at least one Democratic leader expressed support for the administration’s goals, if not necessarily its specific proposals.
“In broad outlines, we agree with large parts of Secretary Paulson’s plan,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Senate leadership who is also chairman of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. “He is on the money when he calls for a more unified regulatory structure, although we would prefer a single regulator to the three he proposes.”
Schumer also complained that the administration proposal did not appear to address the full spectrum of complex new financial securities, including so-called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, which repackage assets such as mortgages for sale to investors.
Losses on such securities have cost Wall Street firms billions of dollars and made them and other institutions reluctant to lend money. That in turn has fueled the credit crunch that is squeezing the economy.
“Very complex financial instruments have evolved in recent years, like CDOs and credit-default swaps, which pose potential problems in terms of systemic risk,” Schumer said. “The Treasury Department should address these issues as well.”
In the short term, Paulson’s plan proposes:
Creating a Mortgage Originations Commission that would oversee the home-loan industry, making sure that state-level licensing conformed with a set of new federal minimum standards.
Consideration of what kind of regulation should be put in place for investment banks that wish to borrow directly from the Federal Reserve.
Paulson has said previously that, although the Fed this month agreed to make loans to securities firms on a temporary, emergency basis, those institutions would have to be more heavily regulated if they wanted permanent access to Fed lending.
In the medium term, Paulson proposes:
Eliminating the distinction between thrifts and banks under federal law.
Bringing all state-chartered banks under federal supervision, either through the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Federal oversight of insurance companies.
Integrating oversight of the futures and securities markets by combining the Securities and Exchange Commission with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Ultimately, the administration’s proposal envisions paring down financial market oversight to just three regulators: a “market stability” regulator based on the Federal Reserve; a “business conduct regulator” based on the current SEC and CFTC; and a “prudential oversight” regulator focused on depository banks, encompassing the current Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
A major Wall Street trade group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Assn., said in reaction to Paulson’s blueprint that there was “universal agreement that it is time to modernize and revitalize the current system” of regulation.
“The present regulatory framework was born of Depression-era events and is not well suited for today’s environment where billions of dollars race across the globe with the click of a mouse,” the group said.
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maura.reynolds@latimes.com
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Staff writer Tom Petruno in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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8fe0aa028e1c41c7350d50273620aac2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-29-me-beliefs29-story.html | Psalms offer source of inspiration for prayer | Psalms offer source of inspiration for prayer
The Psalms, says theologian Eugene H. Peterson, are God’s gift to those who want to learn how to pray.
“If we wish to develop our entire heart, mind, soul and strength, the Psalms are necessary,” the author of the bestselling “Message Bible” writes in “Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer.” “We cannot bypass the Psalms.”
Christine Hodge, a member of Ojai Valley Community Church in Ventura County, came to that realization last year when she joined 70 other women in a nine-week course on the Psalms.
Praying the Psalms has taught her that she can share everything with God, said Hodge, a freelance writer with young children.
“It showed me that it’s OK to tell God anything -- that you are mad, sad, angry,” she said. “Before I studied the Psalms, I’d tell God everything except I was mad at him.”
She now finds her relationship with the divine more intimate and complete. “I think God wants us to be honest with him,” she said.
Why do some people find the Psalms such a powerful vehicle for prayer? Theologians say the answer lies in their vast variety, emotional honesty and occasional bluntness.
“What’s so wonderful about the Psalms is that they’re a keyboard that plays every song,” said the Rev. Ron Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and an expert on praying the Psalms.
“What makes the Psalms great for prayer is that they do not hide the truth from God,” said Rolheiser, president of Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. “They give honest voice to what is actually going on in our minds and hearts.”
Ancient Hebrew poetry, the terms “Psalms” and “Psalter” come from Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
A “collection of collections,” believed to have been completed around the 3rd century BC, the 150 Psalms represent the final stage in a process that spanned centuries, according to a commentary in the New International Version, the bestselling English Bible translation today. The Psalms served as the prayers and songs in temples and synagogues.
Rabbi Miriyam Glazer, a professor of literature at American Jewish University in Los Angeles, says the Psalms “draw for their power and rhythm on the vocabulary and literary techniques” of ancient Hebrew poetry, which was influenced by the hymns and poetry of neighboring cultures.
“Every word of the Psalms, every image, every phrase can be translated in so many different ways,” she writes in her forthcoming book, “Psalms of the Jewish Liturgy: A Guide to Their Beauty, Power and Meaning,” to be published by Aviv Press in the fall. “The Psalms offer such a vividly variegated range of qualities for God that our whole understanding of godliness expands.”
For example, the God in the Psalms is simultaneously “royal, majestic, tender, compassionate, loving, healing, eternally just and capable of great rage,” she writes.
“The same God who hurls hailstones across the sky and ‘hangs the heavens as if they were drapes’ also ‘protects the outsider’ and ‘helps widows and orphans stand on their feet.’ The same God who makes sure the baby birds are fed also hitches a ride on the wings of the wind and frolics with Leviathan!”
The Rev. John Goldingay, a professor of the Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, says the Israelites preserved the Psalms because they resonated with them. The verses continue to resonate in the 21st century because they express the full range of a collective human experience, he said.
“Often people feel that before you approach God, you got to put your best suit on,” said Goldingay, an Episcopal priest. “The Psalms show when you come to God, you don’t have to put your best suit on.”
Consider, for example, the pleading in Psalm 6, which says, “O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am faint.”
Or the anguished prayer of the 22nd Psalm, which begins, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”
The 22nd Psalm is among Goldingay’s favorites, and teaching the Psalms has enriched his own relationship with God. His wife, Ann, a psychiatrist who has lived with multiple sclerosis for more than four decades, cannot speak or make any voluntary movements.
Yet Goldingay says that as he pushes his wife’s wheelchair to take her to events, he feels gratitude to God for the gift of her life and her love. To many of his friends and students, their example is a powerful ministry.
For several years she was in hospice care, but in November, Goldingay was told his wife could go home “because she is not deteriorating.”
His other favorite is the 23rd Psalm, ascribed to Israel’s King David and one of the best-known verses in Western literature, with its immortal opening “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
The Psalm also contains these oft-quoted lines: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”
In Goldingay’s interpretation, his enemy is his wife’s illness. Despite that, he says, God also anoints his head with oil, prepares a table before him and his cup runneth over when his wife is beside him in her wheelchair, in silent but complete understanding.
Glazer, the professor at American Jewish University, offers suggestions on how to use the Psalms in prayer. Pick one, she suggests, then “begin reading very slowly until you find a line that gets your attention, that puzzles you or entrances you or that seems to speak to you in a special way.”
Rest with that line, she suggests. Repeat, ponder and savor it -- “roll it around” the mouth, heart, imagination. Memorize the line slowly. Glazer says the words even might inspire someone to draw or dance. Or continue to sit quietly, meditating.
“And then, though perhaps you’ve never tried it before, speak, to the Holy One in your own words, sharing whatever you’ve discovered in the process of pondering the psalm,” she writes.
In “Answering God,” Peterson tells readers that prayers are tools, “but not tools for getting, but being and becoming.”
“At the center of the whole enterprise of being human, prayers are the primary technology. Prayers are tools that God uses to work his will in our bodies and souls. Prayers are tools that we use to collaborate in his work with us.”
And the Psalms, Rolheiser said, are “like microchips that express what’s happening in the world.”
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This is the last in a series of occasional articles on prayer. After four decades in daily journalism, K. Connie Kang is retiring.
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64f8b6db595ceec9d028c1dd785edcc5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-29-na-campaign29-story.html | Clinton dismisses appeal to step aside | Clinton dismisses appeal to step aside
In a sign of growing anxiety over the Democrats’ bitter nominating fight, a senior senator urged Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday to abandon her presidential bid and cede the race to rival Barack Obama. Clinton rejected the notion.
The recommendation from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont that Clinton drop out came as Obama picked up support from another senator, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, the state holding the next primary, on April 22.
Separately, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean signaled his concern over the tenor of the race by urging Obama and Clinton to scale back their rhetorical assaults, saying they risk undermining the effort to beat Republican John McCain in November.
Dean also urged undecided superdelegates -- the party and elected officials who are likely to decide the nomination -- to pick a candidate by July 1 to avoid an irreparable rift at the party’s August convention.
“Let the media and the Republicans and the talking heads on cable television attack and carry on, fulminate at the mouth,” Dean told the Associated Press. “The supporters should keep their mouths shut about this stuff on both sides because that is harmful to the potential victory of a Democrat.”
New York Sen. Clinton faces long odds in overcoming Obama’s lead in the race for elected delegates and trails the Illinois senator in the popular vote.
But polls show her comfortably ahead in Pennsylvania, and Clinton has suggested a willingness to fight on to August. “A spirited contest is good for the Democratic Party and will strengthen our eventual nominee,” Clinton said while campaigning Friday in Indiana, which votes May 6.
In speaking out on behalf of Obama, Leahy -- and to a lesser extent Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut -- gave voice to a sentiment that many Democrats have been whispering with increased urgency over the last several days: a fear that the prolonged battle for the nomination -- which once seemed to energize the party -- may have begun to do more harm than good.
McCain has been making mistakes, Leahy said Friday in a written statement, but is “getting a free ride on those gaffes, because the Democratic candidates have to focus not on him but on each other.”
“Sen. Clinton has every right, but not a very good reason, to remain a candidate for as long as she wants to,” he said. “As far as the delegate count and the interests of a Democratic victory in November go, there is not a very good reason for drawing this out.”
A complication for Clinton, as she courts superdelegates, is the rocky history that she and Bill Clinton have with many in the Democratic establishment.
Obama portrays her as a Washington fixture, and after 15 years inside the Beltway -- eight of them as first lady -- the New York senator is very much steeped in the capital and its culture. So, too, are Clinton’s campaign team and many of her political allies.
Even so, she and the former president have long had a more complex and difficult relationship with fellow Democrats -- especially those on Capitol Hill -- than might be expected for a couple who have reigned like no pair since Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Whether it was the botched effort to reform healthcare; tough votes on taxes, trade and welfare; the president’s “triangulation” against fellow Democrats; or the Monica S. Lewinsky mess, the Clintons often made life uncomfortable for their party peers during eight years in the White House.
“There’s a lot of feeling among Democrats on the Hill that the Clintons did very little for the party. It was all about them,” said one Democratic lawmaker, an Obama supporter who did not want to be identified in order to preserve a working relationship with Clinton. “We lost seats in Congress, we lost governorships, we lost statehouses. . . . And the whole time defending [President Clinton] through the impeachment process, the entire Democratic agenda got shelved.”
The latent tensions might be just so much psychodrama, or a political footnote, except that Clinton is now turning to some of the same lawmakers who felt used and abused -- along with state party leaders, who have their own gripes -- to help win the party’s presidential nomination.
“It sure would be helpful to her if there was a little more personal loyalty to her in the hearts of those 300 or 400 people who are ultimately going to decide this,” said one neutral Democratic strategist who, like most of those critical of the Clintons, did not want to be identified to avoid angering the couple.
Steve Elmendorf, who was a top lieutenant to former Democratic House Leader Dick Gephardt, was at the center of much of the friction between the Clinton White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill. Like his former boss, Elmendorf is backing Clinton.
“There were definitely tensions,” Elmendorf said. “But I haven’t heard a whole lot of people say, ‘They screwed us on NATFA. They screwed us on welfare reform,’ ” he continued, citing two of the biggest legislative battles of the Clinton years. “I think most people ended up in a pretty decent place with the Clintons.”
Still, Clinton’s hard-edged campaign against Obama has irked many Democrats. Those close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said she did not appreciate a letter this week from Clinton donors objecting to her statement that primary and caucus results should dictate the final choice of superdelegates.
Pelosi was to speak Friday night at the California Democratic Convention in San Jose. Bill Clinton addresses the gathering on Sunday -- and probably will woo superdelegates there.
For Hillary Clinton, Leahy’s move was especially stinging, because the Vermont senator was a staunch defender of President Clinton during his impeachment ordeal.
Leahy said Obama’s lead in delegates appeared insurmountable. Obama is ahead 1,623 to 1,499, according to the Associated Press, and it takes 2,024 to win the nomination.
Dodd, a former presidential candidate, was more measured than Leahy, telling the National Journal on Thursday that Clinton should drop out of the race next month if voters keep rallying behind Obama.
Still, Clinton has previously defied those urging her early exit, with good results in New Hampshire, then Ohio. Many had expected Clinton losses in those states to cut short her candidacy.
When asked Friday in Indiana about Obama’s comment that the race seemed like a good movie that was going on too long, Clinton joked: “I like long movies.”
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michael.finnegan@latimes.com
mark.barabak@latimes.com
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Times staff writer Noam Levey in Hammond, Ind., contributed to this report.
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aa4e92300f781b933ced914865d6164a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-29-na-manatees29-story.html | Cheering’s expansion team | Cheering’s expansion team
Robert Ramos bumps when he should grind. If he’s supposed to walk like an Egyptian, he gets down in a low swagger. With Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” blaring, Ramos isn’t sure which way that is.
Even when telling a joke about his lack of dancing prowess, his timing is off.
“My girlfriend says that if it wasn’t for no rhythm, I wouldn’t have any rhythm at all,” he says, furrowing his brow when that doesn’t sound right.
But Ramos and 15 other men will be dancing before an expected 45,000 fans at the Florida Marlins’ home opener Monday at Dolphin Stadium. They are the Manatees, Major League Baseball’s first plus-size male cheerleaders.
The Marlins are hoping the squad -- which is named after endangered marine mammals that resemble pale walruses without tusks -- will bring fans into the park. Despite two World Series championships in its 15-year existence, the National League East team had the lowest average game attendance in the majors last year, fewer than 17,000. It posted a disappointing 80-82 season amid rumors, since squelched, that the team was for sale.
The idea was to connect with fans who are most comfortable watching baseball on a couch near a beer cooler. So when Marlins marketing executives posted a notice on the team website and held tryouts, there were no upper or lower limits on weight.
The chosen Manatees tip the scales at 225 to 435 pounds.
“There are more people who look like them than have those perfect bodies,” says Sue Friedman, a charter member of the Marlins Fan Club.
But can manatees learn to dance?
At the first practice, in a second-floor studio at the Don Shula Sports Center, Ramos hung back from the others decked out in black and aqua -- the Marlins’ team colors. A shy 6-foot, 270-pound man whose decision to join the Manatees shocked his near and dear, Ramos stood like a wallflower until choreographer Vanessa Martinez-Huff clapped the practice into session.
Modeling each step in front of her panting apprentices, Martinez-Huff watched their moves in the studio mirror, halting the music every few beats to correct missteps. Her motions were smooth and her voice cheery.
In her eyes was a look of stifled panic.
But she shook it off, determined to shame the men into synchronized movement.
“I see people leaving to get hot dogs!” she admonishes them. “You want to keep them in the stands! Do you want to lose out to a hot dog?”
“Can they bring me one?” asks Steve Bauer, a 280-pound food service vendor, drawing high fives from the other Manatees.
Tim Koteff, a 47-year-old from Deerfield Beach, infuses the routines with unexpected vigor and panache for a 5-foot-8 frame carrying 225 pounds. Mark Robinson, an event coordinator in an orange do-rag, shows off a split that brings groans from men who have trouble bending their knees.
George Gonzalez and Brian Seik -- who refer to themselves as Disco George and White Lightning -- dance to the music in their heads more than to the rhythm of the opening number.
“I’m doing this for the guys like me, the regular guys who haven’t been that active lately,” says Gonzalez, a 39-year-old computer firm account manager who weighs 130 pounds more than when he graduated from high school. Disco George has already made a name by dancing spontaneously at Miami Heat basketball games. He’s fleet of foot for a large man.
Seik follows his own constant motion in the studio mirror. A single father and marketing salesman with a protruding gut and a knee brace, he says his 8-year-old daughter, Heaven, isn’t cool with her father flaunting his girth in public.
“She’s like, ‘Oh, Daddy, no!’ But she’ll deal with it,” he says, making a note to put something aside for therapy in case he’s wrong.
Two weeks and three practices later, Ramos and the others arrive at Dolphin Stadium for a taping of the Spanish-language breakfast TV show “Despierta America” -- Wake Up, America.
Ramos is wearing a neon aqua ball cap and has added a matching terry cloth wristband.
A rental car agent, Ramos is on his cellphone, telling a colleague he can’t help him solve a problem right now. He hasn’t told anyone at work that he’s a Manatee. His mother is still in shock; his girlfriend, a seventh-grade English teacher, is mortified.
“She doesn’t like people saying we’re fat,” Ramos says. “She doesn’t think I’m that bad, so she thinks I’m humiliating myself by being out here.”
Two of the original 16 Manatees have fallen to preseason injuries -- including Seik, whose knee went out after the last practice. They’ve been replaced by Fernando Fundora and Serafim Heredia, aka the Big Kahuna and Bulldozer.
The squad gets through its number for the taping with relative precision. Martinez-Huff’s eyes are wide with disbelief when her charges stay on beat. The Manatees seem to have found their groove.
But once the camera is off and practice resumes, so do the blunders.
Jeff Stern, a 52-year-old accounting teacher, keeps starting left when he should go right. Abraham J. Thomas, the oldest Manatee at 61, doesn’t do knee-bends out of fear he won’t be able to get up again.
At 320 pounds, Joseph Love takes his Manatee membership seriously. He looks shattered if he turns the wrong way. When the others rest, he goes over the steps alone.
For all their effort, the guys will get two tickets to every home game, a staff pass to the stadium, free parking, game-day meals, their Manatee uniforms -- for starters, black shorts and long T-shirts -- and other minor perks.
Love, a casino security guard, wants to make the Manatees something more than a gag that wears thin after a game or two.
“I’ve been a fan since Charlie Hough beat the Dodgers on the first day. I met my wife at a Marlins game. We had our first kiss during a Derrek Lee at bat,” he recalls. With a rakish eyebrow flutter, he says: “Lee got a double. I got a home run.”
After practice, Martinez-Huff calls a huddle to get a list of sizes and nicknames for the uniforms. (The squad will perform once per game for the first few weeks, then more frequently if the fans respond.) Dress rehearsal is just three days away, she reminds them, and they’ll be introduced alongside the firm-bodied Mermaids and a peppy teen cheer group, the Minnows.
All long legs and flowing hair in their skin-tight tap pants and halter tops, the Mermaids flutter by with their silver pompoms on rehearsal day. The Manatees are getting a pep talk from Martinez-Huff, but as they eye the Mermaids, they have that “What were we thinking?” look on their faces.
As they wait their turn to perform, Ramos and Heredia swap Iraq war stories. Ramos served in the ongoing war, and Heredia is a veteran of the 1991 invasion. Both blame their weight gain on the sedentary years that followed their service.
Their reverie is interrupted by the stadium announcer.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Florida Marlins present the Manatees!” Ramos has lost his standing as the least rhythmic. Stern, the accounting teacher, turns the wrong way for the umpteenth time, muttering, “I’m an idiot!” Bauer and Robinson collide when the two lines of dancers are supposed to change places.
The reality of performing on opening day is starting to dawn on the big men. Love laments every gaffe with a disapproving shudder and roll of the eyes. Thomas is so winded he heads for the men’s room as soon as the team is off the field. But Gonzales dances off, grinning, oblivious to his less-coordinated colleagues’ concern.
Ramos assumes the crowd will be laughing with them, not at them. Besides, he has an ulterior motive for his newfound exhibitionism: He’s already sweated off the first few of the 50 pounds he gained while recuperating from injuries suffered in Iraq, and he hopes to lose enough to eventually be too thin for the squad.
Ramos looks forward to opening day with renewed confidence. He has improved his moves and made progress at home: His girlfriend, at first too embarrassed by his moonlighting, has agreed to accompany his mother to the game.
“She’ll be there for opening day,” Ramos says. “It’ll probably be the last baseball game she ever goes to.”
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carol.williams@latimes.com
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dffdeaf7841cd10052f1460fc3e54fe1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-fg-shiites30-story.html | U.S. is entangled in Shiite rivalry | U.S. is entangled in Shiite rivalry
The biggest surprise about the raging battles that erupted last week in southern Iraq was not that the combatants were fellow Shiites, but that it took this long.
Enmity has long festered between the two sides: one a ruling party that has struggled against the widespread perception that it gained power on the back of the U.S. occupation, the other a populist movement that has positioned itself as a critic of the U.S.-backed new order.
As they vie for power before October provincial elections that will determine who controls the oil-rich south, the stakes are high not only for the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest Shiite faction in the Iraqi coalition government, and the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr.
The conflict also poses great difficulties for the Americans, who are widely seen as siding with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party against Sadr.
The Iraqi government’s offensive in Basra has spelled the end to a seven-month cease-fire by Sadr’s militia in all but name.
In an ominous sign Saturday, Sadr in a rare TV interview praised armed resistance. Separately, he urged his followers to defy Maliki’s ultimatum to surrender their weapons.
Iraqi forces battling the Mahdi Army called in U.S. airstrikes Saturday in Basra, and two American soldiers were killed in a mostly Shiite area of east Baghdad.
Sadr’s cease-fire, which he imposed in August after his loyalists clashed with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council’s militia in the southern city of Karbala, was widely credited with helping calm Baghdad.
The U.S. military now risks forfeiting gains with the Sadr group, arguably the most popular Shiite political movement across Iraq. Already, U.S. officers have reported an increase in the number of attacks against them in Baghdad, where soldiers had benefited from the Mahdi Army’s tacit cooperation.
“It would be disastrous if the United States ended up as supporters on a crackdown on the Sadrists for reasons mainly to do with internal Shiite politics,” said Reidar Visser, editor of the southern Iraq-related website historiae.org.
“The fight in Basra shows the folly of trying to control all the Shiites of Iraq through a small minority, which appears to be the current U.S. policy.”
Many Iraqis have viewed the members of the post-Saddam Hussein administrations as isolated returning exiles, backed by Iran or the U.S. The officials’ credibility has been diminished by government failings since the U.S.-led invasion -- notably endemic corruption, the lack of security and abysmal public services.
In contrast, the Sadr movement’s foundations are built upon the legacy of Sadr’s father, who challenged Hussein’s rule in sermons and was killed in 1999. Its voice, fiercely anti-U.S. and staunchly nationalist, has emerged as one of the few alternatives for Iraqis. The movement has even survived a two-year stint in the government and, like other Shiite militias, its involvement in sectarian killings.
Sadr loyalists allege that as the elections approach, their group has been deliberately targeted by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council through the army and police’s top commanders, where the party wields influence. The Sadr camp mostly boycotted the last local elections in January 2005, and predicts that it will rout its opponents this time.
But a senior Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council leader, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, said the Sadr loyalists were trying to cover up their criminal activities with the allegations of politically motivated attacks.
“They have an overt plan to control the provinces; this is what is happening. They want to take over certain provinces. There is no hiding this,” he said. “They will deal with the devil, they will deal with criminal elements if it helps them reach their goals.”
The dislike runs deep. Sadr loyalists curse members of the rival group’s armed wing, the Badr Organization, with a play on words, calling them “Ghadr” -- Arabic for treachery. Mahdi Army fighters accuse the Badr Organization of killing Sunnis in Baghdad and then blaming it on them.
In turn, asked about Sadr, one senior official from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council answered coldly: “You know what they say, once a problem, always a problem.”
The animosity is also rooted in a historic rivalry between the Sadr family, long seen as a champion of the underclass, and the Supreme Council’s senior leader, Sheik Abdelaziz Hakim, son of a conservative grand ayatollah, whose family traditionally enjoyed the support of the country’s Shiite merchant class.
Observers warned a year ago that the situation in the Shiite-majority south was deteriorating as anger mounted within the Mahdi Army over delays in holding provincial elections. Then, the senior coalition commander in the southern city of Diwaniya, Polish Maj. Gen. Pawel Lamla, said that an increase in Shiite militia violence could be traced to the power struggle.
“The Badr Organization and the government are a little afraid of the future elections,” Lamla said. “Now they have the power, but who knows about the future?”
Many in the Mahdi Army had chafed under the cease-fire, believing that the Americans and Iraqi security officials, backed by the Badr Organization, continued to go after Sadr supporters who weren’t involved in violence.
“The law has been taken advantage of by certain actors for political gain,” said Liwa Sumaysim, head of Sadr’s political bureau. “There is fear and anxiety that this is what is happening in Basra.”
Fueling the Sadrists’ concerns about Basra is the fact that some of Maliki’s trusted security advisors are from the Badr camp. The head of the Basra security command, Gen. Mohan Freiji, is also considered loosely affiliated with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC, said a Western advisor at the Defense Ministry.
The offensive in Basra so far has targeted only Sadrist neighborhoods and has avoided going after the Al Fadila al Islamiya party of Basra Gov. Mohammed Waeli or the Badr Organization, both of which have elements that have contributed to the problems in the port city.
“How could the Sadrists interpret U.S. air support of the Basra operation other than as the manifestation of a U.S.- SIIC alliance?” asked Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.
British officers have noted that the Fadila party is suspected of involvement in oil smuggling, one of the major security concerns in Basra. The Badr Organization has also been implicated in racketeering at ports and controlling the city’s police intelligence service, according to the International Crisis Group. Without tackling Fadila and Badr’s lawless elements, Basra’s problems are likely to continue.
The current violence also jeopardizes the Americans’ detente with Sadr loyalists around the country. After the cleric’s cease-fire in August, U.S. officers in Baghdad cut deals with moderate elements of the Mahdi Army to stabilize the capital’s western neighborhoods. Officers were even given lists of Mahdi Army fighters they could not arrest.
Now, the same Shiite militiamen are battling U.S. forces again.
Abu Ali, a member of the Sadr movement in the capital’s New Baghdad area, had been helping enforce Sadr’s cease-fire, but said his local office had returned to planting homemade bombs in case U.S. soldiers dared to enter their area.
“We have called for jihad,” Abu Ali said. “The government came with the occupier and supports the occupiers and they know the Americans will protect them. We are fighting to get our rights.”
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ned.parker@latimes.com
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Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Mohammed Rasheed and Said Rifai contributed to this report.
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83c6443126e20e0759ca19022280bbbe | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-fi-sunprofile30-story.html | Family tradition lends stability to bank | Family tradition lends stability to bank
When he was a boy and his father would return home after another long day at the family’s bank, Henry Walker would ask, “Did you make any loans today?”
After that topic was exhausted, Walker recalled, it might be time for a fatherly quiz on percentages.
Some, perhaps, are born bankers, while others have banking thrust upon them. For the descendants of C.J. Walker, a rancher who founded Farmers & Merchants Bank in 1907, it’s hard to tell the difference.
The family-operated Long Beach bank this month named 42-year-old Henry, C.J.'s great-grandson, as its new chief executive. Henry’s brother, Daniel, 54, who keeps an eye on the family’s ranching interests, remains chairman of the bank.
In becoming CEO, Henry succeeded the brothers’ 81-year-old father, Kenneth, who held the post for 29 years. Kenneth is staying on as president of Farmers & Merchants’ main office on Pine Avenue in downtown Long Beach -- a fitting place, Henry said, for an entrepreneur who always has been close to his customers.
“My father is an amazing man, someone who would work 15 hours a day, seven days a week,” Henry Walker said.
But now that Farmers & Merchants has 22 branches in Long Beach, the South Bay and Orange County, and $3 billion in assets, up from a few hundred million when his father started, Henry said, “It takes a deeper management team, a deeper structure.”
Not that things ever really change much at Farmers & Merchants, which has the same brass doors and teller cages installed at the main office when it opened in 1922. A stuffed cougar looks down from a balcony perch.
Shot between the eyes in 1929 by Henry’s grandfather, the mountain lion is a reminder of family history, as are Henry’s horse-head cuff links, a gift from his father. The equestrian tradition is also reflected in an obsession with polo: Henry, his brother and his nephew Matthew compete in high-level matches in Santa Barbara and internationally.
The constancy at Farmers & Merchants is such that one rival, insisting on anonymity, said that some things many banks would consider boringly conventional were “a little out there” for the family-run financial institution.
Like most community banks, Farmers & Merchants is mainly a commercial real estate lender. But unlike many others, it won’t lend money to a business based solely on its cash flow, no matter how strong. Unless you are an exceptional longtime customer, don’t try borrowing more than 50% of the value of the commercial property you pledge as collateral.
“Most community banks are over-lent,” Henry Walker said. “We lend money very efficiently, very cost effectively, and we wind up with what we think are the best borrowers in Southern California.”
The bank makes some residential mortgages -- for no more than 65% of a home’s value -- chiefly as an accommodation for commercial customers who simply would rather not deal with other lenders.
Farmers & Merchants also maintains the highest financial cushion against loss of any bank in the region -- more than three times the capital required, demonstrating a lesson learned in the 1930s. The Great Depression forced the family to sell much of its land, but the bank stayed strong enough to weather the storm, even while suspending foreclosure proceedings to support customers after the devastating Long Beach earthquake in 1933.
The bank’s oversize reserves are a comfort factor, especially with the sluggish economy likely to stretch many community banks’ resources.
“My brother and I were raised first and foremost with the rule: You safeguard customers’ deposits,” Henry Walker said.
Whether that institutional caution had been overdone became a sticking point four years ago when a family faction led by Marcus Walker, another C.J. Walker great-grandson, began rattling the old teller cages.
Marcus Walker suggested using some of Farmers & Merchants’ treasure hoard to bankroll more loans and pay a higher dividend. He also lobbied for the bank to split its stock, then trading for about $4,800 a share, to make it easier for new investors to purchase. And he filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court, accusing bank management of not acting in the best interests of all the stockholders.
The bank recently settled the lawsuit by buying all 5,827 Farmers & Merchants shares -- a nearly 4% stake -- owned by Marcus Walker, his immediate family “and certain of his related and affiliated parties” for $7,300 a share, or $42.5 million. Marcus Walker didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Henry Walker dismissed the faction as “not really much of a branch of the family; more like a couple of leaves.”
The banking branch of the family includes two fifth-generation Walkers, children of Daniel Walker, who are active at the bank: Christine Walker, 28, chief risk manager, and Matthew Walker, 30, manager of the Laguna Hills office. If they inherit management of Farmers & Merchants some day, it may well be a bank with a larger footprint. Given the bank’s solid shape and the stresses its competitors are under, it may be time in another year or so to expand through acquisitions, Henry Walker said.
“We might consider Orange County, and we would consider banks outside our current service area -- something that would add reach,” he said. “The question is, do you buy a troubled bank or do you wait until it fails? There certainly are a lot of community banks struggling out there right now.”
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scott.reckard@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Newest successor
Who: Henry Walker
Age: 42
Job: Chief executive, Farmers & Merchants Bank in Long Beach
Education: B.S., Pepperdine University
Residence: Aliso Viejo
Family: Married, with three children
Recreation: Polo, golf, snowboarding
Memberships: Pacific Club, Newport Beach; Santa Barbara Polo Club
Unusual artifact: Stuffed cougar, shot by his grandfather, in the bank’s main office
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68487103d168f1757ea297c9a93e2097 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-na-health30-story.html | McCain’s health plan fails her test | McCain’s health plan fails her test
Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, said she and John McCain have one thing in common: “Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy.”
Edwards lodged her criticism of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s proposal Saturday at the annual meeting of the Assn. of Health Care Journalists.
Under McCain’s plan, insurance companies “wouldn’t have to cover preexisting conditions like melanoma and breast cancer,” she said.
McCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy. Edwards in 2004 was diagnosed with breast cancer, and announced a year ago that it had returned and spread into her bones, meaning it no longer could be cured.
McCain’s plan focuses on offering new tax breaks for individuals who buy their own health insurance. But critics say the Arizona senator’s proposal avoids giving insurers requirements on whom they must cover and how much they may charge.
His plan would make it difficult for people with preexisting conditions, but who aren’t covered by a government- or job-sponsored plan, to buy individual coverage, Edwards said.
Cancer survivors are routinely denied insurance when they try to purchase it as individuals, health experts say.
Edwards also criticized McCain’s proposal because it would allow companies to sell health insurance across state lines. The senator’s campaign website says the effort would give consumers more options and promote competition throughout the healthcare system.
But Edwards said the plan would allow insurers to move their headquarters to states in which consumer protection laws are weak. Giving an example to back up her claim, Edwards noted that many credit card companies are based in Delaware, where the state’s laws are more accommodating to corporate interests, she said.
“Hard-fought state-by-state protections would be lost,” Edwards said. “They mask this proposal as a cost-saving technique. This is giving insurance companies a pass.”
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, senior policy advisor to McCain, said Saturday that Edwards’ comments were disappointing and that they revealed she did not understand the comprehensive nature of the senator’s proposal.
Holtz-Eakin said McCain’s policy would harness “the power of competition to produce greater coverage for Americans.” Because McCain’s plan would lower the cost of healthcare through competition, Holtz-Eakin said, it would reduce costs for consumers with or without preexisting conditions.
Regarding her own health, Edwards is “actually doing really well,” she said. “The cancer is still there, but it’s under control.”
She declined Saturday to make an endorsement in the presidential race. But Edwards said she favored Hillary Rodham Clinton’s healthcare plan over Barack Obama’s.
“Sen. Clinton’s plan is a great plan” that closely resembles John Edwards’ proposal, she said. Clinton’s plan mandates that every American be insured. Elizabeth Edwards said only universal healthcare would resolve one of the problems plaguing the healthcare system -- its soaring cost.
“Until we get rid of the need for hospitals and other providers to cover the costs of people who are not covered . . . the overall cost is not going to go down,” she said. “The only real cost savings comes when you have universality.”
In North Carolina, meanwhile, John Edwards praised Sens. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Obama (D-Ill.) in his first public speech since dropping his White House bid two months ago but declined to endorse either candidate.
“I have a very high opinion of both of them,” he said at the Young Democrats of North Carolina convention. “We would be blessed as a nation to have either one of them as president.”
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ron.lin@latimes.com
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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46e53535bc329c96748ba70699179691 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-op-greene30-story.html | Snooze alarm | Snooze alarm
When a star dies from an overdose, there’s a tendency to write it off as “drug abuse.” That amazing combination of drugs in Heath Ledger’s body, for instance -- what was he thinking? Blame the celebrity, chalk it up to reckless living, a self-destructive lifestyle, a pursuit of pleasure through recreational drugs.
But the drugs that killed Ledger -- three types of benzodiazepines, an antihistamine, two pain relievers -- are all substances people take for sleep. Ledger, we know, was desperate for sleep. A month or so before his death, he told the New York Times that he was going night after night on no more than two hours of sleep.
He was described by his ex, Michelle Williams, as having a mind “turning, turning, turning.” That might explain the variety of benzodiazepines he took that night -- Valium, Zanax and Restoril. All are effective at quieting a whirring mind.
Imagine what it would be like being a celebrity with a sleep disorder: the early morning shoots, the need to look bright-eyed and beautiful before a camera, the world watching, at close range, as you get hollowed out and haggard from lack of sleep. You’d need nerves of steel to live in the public eye like this; you’d need a “head-hits-the-pillow-and-I’m-out” kind of sleep system -- which not everybody has. Some stars, such as Eminem and Drew Barrymore, speak openly about their insomnia; I’m sure there are many more who do not.
I wonder how many stars have died just because they were trying to get some sleep. Elvis Presley had serious insomnia, by his ex-wife’s account, and ultimately became addicted to Placidyl, a sedative so dangerous that it’s no longer on the market. He would have had to increase the dose to keep getting the same effect, as one does with most sleep medications, even the newer ones -- but those older drugs are longer acting and build up in the system over time, leaving users dopey, groggy, in a permanent fog. Elvis then turned to Dexedrine to wake himself up, according to his ex-wife, and got caught in a vicious cycle. Official cause of death: heart failure.
Judy Garland also got hooked into that cycle: uppers to control her weight, sleeping pills so she could sleep; she too would have had to increase the dose to get an effect. Official cause of death? Accidental overdose from a barbiturate, Seconal.
Marilyn Monroe’s death was ruled a “probable suicide” by the L.A. County coroner’s office but is thought by many to have been accidental, possibly because of a miscommunication between her doctor and psychiatrist, one giving her Nembutal, a barbiturate, and the other giving her chloral hydrate, the medication most prescribed for sleep before there were barbiturates. There are many theories about her death, of course, but one likely scenario is that she was just trying to get to sleep.
Anna Nicole Smith? Chloral hydrate, again. She told friends she’d built up a tolerance to it; she would have needed more to get the same effect. She was obviously mixing it with other medications -- there were four benzodiazepines in her bloodstream: Valium, Serax, Ativan and Klonopin, in addition to an antihistamine and a GABA agonist -- all of which can be taken for sleep.
Who knows what goes through a person’s mind when they reach for that final, fatal dram? “She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she felt she must increase it,” writes Edith Wharton about her character, Lily Bart, at the end of “The House of Mirth,” as Lily squeezes out the extra drops of laudanum that put her into a sleep from which she never awakens. “The action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a few drops would probably do no more than procure for her the rest she so desperately needed.”
In my research on insomnia, I have spoken to quite a few people who told me that they had reached a point at which they just didn’t care, they’d do anything to sleep: “At least if I died, I’d get some rest,” one insomniac said. The celebrated Swedish physician Axel Munthe, who had more success treating the insomnia of his patients than he did his own, wrote in his 1929 bestseller, “The Story of San Michele”: “Insomnia does not kill its man unless he kills himself -- sleeplessness is the most common cause of suicide. But it kills his joie de vivre, it saps his strength, it sucks the blood from his brain and from his heart like a vampire.”
We’ve been taught to see insomnia as secondary to, as resulting from, depression, neurosis or other sorts of psychopathology. But there is increasing evidence that it may work the other way around: Insomnia may be the cause and not the consequence of a person’s emotional instability. Insomnia is now known to be a risk factor for depression, alcoholism and suicide.
And research suggests that how well or badly we sleep may have as much to do with genetics, with a physiological predisposition to fragile sleep, as with anything we’re doing to mess ourselves up. Studies of twins by Andrew Heath of the department of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, and by Belgian researcher Paul Linkowski have found that identical twins, even when not raised together, have sleep patterns more similar to one another than do nonidentical twins or other sibling pairs, in terms of bedtime, length of sleep and quality of sleep.
Studies of the molecular mechanisms of normal sleep and sleep disturbances by University of Zurich researcher Hans-Peter Landolt, Stanford University researcher Emmanuel Mignot and Washington University researcher Paul Shaw, among others, also suggest that differences in sleep behavior are genetically determined.
Insomnia may soon be on a growing list of conditions, including ulcers and migraines, that were once attributed to neurosis but are now known to have neurobiological bases. Several sleep disorders -- narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome, REM behavior disorder -- have already been added to the list.
To be sure, many stars live wildly, recklessly. They rocket to dazzling heights, then fall precipitously, leaving onlookers amazed at the spectacle. Maybe it satisfies our sense of drama to see their ends as somehow fitting -- spectacular endings to spectacular lives, poetic justice, the price of fame. But probably some of them were just trying to get to sleep.
Surveys suggest that as much as 10% to 15% of the U.S. adult population suffers chronic insomnia -- that is, continuously, enough to drive them to incautious use of medications. Many of these people are functionally disabled, unable to get or hold a job; some are so debilitated that they’re constantly ill, at the mercy of every passing bug. Insomniacs have statistically more visits to the doctor, more hospitalization, more accidents on the job and on the road. It’s impossible to function when you’re getting less sleep than you need over a long period of time.
But the stigma attached to this disorder -- that it’s neurosis or psychopathology or a condition we bring on ourselves -- makes many of us choose to quietly increase our dosage rather than reach out to seek help. Why wasn’t there an insomniacs’ hotline Ledger could call? Why haven’t insomniacs organized? People with rarer sleep disorders, like narcolepsy and restless legs syndrome, have founded advocacy groups that are drawing attention and funding to these conditions.
But insomniacs have not. And so insomnia remains an under-researched and little understood condition, more likely to be seen as the fault of the victim than given the kind of treatment that helps.
A coroner’s report concluded that Ledger’s death was an “accident” -- “the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects” of the drugs he took that night, drugs he almost certainly took for sleep. Maybe we should revisit that old saying, “nobody ever died of insomnia.” Ledger helped break the silence on this issue. Let’s keep talking.
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802b7114bcaea38bbbe08ea9164b016f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-op-klein30-story.html | Prison rape isn’t a punch line | Prison rape isn’t a punch line
‘From the studio that brought you ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ ” intones the preview for the light comedy “Let’s Go To Prison,” “comes a penetrating look at the American penal system.” In case that was too subtle for you, the DVD box features a dropped bar of soap, just waiting for some poor inmate to bend over to pick it up -- and suffer a hilarious sexual assault in the process.
Or maybe you’re not feeling up for a movie. It’s more of a board-game afternoon. How about picking up “Don’t Drop the Soap,” a board game created by the son of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. The game “is simply intended for entertainment,” said Nicole Corcoran, the governor’s spokeswoman. What, after all, could be more entertaining then trying to “avoid being cornered by the Aryans in the shower room” (one of the goals of the game, according to its promotional material)?
Here in Washington, however, the weather has been beautiful lately, so if you were bored last week, you might have wanted to do something out of the house. One option would have been going down to the Department of Justice, where, on the third floor, officials were holding hearings on prison rape, interrogating administrators from some of the worst prisons in the nation about the abuses that go on within their walls.
These hearings are held annually. This year’s transcripts aren’t online yet, but in 2006 you could have heard a man named Clinton explain, “I had no choice but to enter into a relationship with another inmate in my dorm in order to keep the rest of them off of me. In exchange for his protection from other inmates, I had to be with him sexually any time he demanded it. It was so humiliating, and I often cried silently at night in my bed ... but dealing with one is better than having 10 or more men demanding sex from you at any given time.”
Clinton’s testimony wasn’t very funny, and it wasn’t for entertainment. Nor was the 2001 report by Human Rights Watch, “No Escape,” which included a letter from an inmate confessing that “I have no more feelings physically. I have been raped by up to five black men and two white men at a time. I’ve had knifes at my head and throat. I had fought and been beat so hard that I didn’t ever think I’d see straight again.”
Prison rape occupies a fairly odd space in our culture. It is, all at once, a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse. We pass legislation called the Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time that we produce films meant to explore the funny side of inmate sexual brutality.
Occasionally, we even admit that prison rape is a quietly honored part of the punishment structure for criminals. When Enron’s Ken Lay was sentenced to jail, for instance, Bill Lockyer, then the attorney general of California, spoke dreamily of his desire “to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi, my name is Spike, honey.’ ”
The culture is rife with similar comments. Although it would be unthinkable for the government today to institute corporal punishment in prisons, there is little or no outrage when the government interns prisoners in institutions where their fellow inmates will brutally violate them. We won’t touch you, but we can’t be held accountable for the behavior of Spike, now can we?
As our jokes and cultural products show, we can claim no ignorance. We know of the abuses, and we know of the rapes. Research by the University of South Dakota’s Cindy Struckman-Johnson found that 20% of prisoners reported being coerced or pressured into sex, and 10% said they were violently raped. In a 2007 survey by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 60,000 inmates claimed to have been sexually victimized by other inmates during the previous 12 months. Given the stigma around admitting such harms, the true numbers are probably substantially higher.
But by and large, we seem to find more humor than outrage in these crimes. In part, this simply reflects the nature of our criminal justice system, which has become decreasingly rehabilitative and increasingly retributive.
In the 1970s, as economist Glenn Loury has written, “the corrections system was commonly seen as a way to prepare offenders to rejoin society. Since then, the focus has shifted from rehabilitation to punishment and stayed there.”
On the campaign trail, Mike Huckabee put it even more pithily. “We lock up a lot of people that we’re mad at,” he liked to say. “Not the ones we’re really afraid of.” Criminals aren’t sent to prison so they can learn to live outside of prison; they’re sent to prison to get what they deserve. And that paves the way for the acceptance of all manners of brutal abuses. It’s not that we condone prison rape per se, but it doesn’t exactly concern us, and occasionally, as in the comments made by Lockyer, we take a perverse satisfaction in its existence.
Morally, our tacit acceptance of violence within prisons is grotesque. But it’s also counterproductive. Research by economists Jesse Shapiro and Keith Chen suggests that violent prisons make prisoners more violent after they leave. When your choice is between the trauma of hardening yourself so no one will touch you or the trauma of prostituting yourself so you’re protected from attack, either path leads away from rehabilitation and psychological adjustment.
And we, as a society, endure the consequences -- both because it leads ex-cons to commit more crime on the streets and because more of them end up back to jail. A recent report released by the Pew Center on the States revealed that more than one in 100 Americans is now behind bars. California alone spends $8.8 billion a year on its imprisoned population -- a 216% increase over what it paid 20 years ago, even after adjusting for inflation.
That’s money, of course, that can’t be spent on schools, on job training, on wage supports and drug treatment. Money, in other words, that can’t be spent on all the priorities that keep people out of prison. Money that’s spent instead on housing prisoners in a violent, brutal and counterproductive atmosphere. And there’s nothing funny about that.
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6dd0b12aad979e997151aa20c0866a3e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-sp-coliseum30-story.html | Baseball from another dimension | Baseball from another dimension
They closed left field.
Not officially, of course. But, for all the giddy delight and choreographed ceremony in the Dodgers’ return to their ancestral home Saturday, the left fielders themselves demonstrated the oddity of baseball in the Coliseum -- by vacating their position in favor of deployments most commonly seen in slow-pitch softball.
In more of a civic festival than a sporting event, the Dodgers attracted what they announced as a world record for a baseball game -- 115,300 -- to an exhibition game against the World Series champion Boston Red Sox.
“I don’t know if it can get much cooler than this,” Dodgers catcher Russell Martin said.
For the first generation of Los Angeles fans, this was homecoming. For those who followed, this was history come to life. Of the thousands of memories created, the final score will be the one that fades the quickest.
For the record, the Red Sox won, 7-4, powered by a three-run home run from catcher Kevin Cash and a two-run shot from first baseman Kevin Youkilis. For the Dodgers, James Loney homered over the 60-foot screen in left field, and Blake DeWitt homered too.
When the Dodgers set up temporary shop in the Coliseum from 1958 to 1961, a track surrounded the football field, so left field ran a cozy 250 feet. The track is gone now, and on Saturday left field ran a Lilliputian 201 feet.
In the Little League World Series, left field runs 225 feet.
Martin glanced at the Coliseum alignment and teased his slap-hitting teammate.
“This might be the only place Juan Pierre could go opposite-field home run,” he said.
Before the game, left fielder Andre Ethier joked about playing free safety.
“Fine,” Manager Joe Torre said. “Make sure you have a beacon out there.”
When the game started, Ethier took center field, with center fielder Andruw Jones moving behind second base to form a five-man infield. And not just for show: Jones covered second base when Martin threw out Jacoby Ellsbury trying to steal -- that’s 2-8 in your scorebook.
The Red Sox played their outfielders in left-center, right-center and right. So, when Rafael Furcal hit a grounder past third base, Boston shortstop Julio Lugo chased the ball a few dozen feet into the corner and held Furcal to a single. Later, when Matt Kemp one-hopped the left-field wall, Boston shortstop Alex Cora retrieved the ball and held Kemp to a single.
There were fans everywhere -- in actual seats, on cement slabs in the peristyle end, standing behind a temporary fence that separated right field from the rest of the grass.
The Dodgers posed for pictures on the stairs Rafer Johnson ascended to light the Olympic torch in 1984, then the team dressed in the USC football locker room.
“It’s neat,” Kemp said. “This is history, knowing that O.J. Simpson and Reggie Bush and all those guys were here. It’s cool to see this place.
“There are so many things that happened here. The Coliseum means a lot to the city of Los Angeles.”
So do the Dodgers, given the enthusiasm that greeted a game that counted for nothing, except a glorious start to the team’s summer celebration of 50 years in Los Angeles.
“It’s bringing the spirit of the Dodgers alive again,” owner Frank McCourt said. “This is the awakening of a sleeping giant. This is Dodgertown.”
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bill.shaikin@latimes.com
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af22e651d45360d21ab97f1c30ac7c77 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-30-sp-dodside30-story.html | Fun for all inside the crazy confines | Fun for all inside the crazy confines
World Series MVP Mike Lowell took one look at the 201-foot left-field line and smiled.
“I could do some damage here,” he said.
The Coliseum’s cozy confines were also to the liking of Boston teammate David Ortiz.
“I wish all big league ballparks were like this,” he said in Spanish after lofting nearly two dozen balls over the makeshift fences in batting practice, then tossing a few more into the stands for good measure.
It might not have been baseball they played on a football field Saturday night, but it sure looked fun.
In batting practice, for example, one of Kevin Youkilis’ shots made the short trip to the left-field screen so quickly it stuck in the net. Then in the third inning, he hit one over it.
Red Sox right-hander Clay Buchholz, thankful he wasn’t pitching on this night, ran to the clubhouse to retrieve his digital camera and take photos of the wiffle ball-sized field.
“This is unbelievable,” he said, pointing to the left-field power alley, a cramped 280 feet from home plate. “That’s what I played on when I was 12.”
But Buchholz, who still looks 12, wasn’t playing against Jeff Kent, Andruw Jones and Russell Martin when he was in junior high. So trying to squeeze big leaguers onto a field too small for a decent putting green required some compromise, resulting in a game that was more like Arena Baseball than a true major league game.
Even Pete Carroll, USC’s 56-year-old football coach, was able to go deep there, hitting three balls over the left-field screen last week. “I owned it,” Carroll boasted Saturday.
The field was so small the Dodgers used only two outfielders, positioning left fielder Andre Ethier in left-center and center fielder Jones on the dirt behind second base and allowing him to take throws on stolen-base attempts. Boston’s alignment was more traditional, though it was uncertain why because when the Dodgers’ Rafael Furcal lined a ball off the left-field wall in the first inning, it was played by Julio Lugo, the Red Sox shortstop.
And the first base coaching box was so close to the Dodgers’ dugout, Boston’s Luis Alicea could engage them in conversation. While whispering.
“It’s a true exhibition game,” said Boston infielder Alex Cora, who admitted he wasn’t totally sure what would be exhibited. But he was willing to go along since the game was a benefit for the Dodgers’ anti-cancer charity ThinkCure.
“If the fence is 100 feet [away], it’s 100 feet. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s for a great, great cause. I’m more impressed by the number of seats out there.”
And virtually all of them were filled, with hundreds more fans standing along the right-field fence in the peristyle end of the Coliseum, making Saturday’s crowd of 115,300 the largest in baseball history.
“It’s more of an event,” said Boston Manager Terry Francona, whose team is already two games into its regular-season schedule. “We’re just going to have to be flexible.”
Like Tim Powell, whose flexible travel plans allowed him to come all the way from Indianapolis with his 16-year-old son Robbie to see the game.
“We just love baseball,” the elder Powell explained.
Hall of Fame broadcaster Jaime Jarrin, who called his first game at the Coliseum in 1959, put it this way late Saturday: “It’s not a game. It’s a celebration. What a spectacular night.”
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kevin.baxter@latimes.com
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b9722f24486507b91e32395594b1316a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-31-fg-hayden31-story.html | CIA chief says Iran still pursuing nuclear bomb | CIA chief says Iran still pursuing nuclear bomb
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Sunday that he believes Iran is still pursuing a nuclear bomb, even though the U.S. intelligence community, including his own agency, reached a consensus judgment last year that the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he thought Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, Hayden said, “Yes,” adding that his assessment was not based on “court-of-law stuff. . . . This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence.”
He said his conviction stemmed largely from Iran’s willingness to endure international sanctions rather than comply with demands for nuclear inspections and abandon its efforts to develop technologies that can produce fissile material.
“Why would the Iranians be willing to pay the international tariff they appear willing to pay for what they’re doing now if they did not have, at a minimum . . . the desire to keep the option open to develop a nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they’ve already decided to do that?” he said.
However, a sweeping assessment from the intelligence community issued in December concluded Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons work in 2003, soon after the United States invaded Iraq, and appeared not to have restarted it.
The CIA director is the latest senior Bush administration official to question the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate, which was widely seen as a setback to efforts by the United States and European nations to step up international pressure on Tehran.
Soon after the report was released, President Bush argued that it should not be seen as a sign that Iran was backing away from its pursuit of the bomb.
“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” he said in a Dec. 4 news conference.
In an interview with ABC News last week, Vice President Dick Cheney alleged that Iran was “heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels.” International inspectors have not found evidence of such an effort.
Iran has said its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful energy purposes, to generate power. In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ watchdog group, said that Iran’s uranium enrichment operations at its Natanz plant are yielding material useful for civilian reactors, but far below the 80% or 90% grade needed for weapons production.
Still, the United States and other Western nations fear that Iran’s pursuit of dual-use nuclear technologies will eventually enable it to develop nuclear weapons.
The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran represented a startling shift in the intelligence community’s views of Tehran’s nuclear activity. The report, issued after years of warnings that Tehran appeared bent on building a nuclear bomb, begins by saying that U.S. spy agencies had concluded “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
The finding was cited as evidence that Tehran was susceptible to diplomatic pressure. It was subsequently attributed to new intelligence that had surfaced in the summer of 2007, including journals kept by senior Iranian officials that documented the decision to suspend the program.
But the report also notes that Tehran “at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” and has not ceased civilian uranium enrichment activities that could possibly be converted to weapons development purposes.
The nation’s top intelligence official, J. Michael McConnell, testified last month that he “probably would change a few things” if given a chance to redo the report, suggesting that its conclusions had been misinterpreted.
The document includes a footnote that specifies that Iran is believed to have stopped only its “weapon design and weaponization work,” not the uranium-enrichment work that is widely considered the biggest obstacle to constructing a bomb.
Hayden acknowledged Sunday that U.S. estimates on such matters were now viewed with greater skepticism because assertions about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons had been proven wrong.
The U.S. intelligence community “has additional burdens to carry because of the Iraq NIE, in which we got so much of that estimate wrong,” he said.
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greg.miller@latimes.com
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4bcec330f2cb7f447324660566ae1809 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-31-fi-nolaptops31-story.html | Meetings going ‘topless’ | Meetings going ‘topless’
As the capital of information technology, Silicon Valley may have more gadgets per capita than any other place on the planet. Yet, even here, “always on” can be a real turnoff.
Frustrated by workers so plugged in that they tuned out in the middle of business meetings, a growing number of companies are going “topless,” as in no laptops allowed. Also banned from some conference rooms: BlackBerrys, iPhones and other devices on which so many people have come to depend.
Meetings have never been popular in Silicon Valley. Engineers would rather write code than talk about it. Over the years, companies have come up with innovative ways to keep meetings from sucking up time. Some remove chairs and force people to stand. Others get everyone to drink a glass of water beforehand.
But as laptops got lighter and smart phones even smarter, people discovered a handy diversion -- making more eye contact with their screens than one another. It became so pervasive that Todd Wilkens, who works at a San Francisco design firm, waged a “personal war against CrackBerry.”
“In this age of wireless Internet and mobile e-mail devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult,” he wrote on his company blog in November. “Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iPhones and the like keep people from being fully present. Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results.”
Wilkens’ firm, Adaptive Path, now encourages everyone to leave their laptops at their desks. His colleague, Dan Saffer, coined the term “topless” as in laptop-less. Mobile and smart phones must be stowed on a counter or in a box during meetings.
“All of our meetings got a lot more productive,” Wilkens said.
It’s not exactly attention deficit. Linda Stone, a software executive who worked for Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., calls it “continuous partial attention.” It stems from an intense desire to connect and be connected all of the time, or, in her words, to be “a live node on the network.”
Etiquette has suffered in the process. “Face-to-face meetings have become a low priority because they’re constantly being interrupted by technology, and many people can’t figure out what to do,” said Sue Fox, author of “Business Etiquette for Dummies.” “What’s more important -- the gadget or the person, or people, you’re with?”
High-tech distractions
The ever-increasing speed and power of technology allow people to effortlessly toggle back and forth between tasks. The wireless revolution has only accelerated this trend, turning every laptop computer into a lightning-quick, mobile communications hub. Attention is increasingly at a deficit in all facets of society -- the workplace, the classroom, the city council meeting and the social occasion.
Universities, for example, invested small fortunes in wireless Internet only to come to an alarming conclusion: Access designed to boost learning quickly became an irresistible distraction. University of Michigan law school professor Don Herzog said students were hunting for sublets, reading the newspaper, checking stock quotes or sending e-mail during class.
The law school blocked wireless access in classrooms. When that didn’t work, some professors banned laptops. The reaction from students was mixed: Some said they were grateful to be able to concentrate, others were sullen, Herzog said.
As technology becomes cheaper and more powerful, the debate is intensifying about how far universities should go in restricting its use in classrooms. Most graduate schools including the UCLA Anderson School of Management let professors decide whether they should limit laptop use. More than 75% of professors at UCLA’s law school shut off Internet access in their classrooms, said Sean Pine, the law school’s chief information officer.
Late last year, Jeremy Zawodny, who works with outside software developers at Yahoo Inc., attended his first “no laptop” meeting at the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company.
“I looked around in amazement that no one had their laptops open,” he said. “I try not to bring my laptop to meetings because the pull is strong if I am not interested in something or if the topic doesn’t directly involve me.”
After attending a few such meetings, Zawodny blogged about it earlier this month. He said he felt conflicted. On the one hand, he said, he was tempted to skip meetings if colleagues divided their attention. On the other, it’s “absolutely ridiculous that we have to mandate common courtesy and force people off their laptops long enough to have a useful meeting,” he wrote.
Zawodny’s post got a thumbs-up from Nelson Minar, a former Google Inc. engineer, who says supervisors can be the worst offenders.
“One of my biggest frustrations when I was an engineer at Google was being summoned to an executive meeting only to find three-quarters of the executives too busy with their laptops. I’d spend hours preparing a summary of my project status, a briefing on a new strategy area, or a review of staffing assignments. As requested,” Minar commented on Zawodny’s blog. “Nothing communicates disrespect to your reports like ignoring them when they’re with you.”
Minar declined to be interviewed.
Urge to unplug
The folks at Dogster Inc., the San Francisco company that runs the sites Dogster.com and Catster.com, decided to cut the cord about a year ago. The decision was in keeping with their philosophy of creating a collaborative culture, co-founder John Vars said.
“Even if people are just taking notes, they are not giving the natural human signals that they are listening to the person who is speaking,” he said. “It builds up resentment. It can become something that inhibits good teamwork.”
Bottom line, Vars said: better, more efficient communication. “Meetings go quicker and there is also just a shared experience. People are communicating better, the flow is faster.”
Not everyone feels the urge to unplug. Selina Lo doesn’t mind if her employees multi-task in meetings. The energetic chief executive of Ruckus Wireless, a Sunnyvale-based Wi-Fi company, is a known workaholic. She flashes $50 bills at off-duty cab drivers and delivers clipped answers to complex questions to save time.
“Occasionally, if I see someone too absorbed reading e-mails, I will elbow them,” Lo said. “People are going to get distracted. It’s OK as long as it is not for an extended period of time. I get distracted myself. That’s just how meetings are nowadays.”
And that makes some people wonder if by focusing on gadgets and gimmicks, everyone’s missing the real problem.
Minimized meetings
“People hate most meetings,” Zawodny said. “No one teaches anyone to run them correctly. They become a source of frustration.”
That frustration is so widespread that some start-ups cut meetings short or do away with them. Mountain View, Calif., Internet company Plaxo Inc. took a “meat ax” to meetings, moving them all to Tuesdays with the goal of making other days more productive. (They called it “Meataxo.”) San Francisco e-mail start-up Xobni Corp. has been known to use a stopwatch to keep team updates under two minutes during daily lunch meetings.
Photo-sharing site SmugMug Inc. in Mountain View is an “anti-meeting” company, founder Don MacAskill said. “We have a single all-hands meeting once per week, and the emphasis is on getting it over fast. Each person is expected to answer the question ‘What am I working on this week?’ and is expressly forbidden to talk about what they did the week before, make announcements, ask questions, etc.”
That sounds about right to Joe Lazarus, Yahoo’s former director of marketing, who left in November to consult and start his own company. He weighed in on Zawodny’s blog: “No laptop meetings make sense. No meetings make even more sense.”
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jessica.guynn@latimes.com.
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1d7912321280431b365fbb9a53e39eb2 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-31-me-duttons31-story.html | Dutton’s bids loyal customers farewell | Dutton’s bids loyal customers farewell
There was an Irish wake Sunday with white wine instead of whiskey and an open microphone in lieu of a coffin at Dutton’s bookstore in Brentwood.
The business, long considered the ground floor of the city’s literary scene, is scheduled to close April 30, but owner Doug Dutton held an early party Sunday to say goodbye to his loyal customers and staff. The store, which has been open for 24 years, is being closed because of debt and uncertainty about whether it could continue to operate in its current location.
The building’s owner, Charles T. Munger, has plans to develop the site.
The store was not offering discounts -- at least not yet -- but few customers came for the deals anyway. Dutton estimated that only 30% of the inventory remains, and many shelves were almost empty. The new fiction display resembled an unfinished puzzle rather than being crammed full of books.
“I’m really here to pay homage,” said Dafna Ezran, who has been shopping at the store since she was a UCLA undergraduate in the late 1980s.
Even though big bookstores have shelves of full of books, Ezran said she frequented the store in search of hard-to-find poetry collections. She recalled once coming to Dutton’s to find “Good Heart” by Deborah Keenan after she couldn’t find it anywhere else.
“The poetry section just isn’t the same anywhere else,” said Ezran, 41, who lives nearby. She wanted to buy one last book at the store and said she was considering one of two remaining copies of Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.”
Richard and Annette Harbinger showed up early to get front-row seats by the microphone. They have been regular visitors to the store since it opened and find themselves there several times a week. They estimated that about 10% of their 10,000-volume library came from Dutton’s.
“It’s a good thing we have very tall ceilings,” Annette said.
The couple sipped white wine and listened to a four-piece classical quartet while they waited for the program to start. “We were here on the first day, so it’s fitting we’re here on the last,” she said.
As the store courtyard filled up and caterers began putting out food and opening bottles of wine, emcee Diane Leslie began to fret.
Leslie has been the regular host for author readings for the last 22 years but still had a hard time composing herself. “I’m hopeful I won’t cry,” she said.
She managed to keep composed when she talked about how much she enjoyed the store. “I’ve learned more [here] than I’ve learned anywhere else,” Leslie said.
Mystery author Denise Hamilton sobbed before she recalled giving her first reading of her debut novel, “The Jasmine Trade,” more than five years ago. After the event, Dutton sent Hamilton a handwritten note of encouragement.
“I remember thinking that God had written me a letter,” Hamilton said.
But many of the nearly 300 visitors wiped away tears as speakers offered up memories of the store.
When it was Dutton’s turn to speak, he thanked the crowd for their support and said he had several projects in mind, including teaching. He didn’t rule out getting back into the book-selling business.
“It’s a crummy business but a wonderful life,” Dutton said.
In the end, there was only one reading. Longtime Dutton’s employee Scott Wannberg read a poem he’d written for the event called “The end of the aisle”:
i still passionately advocate the physical feel of a
book
cover and material within
as you participate in today’s soiree
continue to appreciate and support the printed word
in all its color and breadth.
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jason.song@latimes.com
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481237dcf36e8c6d75a943eb669c900d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-31-oe-schiff31-story.html | Let the housing chips fall | Let the housing chips fall
The economic crisis enters a new and more dangerous phase daily, and Americans of all levels of economic sophistication are scrambling to make sense of the myriad remedies and proposals that are springing from Washington.
The Fed has slashed interest rates -- even in the face of inflation and a crashing dollar -- and conjured new mechanisms to inject cash directly into the financial markets, including the bizarre engineering of the Bear Stearns buyout. In addition, legislators and regulators have enacted, or are pushing through, measures that will place a moratorium on home foreclosures, suspend interest rate adjustments and compel Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages. Further game-changing proposals are working their way through the think tanks and policy proposal pipelines: loan balance reductions, the suspension of “mark to market” accounting, direct federal mortgage purchases and, most bizarre, the suggestion of a Wall Street Journal columnist that the federal government buy and bulldoze the “least wanted” foreclosed homes.
When lost in the details of these measures, it is easy to miss their unifying goal: pump cash into the market, encourage lenders to keep lending and, ultimately, stop home prices from falling. But try as they might, it won’t work.
The government is worried for good reason. The value of the trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed bonds that course through the American financial system is a function of homeowners’ capacity -- and willingness -- to repay their mortgages. To an extent not widely understood, this is all tied to home prices.
When prices rise, everybody can repay loans. Price appreciation builds equity, and that allows even overstretched buyers to refinance or sell at a profit -- so mortgage lending becomes nearly risk free. Defaults are rare, but if they do occur, banks reclaim houses worth more than the loan. When prices are falling, this process is reversed and lending to overstretched buyers becomes a losing proposition, no matter how low interest rates drop or how much money the government drops from helicopters. That’s why banks have curtailed lending.
The government is trying in vain to get funds flowing again and put a floor under prices. But it’s too late. U.S. home prices are like a beach house supported by eight pillars: lax lending standards, low down payments, “teaser” interest rates, widespread real estate speculation, pliant appraisers, willing lenders, easy refinancing and a market for mortgage-backed securities. Knock out even half of these pillars and the house comes crashing down. We’ve knocked out all of them. Yet everyone hopes that this allegorical house can defy gravity and that bubble-era prices can be sustained in a post-bubble world.
After an unprecedented, unsustainable and irrational home price bubble for most of the current decade, authorities have about as much ability to keep prices from falling as King Canute had in stopping the tide.
At current levels, the average American still can’t afford the average house. Despite the creativity of its new policies, Washington can’t alter that math. The only mechanism to restore balance and get the credit flowing is for prices to fall steeply to a true market level, and for losses (for consumers and corporations) to be recognized and absorbed.
Anecdotal and statistical evidence supports this. Foreclosed homes at auction quickly find buyers and financing when price declines are severe enough. February’s existing home sales figures showed the largest year-over-year price drop on record. And it was also the first month that the number of sales ticked upward in a year.
The quicker home prices find a sustainable bottom, the quicker our economy can truly recover.
Instead, the government is trying to float our allegorical collapsed beach house on a flood tide of new liquidity. But the fixes compound the problem. They’re creating runaway inflation, shrinking the value of the dollar -- and heading toward unprecedented government meddling in the marketplace and a diminished sanctity of contracts.
If left unchecked, these policies may save a few mortgage holders and bail out some Wall Street firms, but they’ll also wash away the prosperity that Americans have built up over generations.
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3baed938fb60a8de1ed0f432e2966196 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-01-fg-russhate1-story.html | Ethnic violence surges in Russia | Ethnic violence surges in Russia
Throats slashed and bodies dumped, three slain Uzbek immigrants were discovered in the Moscow region, police announced Wednesday as racial violence continued to climb starkly in Russia’s streets.
This year has seen a dramatic increase in skinhead and neo-Nazi attacks, human rights groups say, many of them aimed at Caucasian and Central Asian immigrants from hardscrabble former Soviet republics who flock to Russia to eke out a living. The bodies turn up beaten, bruised and stabbed, sometimes mutilated or bearing signs of torture.
The first body discovered was of a 32-year-old Uzbek killed Tuesday night. Later that night, the bodies of two Uzbek brothers, ages 23 and 30, were found in a house under construction, according to the Russian Interfax news agency. Such crimes have often been tied to race, but police have not yet announced a motive in the cases.
Human rights groups complain that the government has failed to stanch, and has even implicitly fostered, the ethnic violence. More than 50 people have been killed in racially motivated attacks this year, compared with fewer than 20 such deaths in the same period last year, the rights groups say. Critics accuse authorities of encouraging ultranationalistic, xenophobic groups and failing to thoroughly investigate or prosecute hate crimes.
In one case that was prosecuted, six Russian men were found guilty Wednesday of bombing a multiethnic market in Moscow in 2006. The blast, which killed 14 people and wounded 61, stands as an emblematic attack in a campaign by ultranationalists to drive immigrants out of Russia with violence.
The killings this week of the Uzbeks came to light on the eve of a planned demonstration in Moscow by the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, a group whose rallies have traditionally been gatherings for ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, arms held high in salute to Adolf Hitler.
This group and other such organizations are allowed to hold regular rallies and marches in Russia and draw thousands of participants who shout racist slogans and demonstrate unmolested. By contrast, police often crack down on anti-government protests by pro-democracy groups, and gay pride demonstrations are banned.
“Xenophobes feel comfortable in Russia. They feel protected,” said Lev Ponomaryov, head of the Moscow-based For Human Rights organization. “It’s very difficult to get the authorities to pay serious and adequate attention to these crimes.”
At least one leader of a neo-Nazi organization has bragged publicly about participating in attacks on ethnic minorities, Ponomaryov said. His organization lobbied the government to investigate the man’s boasts, he said, but the requests were ignored.
The governments of several Central Asian countries also have implored Russian authorities to better protect the millions of immigrants who seek work in the shadow of a global oil and gas boom that has greatly benefited Russia.
Earlier this year, the government of Kyrgyzstan complained to Moscow about the rise in crime against its citizens. The protest came after a string of particularly gory slayings. In one case, the body of a 22-year-old Kyrgyz man was found, his stomach cut open, his throat slashed and a star carved into his torso.
“These [nationalistic] groups portray themselves as the protectors of the Russian people against internal threats,” said Oleg Panfilov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
“They are becoming more popular and more communicative,” Panfilov said. “They have a huge number of websites and blogs on the Internet, and the authorities aren’t doing anything to stop them or to curb the spread of nationalism.”
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megan.stack@latimes.com
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db46e818899c24eda8cc7fc46376e5da | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-01-fi-starbucks1-story.html | Starbucks’ net income drops 28% | Starbucks’ net income drops 28%
Starbucks Corp. said Wednesday that its fiscal second-quarter profit fell 28% as U.S. consumers responded to rising food and gasoline prices by making fewer latte runs.
For the quarter ended March 30, Starbucks’ net income sank to $108.7 million, or 15 cents a share, from $150.8 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 12% to $2.53 billion.
Starbucks warned last week that results would fall short of Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts, on average, had forecast a profit of 21 cents a share on $2.63 billion in sales, according to a Thomson Financial survey.
“We continue to come under very heavy consumer pressure due to the economy,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Schultz. “Most retailers, restaurants, certainly other premium brands are facing similar head winds.”
Charges for closing a few stores and not moving forward with some planned openings, as well as costs associated with Starbucks’ plan to reinvigorate U.S. sales, such as added benefits for loyalty cardholders, cut earnings by about 3 cents a share.
Sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, a key measure of retail health, fell in the mid-single digits. Starbucks’ past guidance called for 3% to 5% growth in so-called same-store sales.
Starbucks added 266 U.S. stores in the quarter and 470 outside the country, bringing the worldwide total to 16,226.
Starbucks brought Schultz back as CEO in January after a year of sinking share prices as its rapid U.S. growth outpaced demand and sapped stores of their charm, making it easier for chains such as McDonald’s Corp. to compete.
His moves have included a new signature coffee available in every U.S. store every day. Schultz said the new Pike Place Roast is “driving incremental customers to stores.”
The company plans to launch three new types of drinks in the U.S. this summer: a health-conscious smoothie-style line, an icy Italian coffee-based drink and an energy drink that adds extra kick to the existing Starbucks DoubleShot, which is sold in cans.
Starbucks baristas will start mixing up fresh DoubleShot with Energy drinks at the same time the new cans appear on shelves, Schultz said.
For the full fiscal year, Starbucks said that earnings would fall below the 87 cents a share it earned in fiscal 2007 and that revenue would grow 13% to 14%. Previously, it had said fiscal-year profit would grow in the low double digits.
Starbucks’ shares slipped to $16.20 in after-hours trading, after ending the day up 3 cents at $16.23 before the earnings news.
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cfbe2926f6fd9ece1fda2277a079db45 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-02-me-ports2-story.html | Ports idled by workers’ war protest | Ports idled by workers’ war protest
Thousands of dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports took the day off Thursday, effectively shutting down operations at the busy complexes in what the union called a protest of the war in Iraq but employers worried might be a prelude to labor unrest.
The stand-down at ports including Los Angeles and Long Beach -- which combined handle 40% of the imported goods arriving in the United States each year -- idled ships and cranes, stranded thousands of big rigs and halted movement of about 10,000 containers during the eight-hour day shift.
The show of force by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which ended as workers reported for the Thursday night shift at Southern California’s twin ports, came two months before its contract expires with the Pacific Maritime Assn., a group of cargo carriers, terminal operators and stevedore companies.
The action also, as one labor historian put it, added significant support for May Day, which has become the preeminent working-class and protest event of the year. The union may have taken a calculated risk that allowing its members to participate was worth potentially aggravating employers in the middle of contract negotiations.
“This union looks at itself as the vanguard of the working class on the West Coast, and I think there was a sense that they needed to participate in this event,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a UC Santa Barbara history professor and director of the school’s Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy.
At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Thursday morning, however, there were no antiwar activities -- no protesters, no signs with antiwar sentiments and no indication of any large-scale opposition by dockworkers to U.S. policy in Iraq. The issue was discussed, union leaders said, during a private meeting of rank-and-file members at the ILWU Local 13 headquarters in Wilmington.
“We are supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq,” union President Bob McEllrath said in a news release.
The union’s 25,000 members decided in early January to stand down on May 1. Their day off came despite an arbitrator’s order on Wednesday that they report to work. That order followed a Pacific Maritime Assn. complaint about the planned action, which it said violated contract obligations.
“Is this a voluntary war protest or a strike aimed at leveraging labor negotiation? We’re not sure,” said Steve Getzug, spokesman for the association. “We’re concerned. We thought these kinds of old tricks were a thing of the past.”
During the last negotiations in 2002, employers accused the union of a work slowdown and locked out the union at West Coast ports for 10 days, causing a retail business crisis that was interrupted when President Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. At the time, economists estimated that the labor dispute cost the economy $1 billion to $2 billion a day.
“The arbitrator is the ‘supreme court’ of the waterfront and what he says has resonance,” Getzug said. “And he said twice to the union that it had a duty to inform its membership to report to the docks today. The evidence is clear they defied that order.”
The nation’s largest retail group said it wasn’t surprised by what happened Thursday because longshoremen are routinely involved in some sort of job action on May Day.
“This is something that happens every year [and] shippers and retailers know about it,” said Craig Sherman, the National Retail Federation’s vice president of government relations. “It’s going to have no impact at all in terms of merchandise on store shelves.”
Nor was Sherman concerned about the implications for contract negotiations, which he said began earlier this year and are “going pretty smoothly.”
The loss of one work shift -- even the busiest one of the day -- was going to have a very limited effect on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Los Angeles and Long Beach are not only the nation’s busiest container ports, they are also by far the most efficient in the U.S., although they do not move cargo as rapidly as the fastest Asian or European ports.
“It will cost us extra money. We’ll have to run an extra shift to catch up, but this will not slow the ports down much and it won’t impact our customers at all,” said Mike Zampa, a spokesman for APL, a subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest ocean shipping conglomerates, Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines.
Perhaps hardest hit by the job action were the local ports’ 16,800 independent truck operators, many of whom were greeted at terminal gates by guards with a blunt message: “We’re closed. Turn around.”
Among them was Guillermo Castillo, 35, of Calexico, who decided to wait it out near the TraPac Terminal in the Port of Los Angeles. Resting his head on a towel matted against his cab door, Castillo complained: “I heard nothing about this. I’m losing a whole day of work, and about $580.”
A mile to the east at the Port of Long Beach, Nelson Hernandez, 25, of Bellflower was among half a dozen short-haulers killing time at a lunch wagon parked outside a terminal gate. Shaking his head in dismay, he said, “No work anyplace around here. Losing $400, at least. I’m going home.”
A few feet away, lunch wagon cashier Pin Lim mused, “The silence around here today is really weird.”
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louis.sahagun@latimes.com
ron.white@latimes.com
Times staff writer Leslie Earnest contributed to this report.
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a6812925734a26da02c5172d8f5c7c79 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-02-me-snowpack2-story.html | Water rationing is possible this summer | Water rationing is possible this summer
California communities face a strong possibility of water shortages and even mandatory rationing this summer because of record dry weather in March and April, a fast-shrinking snowpack and below-normal reservoir levels, state officials said Thursday.
The bleak news, contained in California’s final Sierra snowpack report of the snow season, means a second consecutive year of water anxieties in a state heavily dependent on water from the melting snow in the Sierra Nevada.
“I have not seen a more serious water situation in my career, and I’ve been doing this 30 years,” said Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies. An outmoded delivery system and court rulings that protect endangered fish are also straining the system, he said.
“This is a harbinger of relatively tough times, not just for this year but for a set of years,” Quinn said.
He and others urged Californians to rein in water use.
“We need to recognize that we’re in a water shortage and begin to act accordingly,” state Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman told reporters at a Sacramento news conference.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement urging the Legislature to pass comprehensive water reforms, warning that many communities face shortages and possible rationing.
After a record-dry 2006-07 snow year, water managers had hoped this year would bring ample snow and rainfall to fill reservoirs and ease worries about water shortages. Those concerns have been exacerbated by a long drought in the Colorado River Basin and a federal court ruling curbing water deliveries from Northern California.
Cities throughout Southern California supplement their own local supplies with two major sources outside the region: Sierra water pumped south through the State Water Project, and water transported west from the Colorado River.
Los Angeles traditionally has gotten 30% to 60% of its water from the Eastern Sierra via the Los Angeles Aqueduct, but it still buys water imported from the north and east.
“I think we’re all facing a worrisome water picture,” said H. David Nahai, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Statewide, early hopes of a wet year faltered when snowfall in some areas of the Sierra -- the source of much of the state’s water -- virtually stopped in early March. The months of March and April combined were the driest in the northern Sierra since 1921.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack has shrunk to 67% of normal, down sharply from 97% in late March, according to results of the snow survey, released Thursday by the state Department of Water Resources. The May 1 measurements are crucial in forecasting California water supplies as well as hydroelectric production, state officials said.
“That suggests that reservoir levels are not going to recover,” state snow survey chief Frank Gehrke said. Lake Oroville, which stores much of the water delivered to Southern California, contains only 58% of the water normally there at this time of year.
Worsening the situation, dry weather last year has left soil inordinately parched, and runoff into streams and reservoirs is only 55% to 65% of normal, state experts said. Spring sunshine and warm weather meant the snowpack melted more quickly and some snow converted directly to vapor, Gehrke said.
State meteorologist Elissa Lin fell short of officially declaring a drought. “It’s been a very tough two years for water supply in California,” Lin said. “All of these things are pointing in that direction. . . . Certainly, if we go into a third year, we’re looking at some critical situations.”
Further tightening water supplies, state deliveries to Southern California were slashed in December after a federal court decision last summer aimed at protecting endangered smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, who ordered those restrictions, is scheduled to hold hearings in June to decide whether to impose further cutbacks to protect chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead trout.
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deborah.schoch@latimes.com
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9f2d4e8851c9572d3d5439170fc65b62 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-03-fi-microsoft3-story.html | No date, but Yahoo, Microsoft are flirting | No date, but Yahoo, Microsoft are flirting
After months of posturing by both sides, technology titans Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have suspended their tough talk and have entered serious negotiations on a deal to unite against Internet search king Google Inc., people briefed on the talks said Friday.
Microsoft, which had been threatening to abandon a bid now valued at about $42 billion, instead offered to pay billions of dollars more for the company, those people said. The sweetened bid brought Yahoo, a reluctant seller, to the bargaining table to see whether it could hammer out an agreement that would combine two of the world’s largest Internet companies.
The two appeared late Friday to be on pace to reach a deal over the weekend, the people said, but they warned that talks could still fall apart. Yahoo plans to continue negotiating an alternative arrangement with Time Warner Inc. that would let the Internet pioneer remain an independent company, as its top executives prefer.
The first serious talks between Yahoo and Microsoft marked a dramatic change in tone after three months of sniping.
“Everybody -- shareholders, management alike -- is getting more reasonable. All of a sudden it seems like something is going to happen,” said one person briefed on the negotiations. Like others involved in the drama, he asked not to be named because the discussions were confidential.
Both companies declined to comment, as did Time Warner.
Yahoo and Microsoft are powerhouses in such advertising-supported online services as Web-based e-mail and instant messaging. But they lag far behind Google in the most profitable one: Web search.
Since announcing its unsolicited bid Feb. 1, Microsoft has said it preferred to reach a friendly acquisition deal with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo. But Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft had threatened in recent weeks to turn the bid hostile by seeking to take control of Yahoo’s board of directors.
Yahoo investors had long predicted a raised price and an amicable deal, and they were relieved to see that prospect come closer to fruition. They sent the company’s shares up $1.86, or 7%, to $28.67 on Friday. Microsoft shares fell 16 cents, or 0.5%, to $29.24.
“It has been a foregone conclusion on Wall Street that this is a deal that is going to get done,” said analyst Anthony Valencia of Trust Co. of the West, which owns Yahoo shares. “While there have been some delays, it’s clear that the parties are moving closer and closer together.”
Time Warner is in talks to take a roughly 18% stake in Yahoo, which would absorb the New York-based media company’s AOL online division. Seeking alternatives to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid, Yahoo co-founder and Chief Executive Jerry Yang has pushed the exploration of that deal and a separate arrangement to let the more efficient Google sell search-based advertising on Yahoo’s pages. That would bring in more money even as Yahoo concedes the lucrative territory to the already dominant Google.
Timing played a crucial role in driving the two sides to the table after months of dickering, said people familiar with the thinking at Microsoft. The maker of Windows and Office software is worried that it would face a greater risk of federal antitrust objections if it couldn’t complete a takeover by Jan. 20, when the next administration will take office.
Many complex mergers take nine months to get cleared by antitrust regulators, prompting Microsoft to set a deadline of last Saturday for the companies to enter into meaningful talks.
For its part, Yahoo was concerned that a merger process might linger on, only to be blocked in court by a new administration, which would leave the company in worse shape for competing with Google. Its executives sought a stronger bid from Microsoft to justify taking that risk.
Yahoo’s board rejected the initial offer, which was valued at $31 a share in cash and stock, or $44.6 billion, saying it was too little for the leader in online display advertising. The bid’s value has declined with Microsoft’s stock price to $29.39 a share Friday, or $42 billion.
Yahoo executives floated a figure of $40 a share, which enraged executives at Microsoft, the world’s largest software company.
Without formal merger talks, Microsoft declined to raise the bid. Yahoo refused to enter talks without first getting a higher bid.
“It was all kind of silly,” said a well-connected hedge fund manager who owns stock in both companies. “There’s been a certain amount of dysfunction along the way, perhaps on both sides.”
Divisions of opinion about whether a tie-up made sense existed inside both companies, employees said. As the standoff dragged on longer than initially expected, it threatened to exacerbate what would have been, even under the best of circumstances, a difficult combination of corporate cultures and technologies.
Microsoft remains a software company at its core, albeit one trying to evolve and compete with Google as people perform more tasks over the Internet. Its Internet division is unprofitable.
Yahoo, which depends on Internet ads, is closer to Google in temperament but far behind it in execution.
A combination “is in the long-term interests of both companies,” Valencia said.
Growing impatient, Microsoft had threatened to nominate a slate of Yahoo directors and ask investors to oust the board if no agreement was reached by last Saturday. As that date neared Microsoft feinted again, saying it might walk away, which would send Yahoo shares tumbling.
But Microsoft later left open a small door in the rhetoric, declaring that it would consider its options unless “significant progress” had been made by the deadline.
Against that backdrop, the two sides informally discussed figures between $31 and $40 a share.
“Clearly, Microsoft was bluffing about the ultimatum,” a major Yahoo investor said. “Their next best option is worse than Yahoo’s next best option -- their next best option is slow death, and Yahoo’s next best option is a Google deal and an AOL deal.”
On Thursday morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a major gathering of employees that the company could gain a big piece of the online ad market without Yahoo.
“Yahoo is not a strategy, it’s a part of a strategy,” Ballmer said, according to a transcript. “We’re willing to pay for that at some level, and beyond that level we’re not willing to pay for it.”
But he acknowledged that Microsoft’s technology needed momentum, and that Yahoo’s customers and advertisers would provide that.
“I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me, exactly,” Ballmer said, implying to anyone who read the widely distributed speech that the figure was above $31 a share. “I won’t go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it’s worth if that gets the deal done.”
Talks began to heat up that afternoon.
“Everyone checked around more with their shareholders, and it seems like that encouraged coming to a compromise,” said a person briefed on the effort.
As Yahoo’s board met Friday, people familiar with the talks between the two companies said the most likely compromise was a per-share price in the mid-$30s.
A determining issue might be just how successful Yahoo was with a recent two-week test in which Google sold some ads next to Yahoo’s search results. That test has drawn scrutiny from antitrust regulators.
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joseph.menn@latimes.com
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jessica.guynn@latimes.com
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Menn reported from Los Angeles, Guynn from San Francisco.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
At a glance
Yahoo Inc.
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Chief Executive: Jerry Yang
Employees: 14,300 (2007)
2007 revenue: $6.97 billion
Products: Online services including e-mail, news, sports, instant messaging, search and advertising
Microsoft Corp.
Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.
CEO: Steven A. Ballmer
Employees: 79,000
2007 revenue: $51.12 billion
Products: Software including Windows operating system and Office productivity suite. Xbox video game console. Online services including e-mail, news, sports, instant messaging, search and advertising.
Sources: Gale Group, IAC, Company Intelligence, Datamonitor
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d4425bd222b84eb6935368a184178f1f | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-04-ca-hancock4-story.html | He was troubled before it was trendy | He was troubled before it was trendy
Will SMITH looked desperate. Not Smith specifically, of course: the alcoholic, deeply depressed superhero he was playing on the “Hancock” set last summer.
In a squalid Hollywood Boulevard liquor mart well past midnight, Smith’s John Hancock was thisclose to falling off the wagon. As he sorted through the possible poisons -- Thunderbird and Night Train wouldn’t lend their brown-bag brands to the production, so the film’s art department filled the store’s shelves with fake labels, like Pap Smear Vodka -- Hancock stumbled upon a store robbery. He could either drink his problems away or toss a bad guy through a refrigerator. What do you think Smith’s character was going to do?
As easy as that answer might be, “Hancock’s” journey to theaters (the film opens July 2) wasn’t always so obvious. Although a few of this summer’s tent-pole movies came together remarkably fast, Smith’s latest action movie follows years of false starts -- the plug once was pulled just eight weeks before filming was to commence -- with some of the delays stemming from the film’s often dark tone.
THE AMNESIA FACTOR
Adecade ago, when superheroes were battling colorful villains and not their own demons, the “Hancock” script posited that a crime fighter’s personal struggles could be dramatically compelling. “It was always ahead of the curve,” says producer Akiva Goldsman. “And now the curve finally caught up with it. What was so interesting about the screenplay was there never was a bad guy.”
Since “Hancock” was initially developed by the long-defunct Artisan Entertainment, it has passed through numerous potential directors (Michael Mann, Jonathan Mostow, “The Pursuit of Happyness’ ” Gabriele Muccino), infinite rewrites and even a few name changes (the project was originally called “Tonight, He Comes”).
The latter title hinted at a sexual double-entendre that since has been toned down, but the heart of “Hancock” still remains unusual popcorn season fare. As imagined by “Kingdom” director Pete Berg, screenwriters Vince Gilligan and Vy Vincent Ngo and producer Goldsman, Hancock starts the film as an amnesiac who has no recollection of what he once was capable of doing. The populace knows only what they see for themselves, and it’s not pretty. A bottle always nearby, Hancock flies the way Lindsay Lohan sometimes drives: under the influence.
“He ends up causing millions of dollars of damage whenever he goes out, even if it’s just to get a purse snatcher,” Berg says.
With his former admirers having deserted him and even kids bad-mouthing his deeds, Hancock saves the life of public relations executive Ray Embry (Jason Bateman), who wants to repay the debt by giving Hancock a hero-worship makeover.
But it is Embry’s wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), who offers a more provocative twist on Hancock’s future: She’s not only stunning, but also has her own gifts. Initially dismissive of Hancock, Mary eventually is drawn to him. “Let’s say they develop a very complicated and problematic attraction toward each other,” Berg says, careful not to give away too much.
“It’s a pretty unique blend of comedy and drama,” he says, adding that it’s “been a challenge” to strike the right balance between the two. “But that’s why we were all attracted to the movie.”
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john.horn@latimes.com
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0576027de874ee299b342224180c4aed | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-04-fg-hezbollah4-story.html | Hezbollah’s stockpile bigger, deadlier | Hezbollah’s stockpile bigger, deadlier
Almost two years after its war with Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed and is stronger than before the conflict, according to Israeli and Western officials and the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim group itself.
But assessments diverge on the source of Hezbollah’s arms. Western and Israeli officials accuse Iran and Syria of smuggling thousands of short-range rockets as well as missiles that can strike deep into Israel and other weaponry into Lebanon in violation of a U.N. arms embargo. Smuggling routes have included a rail line through Turkey, the officials say.
Hezbollah dismisses smuggling allegations as propaganda, as do Iran and Syria, but the group refuses to say how it gets its weapons.
In the 2006 war, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel. Most were inaccurate, short-range models, but the attacks killed at least 39 civilians and had a profound psychological effect on Israelis.
About 1,000 people were killed in Lebanon during the 34-day war.
Tensions have risen again. In February, a car bomb in Damascus, the Syrian capital, killed Imad Mughniyah, a Hezbollah chief wanted by U.S., European and Argentine authorities in connection with terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of people in the 1980s and ‘90s. Hezbollah blamed Israel and promised retaliation.
Israel has not confirmed or denied that it was involved in Mughniyah’s death. But it has beefed up defenses and conducted a rare nationwide defense drill in April. Tough talk from both sides continues.
Hezbollah now has about 27,000 rockets and missiles, more than double its supply before the 2006 war, Israeli officials say. Acquisitions include Iranian missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv, they allege.
“We know without a doubt that the international embargo on the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah has been deliberately violated by the governments of Iran and Syria,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman.
The U.S. government, which has designated Hezbollah a terrorist group, accuses Iran of providing arms, training and millions of dollars. Syria also has emerged as an arms supplier, not just a conduit for Iranian arms, Israeli officials say.
“The Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis is closer than it has been since 2006,” an Israeli security official said in an interview. “In operational planning, the Syrians know that Hezbollah is part of their defense architecture. Hezbollah is stronger than before the war. They have improved their antitank capabilities, the number and quality of their rockets.”
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has asserted that the militia’s arsenal has attained or surpassed its prewar level. He has said that his weapons can hit “any area in occupied Palestine.”
Hezbollah leaders have declined to discuss specific numbers. But a source close to Hezbollah agreed with the Israeli assessment of the military buildup. The source spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a temporary halt in contacts with Western news media.
“We are ready and we are stronger than two years ago,” the source said. “In every battle there are weak and strong points. We have found solutions to all of our weak points from that experience.”
The source said Iran has no “operational” role, but acknowledged that Tehran and the militia have a strong strategic partnership.
Nasrallah and his deputies say they would not provoke new hostilities.
In a report presented in February, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that rearmament of Hezbollah would threaten the “sovereignty, stability and independence of Lebanon.” Hezbollah controls large chunks of Lebanese territory, especially in the south.
In a report in October, Ban presented allegations provided to the U.N. by Israel and by Lebanon’s prime minister that Hezbollah had beefed up its missile stocks with Syrian and Iranian help, and said those two countries had “special responsibility” not to destabilize Lebanon. Speeches by Nasrallah “seemed to confirm” Israeli allegations about the growth of the arsenal, Ban said.
Western and Israeli officials say Iran and Syria play a vital clandestine role in rebuilding Hezbollah’s military. Because of his ties to Iranian and Syrian security forces, Mughniyah oversaw the drive, officials say.
Western security officials say they discovered last year that Iran was procuring telescopic sights for antitank guns and rocket-propelled grenades from an Eastern European country. Communications among Iranian diplomats revealed that the sights were earmarked for Hezbollah, say the officials, who because of the sensitivity of the information declined to be identified. Iran also allegedly furnished night-vision equipment and binoculars, the officials say.
An explosion last May in southeastern Turkey exposed an arms trafficking route operated by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, the Western security officials say. When Kurdish separatists blew up the tracks and derailed a train heading from Iran to Syria, police discovered rockets, missiles, guns and ammunition concealed in construction equipment.
Iran denied allegations that the shipment was bound for Hezbollah. Soon afterward, Iran demoted Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, officials say. In September, Safavi was replaced by his deputy, Mohammed Ali Jafari.
Iran allegedly shifted some Hezbollah-bound arms to aerial smuggling routes to Syria that use civilian and military aircraft, officials say. The Revolutionary Guard also resumed smuggling by rail, bolstering clandestine security teams that accompany shipments and paying bigger bribes to border inspectors and rail employees, officials say.
The Western security officials say Turkey tries to fight the weapons activity. Turkish officials declined to comment, and the latest annual report by Turkey’s anti-smuggling directorate does not describe Iranian arms smuggling as a significant problem. When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Turkish journalists that Ankara could do more to crack down on arms traffic to Hezbollah, Tehran called the allegations “false and fictitious.”
Israeli officials say Hezbollah’s most potent weapons include about 500 Iranian Zilzal guided missiles, with ranges of 77, 136 and 186 miles. In addition, they say Hezbollah has 4,000 to 6,000 Iranian Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 rockets with ranges of 27 and 46 miles, respectively. And they say Syria has provided an estimated 20,000 rockets.
“The Syrians are a huge supplier of their own systems to them,” the Israeli security official said. “They are not just passing on Iranian arms shipments anymore.”
Patrick Haenni, a senior analyst in Lebanon for the International Crisis Group, said that although he does not have detailed information on Hezbollah’s arsenal or its source, the statements by both Hezbollah and Israel “seem rather credible.”
“All the signs on the ground show that Hezbollah is in a concerted phase of preparation, and concentrated on its military reactivation,” he said. “The acquisition of missiles is part of their change in military strategy to position themselves as a dissuasion force rather than a classic guerrilla resistance.”
In June, Lebanese authorities stopped a truck carrying Soviet-made Grad missiles bound for Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley near Baalbek, U.N. and Lebanese officials said. Lebanese officials said the shipment was being moved within the country, but Western security officials say the weapons had come across the Syrian border. A few days later, the U.N. special envoy to Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen, told the Security Council about what he called “alarming and deeply disturbing” evidence of the flow of arms from Syria.
Late last year, Damascus struck a procurement deal with a Russian company to acquire SA-18 air-defense systems, Western security officials say. Unbeknown to the Russians, Syria allegedly plans to transfer the shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Hezbollah, officials say. The deal is done but the weapons have not yet been delivered to Syria, they say.
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rotella@latimes.com
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Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem and special correspondent Yesim Borg in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.
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a8614c8f2bb63aeee106c090a52dd023 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-04-op-cohen4-story.html | Cloak and stagger | Cloak and stagger
Last month’s unclassified congressional briefing on Syria’s clandestine nuclear reactor, which was destroyed by Israel on Sept. 6, 2007, was yet another reminder of the challenges confronting the U.S. intelligence community. Still smarting from its gross overestimation of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the community bent over backward to avoid overstating its case against Syria -- and in doing so, it stumbled badly.
In the Syrian case (as with the release last year of part of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program) the intelligence community was unnecessarily cautious, and thereby underestimated the threats posed by Syria and Iran. Its efforts to improve precision have only created new confusion and uncertainty.
The key problem has been the intelligence community’s astonishing awkwardness in making clear what’s a fact and what’s an inference. In the case of Iraq, there were few facts on which to build a convincing case that Saddam Hussein was arming himself with weapons of mass destruction. But Hussein’s past pursuit of them, coupled with the anxieties unleashed by 9/11, led U.S. intelligence analysts and many policymakers to infer the worst and leap to conclusions unsupported by the facts.
The intelligence community has now jumped to the opposite extreme with respect to Iran’s and Syria’s nuclear ambitions, where there are more than a few facts. Yet it has virtually refused to draw any conclusions, no matter how obvious, about the two countries’ nuclear programs. The effect has been to seriously understate the dangers Iran and Syria pose and to distort the policy options available to the U.S. to manage them.
When the unclassified summary of the NIE on Iran’s nuclear program was released Dec. 3, many observers were shocked by its most prominent “key finding” -- that the intelligence community believed with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its “nuclear weapon program” in late 2003. A footnote defined “nuclear weapon program” as Iran’s efforts to design a nuclear weapon and to enrich uranium in secret. That definition is extremely narrow because most proliferation experts view designing the bomb as relatively easy compared with producing the necessary fissile materials for its core and developing a delivery system.
As a result, the summary paid scant attention to those two nuclear-weapon-related -- and extremely dangerous -- activities in Iran. In fact, the summary doesn’t even mention the missiles, and Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, the focal point of U.S. and U.N. Security Council diplomacy and pressure, are described in the blandest of terms.
Why? Based on comments at a recent roundtable of U.S. officials and outside proliferation experts that we co-chaired, those responsible for the NIE on Iran knew that the heads of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had agreed that its key findings would not be declassified. But the White House, fearful that the findings might leak to the media without any official explanation of their significance, overruled the agencies.
By the time the White House decided to release an unclassified summary, the classified version had been produced and was about to be handed over to the congressional intelligence committees. That created a problem. Even though the estimate’s “key findings” were originally intended to be understood in the context of the whole classified report, the intelligence community and the White House felt that they needed to repeat them almost verbatim in the unclassified summary. They worried that any rephrasing of the findings would open them up to accusations of playing politics with the estimate.
That still leaves the question of why the intelligence community spotlighted the finding on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. We know that important new evidence on Iran’s nuclear activities in 2003 had been obtained and that it had required changing a 2005 estimate that the country was pursuing a nuclear weapon. In highlighting the new data, the authors of the 2007 unclassified summary unfortunately left out the context of the previous estimate -- that a rogue Iran remained well on course to developing a nuclear capability.
Ever since Dec. 3, the intelligence community has been trying to restore context to its key finding. On Feb. 27, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said the release of the unclassified version was rushed and that it was “an error of judgment on my part.” Days later, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples said that “although Iran claims its program is focused on producing commercial electric power, [we assess] with high confidence Iran remains determined to develop nuclear weapons.” Then in March, CIA chief Michael Hayden, asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he thought Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, replied “Yes,” adding this was not based on “court-of-law stuff. ... This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence.”
These statements were a move in the right direction, but the CIA’s linguistic fumbling during last month’s congressional briefing on Syria’s reactor indicates that the snafu over the Iran estimate is not a one-time blunder.
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After going to considerable lengths to show that Syria’s reactor was built with North Korea’s help, that it was modeled on the reactor that the North Koreans used to produce plutonium for their nuclear weapons and that it had been carefully disguised by the Syrians to avoid detection, senior intelligence officials declared they had only “low confidence” that Syria has a nuclear weapons program.
The justification for this bizarre conclusion? Although it has “a rich level of information” about the destroyed reactor and North Korea’s involvement in building it, the intelligence community said it has no specific information on Syrian facilities for the manufacture of fuel for the reactor or for processing the fuel after it is irradiated to extract plutonium. Nor has it any information showing that Syria is working on a design for a nuclear warhead.
While well-intentioned, the intelligence community’s efforts at clarity have now twice gone astray. If it wants to right the balance between facts and inference, a starting point might be to stop redefining commonly used phrases -- such as “nuclear weapon program” -- in order to give them new, counterintuitive meanings that obscure a more simple and dangerous reality.
When the intelligence community has real evidence, it should not be afraid to draw the obvious inference and call a spade a spade.
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2d024713dfbd4ddca3918592462f8652 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-04-op-orourke4-story.html | Fairness, idealism and other atrocities | Fairness, idealism and other atrocities
Well, here you are at your college graduation. And I know what you’re thinking: “Gimme the sheepskin and get me outta here!” But not so fast. First you have to listen to a commencement speech.
Don’t moan. I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.” I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.
We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything -- which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex.
My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth’s resources of the weird. Weird clothes -- we wore them. Weird beards -- we grew them. Weird words and phrases -- we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.
So now, it’s my job to give you advice. But I’m thinking: You’re finishing 16 years of education, and you’ve heard all the conventional good advice you can stand. So, let me offer some relief:
1. Go out and make a bunch of money!
Here we are living in the world’s most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, “Go out and make a bunch of money.” Instead, they tell you that money can’t buy happiness. Maybe, but money can rent it.
There’s nothing the matter with honest moneymaking. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.
2. Don’t be an idealist!
Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you’ll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That’s $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?
Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”
Get a pair of bolt cutters and liberate that tree.
Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway -- the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?
So make your contribution by getting rich. Don’t be an idealist.
3. Get politically uninvolved!
All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.
But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that all politicians stink. Impeach George W. Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation’s problems will be solved.
But the problem isn’t politicians -- it’s politics. Politics won’t allow for the truth. And we can’t blame the politicians for that. Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on today’s campaign trail:
“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment The problem is your kids!”
4. Forget about fairness!
We all get confused about the contradictory messages that life and politics send.
Life sends the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile, politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than others. Some are rich while others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s not fair!”
Well, I am here to advocate for unfairness. I’ve got a 10-year-old at home. She’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says this, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.” What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger income disparity gap.
5. Be a religious extremist!
So, avoid politics if you can. But if you absolutely cannot resist, read the Bible for political advice -- even if you’re a Buddhist, atheist or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those people who believes that God is involved in politics. On the contrary. Observe politics in this country. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics through history. Does it look like God’s involved?
The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin. Observe the Tenth Commandment. The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”
Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And, right at the end of it we read, “Don’t envy your buddy because he has an ox or a donkey.” Why did that make the top 10? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, include jealousy about livestock?
Well, think about how important this commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own.
Now, one last thing:
6. Don’t listen to your elders!
After all, if the old person standing up here actually knew anything worth telling, he’d be charging you for it.
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aa536d26a655b06d7c650e0c9467b3ac | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-04-tm-space4-story.html | Faux New World At Glendale’s new mega-project, is a park really a park? Maybe not. | Faux New World At Glendale’s new mega-project, is a park really a park? Maybe not.
The Americana at Brand, the new mega-project by mega-developer Rick Caruso, was set to open two days ago. Maybe you’ve already twirled some spaghetti at its branch of the Cheesecake Factory or taken your kids for a ride on its trolley, which runs in a loop around the 15-acre property in the center of Glendale. If so, you probably marveled at the effortless melange of architectural styles, which run from gritty, rusted-steel industrialism to prettified mansard roofs from Paris (by way of Las Vegas). Maybe you found yourself thinking that it looks like a classic Caruso shopping center--a place essentially designed to print money.
At the very least, it is the biggest thing to hit the ‘Dale since the 134 Freeway went up.
But Caruso has tweaked his formula this time around, adding 100 condominiums and 238 rental apartments to the mix. That combination is not unheard of: Paseo Colorado in Pasadena is among a handful of other open-air shopping centers built in recent years in which apartments have been stacked above retail outlets.
But in the case of the Americana, which was designed by Caruso’s in-house architects and Boston firm Elkus Manfredi, along with other firms for certain storefronts, the cheek-by-jowl proximity of residential and retail architecture raises fascinating questions.
After all, Caruso is famous--or infamous, depending on your point of view--for building his shopping centers around a particularly successful brand of faux urbanism. At the Grove, which is his masterwork and now attracts 18 million people each year (about 3 million more than the Disneyland park in Anaheim), a paved and perfectly proportioned street, complete with decorative curbs, forms a kind of urban spine. Lined by national chains as well as a number of stand-alone kiosks, this space gives people in Los Angeles a chance to do something rare: stroll outside in the company of other Angelenos.
But as any student of L.A. architecture and urbanism can tell you, that street, despite its fine imitation of a public space, is in fact private and patrolled by its own security force. You can’t ride a bike or a skateboard on it, let alone set up a soapbox and tell passersby about China’s actions in Tibet or about the political campaign of Ron Paul (still going!) or Ralph Nader (ditto!). Even wearing a T-shirt with a risque slogan might be enough to get you tossed.
That story has been told by architectural scholars and journalists alike. But the addition of apartments and condos at the Americana at Brand gives it a twist. So does the fact that the Glendale project, which cost $400 million, includes 2 full acres of landscaped green space at its center that, by law, belongs not to the developer but to the city’s redevelopment agency. Glendale insisted on keeping control of that little patch of public realm when it was recruiting potential projects for the site.
That makes the distinction between public and private in the final product almost impossible to untangle. At the Americana, the park is public space masquerading as private space that is masquerading as public.
Got that?
It will be intriguing to watch how the Americana’s shared space--particularly the park--evolves and is used over time, particularly by residents of the complex. Will they treat it as their own front yard--which it basically is? What about the kids who live--and grow up--there? What if they want to ride a bicycle or skateboard there--will they be allowed to?
According to Dave Williams, Caruso’s executive vice president for archi- tecture, they will not. “The open spaces will be handled the same way they’re handled at the Grove,” he told me. “Operationally, we have a safety threshold we want to maintain.” That means no bikes and no skateboards, no dogs heavier than 25 pounds, plus a slew of other restrictions.
My guess is that those restrictions will prove to be more of an issue in Glendale than they’ve been at the Grove. It may not happen right away, especially if the first wave of residents includes more twentysomethings than families.
But as the Americana evolves, those residents may start to wonder why a public park at the foot of their apartment buildings is patrolled by Caruso’s security team (if indeed that’s what happens). If the private cops, who will be backed up by a substation staffed by Glendale police, start breaking up pickup soccer games or taking away skateboards, they may even start resenting it.
The result may be a real contretemps inside Caruso’s smooth, smiley world--and maybe even a conversation about why Glendale, during the planning and construction of the project, allowed the developer to take over the park to the degree that he has, adding kiosks along its edges and otherwise treating it as private, Grove-like space.
That conversation may never happen; the cash registers at the Americana may simply continue to ring uninterrupted. But we can always hope. After all, isn’t such debate a kind of Americana too, as worthy of revival as Chuck Taylors and trolley cars? *
Residents may wonder why a public park at the foot of their apartment buildings is patrolled by Caruso’s security team.
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5ab6764b1ace7e3ee5ad9de042293ff0 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-05-na-bush5-story.html | Bush visits a town torn, then reborn | Bush visits a town torn, then reborn
Alvin Hewitt was the first baby born at Kiowa County Memorial Hospital after it opened in 1950.
Today, the hospital is gone. So are the red brick high school, the single-screen movie theater, the soda shop, City Hall, the county courthouse. Like 95% of this little town on the prairies of southwest Kansas, they were destroyed by a tornado that struck a year ago Sunday, killing 11.
Hewitt could have taken his insurance check and moved away, as about half the town’s residents did. He didn’t.
On the first anniversary of the storm, President Bush returned to Greensburg to celebrate its “yearlong journey from tragedy to triumph” as exemplified by the stubborn determination of a town full of Alvin Hewitts: hundreds of people who refused to simply salvage what they could and then drive away from the rubble, all 45,000 truckloads of it. By the estimate of state Democratic House Leader Dennis McKinney, at least half of the 1,400 residents remained. They are rebuilding the town, gamely turning Greensburg green -- figuratively and literally.
The town, founded in 1886 and named for a 19th-century stagecoach driver, D.R. “Cannonball” Green, is rising again, built this time with a raft of energy-saving measures incorporated in the designs. Wind turbines and solar panels are contributing power. Native grasses are being planted to lessen the need for water.
A quick ride through Greensburg suggests the distance it still has to travel. Entire city blocks are barren but for an occasional elm -- most branches stripped away, but green shoots appearing with the spring. The schools are a collection of double-wide trailers used as classrooms.
Where the theater stood, there’s a jumble of bricks and timber. But a few blocks beyond, just south of the town’s lone traffic light, single-story townhomes are taking shape.
‘Laid low,’ it ‘stood tall’
The president, who toured the destruction soon after the tornado struck, returned Sunday to speak at the graduation of Greensburg High School’s 18 seniors -- advanced a week to accommodate his schedule -- and found in the town’s reemergence from “the tornado that forever changed your lives” a lesson for the broader American community.
“The Greensburg class of 2008 has learned that Americans will always rebuild stronger and better than before. Often in life, you’re dealt a hand that you did not expect. The test of a community -- and the test of an individual -- is how you play the hand,” said Bush, who gave each student a handshake and a diploma.
Most of the town, and perhaps more, turned out for the celebration: At least 800 people filled the folding chairs in the metal-siding gymnasium, and others watched on a screen in the sunshine just beyond the doors.
“The dark clouds from one year ago have parted and have made way for a brighter future,” Bush said, calling Greensburg “a town that stood tall when its buildings and homes were laid low.”
School and church define much of the life here, typical of this part of Kansas, about 100 miles west of Wichita. Before the tornado leveled all but one of the 11 churches, rush hour was Sunday morning.
With its own power plant, hospital, schools, oil-field supply companies and John Deere and GM dealerships, Greensburg was largely self-sufficient. It even had two tourist attractions, the world’s largest hand-dug well and a 1,000-pound meteorite. But when a tornado with winds of 200 mph and a funnel 1.7 miles wide struck at 9:45 p.m. on May 4, 2007, it took only 10 minutes to level the 1 1/2 -square-mile town, the National Weather Service estimated.
For weeks, the modest farmhouses and elegant Victorians, the police station and the firehouse, and all the other detritus that could be picked up and hauled away, burned in a landfill outside of town.
“I was leery about building back. It was so devastating. There was so much cleanup. There was just no hope of getting things back to normal,” Hewitt said.
But, he recalled, his son, Steve, the town administrator, “said this is a total opportunity for us to start over.”
And so Alvin Hewitt, who has worked for 37 years at a natural gas pumping station operated by Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Co., used his insurance settlement -- $180,000, he said -- to replace his destroyed two-story home with a one-story, 2,100-square-foot house with extra insulation in the walls, windows built to resist the prairie winds, and heating pipes using recycled water and built into the foundation’s concrete to keep the basement warm.
Saluting the community’s recognition of “an opportunity to rebuild with a free hand and a clean slate,” Bush said the government would support the effort to put “the ‘green’ in Greensburg” as the town worked toward a future “where the beauty of rural America meets the great possibilities of new technology.”
‘We’re capitalists’
McKinney, the state legislator, said he gets a kick when people ask if Greensburg -- where, according to 2000 Census data, one-quarter of the population was 65 or older -- is a town of “tree-huggers.”
“No,” he replies, “we’re capitalists.”
He said the community saw the aftermath of the tornado as an opportunity to innovate -- and to save money by reducing energy costs.
The goal is to rebuild every public structure to the highest standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification program. If successful, Greensburg will be the first U.S. town to achieve the “platinum” level in the building industry program, intended to encourage environmentally sustainable building practices.
“There’s a sense we can make good things happen,” said McKinney, who raises wheat and milo on about 2,000 acres. He said the most difficult question posed by outsiders in the immediate aftermath of the storm was whether the town would rebuild.
“We’d pause,” he said, “because we never thought of that question. It was a given. This is our home.”
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james.gerstenzang@latimes.com
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d8317240d19fbcc93c5070b8ccb803b4 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-06-fg-serbs6-story.html | Inquiry sought on fate of Serbs | Inquiry sought on fate of Serbs
A leading human rights group on Monday urged the governments of Albania and the self-declared state of Kosovo to investigate horrific allegations about the kidnapping and abuse of Serb civilians after the NATO-led war that drove Serbian forces from Kosovo.
The allegations involve about 400 Serbs who went missing after the war, which ended in June 1999. At that time, Kosovo Albanians were gaining power, backed by the United Nations and the U.S.
Human Rights Watch, in calling for an investigation, cited new information, some of it contained in a controversial book written and released last month by the former lead war crimes prosecutor for the Balkans, Carla Del Ponte.
According to Del Ponte and other accounts presented to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, several hundred Serbs were abducted in Kosovo and transported across the province’s southern border to Albania. Some were beaten. Their fates have remained undetermined and many are thought to have been killed.
In letters sent April 4 to the governments of Albania and Kosovo, Human Rights Watch said Del Ponte presented “circumstantial evidence . . . sufficiently grave to warrant further investigation.”
As of Monday, neither Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci nor Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha had responded, said Fred Abrahams, a senior Balkans investigator for the New York-based human rights watchdog, as the group made its appeal public.
Among the most incendiary of the allegations contained in Del Ponte’s book, published in Italian and titled “The Hunt: War Criminals and Me,” is the claim that doctors removed the internal organs of some of the captives after they were transported to Albania. The organs were then shipped abroad, she asserted.
Abrahams said information on organ trafficking “is suggestive but far from complete.”
He recounted a 2004 inquiry conducted by tribunal officials and a team from the United Nations at a house in Albania that Del Ponte’s informants had identified as the site of the organ removals. The investigation found traces of blood and syringes, drip bags and other equipment used in surgery.
But officials did not deem that evidence to be conclusive. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which is the formal name of the court at The Hague, said last month amid the furor over the Del Ponte book that the court did not have sufficient evidence to substantiate the organ-trafficking allegations.
Albanian and Kosovo officials, while not responding to Monday’s statement by the rights group, have previously blasted Del Ponte’s allegations as libelous and unfounded. The Serbian government, by contrast, has sought to launch its own investigation.
Abrahams stressed that the disappearances remained the most pressing issue. An estimated 1,500 ethnic Albanians and more than 500 Serbs remain missing from the war; most of the Serbs disappeared after the fighting ended.
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wilkinson@latimes.com
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aab7cfaf64e4f883979e0620d5f1790d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-06-fi-hollyangst6-story.html | Neighborhood face-lift gives Hollywood pause | Neighborhood face-lift gives Hollywood pause
Construction cranes hover over Hollywood as the movie industry’s historic home undergoes another sweeping -- and sometimes wrenching -- transformation. ¶ More than a dozen multimillion-dollar projects have been announced, launched or just completed that promise new shopping and restaurants, thousands of new apartments and condominiums and towers of glass and steel. ¶ Glitzy clubs dot once-sketchy street corners. Residents swim atop the former Broadway department store at Hollywood and Vine. Construction projects cuddle up to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and are popping up in the shadow of the landmark Capitol Records tower. ¶ The changes can be both impressive and alarming to those who know Hollywood best. Residents and business owners marvel at the improvements around them. Yet they prize the lingering charm of Hollywood’s golden past and fear that the place they love is slipping away.
“My worst-case scenario is that it loses the special flavor that is unique to Hollywood,” said neighborhood activist Cheryl Holland, who has lived there for almost 20 years.
“We want some give and take” with planners and developers, she said. “Our streets are unique because we abut commercial property.” But, she added, “this is a very historic neighborhood with streets that are quaint and charming.”
The love-hate battle over development that is playing out in neighborhoods all over the Southland and elsewhere is amplified here. Every construction permit faces questions about parking, open space, blocked views, historic preservation and the stress on basic city services.
To be sure, some outsiders may dismiss the concerns as grousing by people who don’t appreciate how good they have it. After all, this is a neighborhood of growing affluence seeing an explosion of new entertainment venues and luxury housing and hotel rooms that would be the envy of much of Southern California.
Not just a neighborhood
Reinventing Hollywood is a challenge more daunting than most city centers ever face. “It’s a place of dreams, a metaphor and not just a neighborhood,” said urban expert Joel Garreau. People have so many different visions in their mind of what Hollywood is, he said, “you are going to get incredible culture clash, economic clash and political clash.”
Since the days of Cecil B. DeMille, Hollywood has been larger than life and still holds a grip on people’s attention and fascination with Southern California. Changes like those underway today come with protest, boosterism, second-guessing, excitement and angst.
With traffic already awful at many hours, fears multiply that congestion will make Hollywood truly unbearable if developers aren’t reined in. Parking has become a fractious issue, too, as prices rise at a diminishing number of lots and local leaders debate whether to build more garages.
Between the traffic and parking difficulties, “it’s not much longer that we are going to be able to come down there,” said Hollywood Hills resident Daniel Savage. “There is a fantastic domino effect that happens when traffic backs up.”
For many, it is all a mixed blessing. No one seems to miss the bad old days dating back to the 1960s, when the neighborhood started losing its luster as many prosperous residents decamped L.A.'s urban core for the suburbs.
Entertainment industry businesses fled too as teen runaways, drug dealers and prostitutes populated the boulevard and traditional Main Street-style stores gave way to strip joints, tattoo parlors and touristy trinket shops.
The neighborhood’s reputation was so bad by the 1980s, recalled honorary Hollywood mayor Johnny Grant in an interview shortly before his death in January, that “it was tough to get people to come accept a star on the Walk of Fame.”
Grant’s boosterism was a source of amusement, he recalled. “The big sport was laughing at me because I kept saying that Hollywood was coming back.”
Observers stopped laughing a few years ago as investment exploded in Hollywood. Nearly 5,000 condominiums and apartments have been built or are soon to be underway in the blocks around Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, where a glitzy W Hotel is also under construction.
Plans have been announced to add 10 stories of office space atop the historic Pantages Theatre to complete the original 1920s design. And nightclubs seem to be opening on every block -- there are, according to police, about 100 establishments in the core entertainment district licensed to sell liquor.
Meanwhile, crime in Hollywood is down 32% from 2003, said Capt. Clayton Farrell of the Los Angeles Police Department.
“We don’t have the endemic crime problems that Hollywood experienced in the ‘80s and ‘90s in spite of an increase in the number of persons coming to Hollywood for entertainment,” Farrell said. “The nightclubs bring in alcohol and other issues but also a lot of affluence and people” who patronize other businesses.
‘A little tawdry’
In the years after World War II, Hollywood was “a glamorous little town,” said writer Milt Larsen, with chic nightclubs, elite restaurants including the Brown Derby and live theater. He enjoyed going from studio to studio to sit in the audiences of radio broadcasts by the likes of Jack Benny, Fanny Brice and Groucho Marx.
Magicians still perform to crowds in the legendary Magic Castle that Larsen founded in Hollywood in 1963. But by then, he said, Hollywood Boulevard was “starting to get a little tawdry.”
Now it’s on the upswing again. In five years, the boulevard “will be a cross between Melrose Avenue and the Third Street Promenade” in Santa Monica, predicted developer Richard Heyman. He is working on a $12.5-million refurbishment of the Art Deco-style former Kress dime store that later became the flagship of racy lingerie seller Frederick’s of Hollywood.
When the Kress opens in a few weeks, it will house a nightclub, restaurant, sushi bar, banquet room and rooftop bar. Owner Michael Viscuso also has acquired other property nearby, with plans to add more stores and to build a 15-story hotel-condominium.
Viscuso said he had watched Hollywood for almost a decade but “the streets looked pretty rough.” Around 2005 he could see change coming and wanted to get in on it. “It’s amazing now.”
The heady pace of that change -- more than $2 billion worth of development since 2003 with an additional almost $1 billion approved and ready to start -- is unnerving people like Hollywood Hills resident Savage, who is also president of the Hollywood Knolls Community Club homeowners group.
“It’s all going way too fast for me,” said Savage, who fears that growth will overwhelm roads, mass transit and other public services. “I’m not a Luddite,” he said. “I generally believe in the free market, but I think someone needs to call a timeout and let the infrastructure catch up.”
Pendulum swings
Hollywood has long been known for low rents and as a destination for starving artist types such as actors and musicians as well as home to a large number of immigrants. Losing such residents would reduce some of the “economic diversity” special to Hollywood, says City Planning Commissioner Michael Woo, a former City Council member. “I anticipate more concern about gentrification and people being pushed out.”
But there is probably no stopping it. Hollywood is going through a type of dramatic change that is sweeping many of the country’s city centers, said analyst Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “What we are dealing with here is the pent-up demand in this country for walkable urban places.”
By Leinberger’s reckoning, there are two models for real estate development: “walkable urban” and “drivable suburban.” After more than 60 years of focusing almost exclusively on the latter, the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living in the United States, and the Los Angeles region is woefully short of neighborhoods where residents can work, shop and entertain themselves on foot, he said.
“Great urbanism attracts people,” Leinberger said. “Places that do have it are going to have overwhelming demand.”
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roger.vincent@latimes.com
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bc6deb9bfa9f128ac950b10c993167fd | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-06-me-eggs6-story.html | Group uses undercover video to ask for poultry firm probe | Group uses undercover video to ask for poultry firm probe
An animal protection organization is throwing back the curtains on the West Coast’s largest distributor of eggs, releasing a hidden-camera video that shows chickens being mistreated by handlers and locked in cages so small the birds can’t spread their wings.
The footage, shot covertly by an undercover investigator with the group Mercy for Animals, shows workers kicking and stomping on chickens and snapping the necks of sick hens. It also shows birds left with untreated wounds and crowded into cages, sometimes amid rotting corpses.
Officials with the animal protection group said the video was shot this year at Gemperle Enterprises, a Turlock farming outfit that supplies giant NuCal Foods Inc., the biggest supplier of eggs in the western United States.
Nathan Runkle, executive director of the Chicago group, said animal protection activists believe such abuse is probably the rule rather than the exception for an industry that they contend puts profits ahead of the humane treatment of animals.
“Unfortunately, we believe this abuse is likely rampant across the country,” Runkle said. “As long as these birds are treated like egg-producing machines, the abuse will likely continue.”
NuCal Food referred calls to Chris Myles, a spokesman for the Pacific Egg and Poultry Assn. Myles said the association condemned many of the “graphic images and activities depicted in this film,” calling them “in violation of our high standards for animal welfare.”
He said the vast majority of egg and poultry farms in California operated in a humane and ethical manner.
The owner of Gemperle Enterprises said the animal group was using grainy and suspect video footage to make accusations that run counter to the policies and practices of his operation.
“What I saw on that video is not what our company does,” said Steve Gemperle, a second-generation owner of the egg producer. “We do not accept any abuse of farm animals. It’s against our values and morals.”
Coming a few months after a similar video exposing mistreatment of cows at a Chino slaughterhouse prompted a nationwide beef recall, the footage is being made public today at a news conference to promote more humane treatment of penned farm animals.
The California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which is on the November ballot, seeks to ensure that farm animals are not kept in cages or pens that allow them virtually no movement.
Mercy for Animals also is asking Merced and Stanislaus counties to launch a criminal investigation into Gemperle Enterprises, which operates in both counties.
Although federal law does not regulate treatment of egg-laying chickens, state animal-cruelty regulations prohibit the mistreatment of the birds, Runkle said.
Over eight weeks in January and February, the group says, its investigator worked as a maintenance worker for Gemperle Enterprises, which employs about 180.
The group said the video showed sick and crippled birds deprived of veterinary treatment or proper euthanizing, and chickens deprived of food and drink, lacking proper care, living in filth that included rotting corpses and layers of feces.
Workers are seen on the video handling the birds so roughly that in some cases the chickens suffered injuries described by the investigator as broken bones and blunt trauma.
The birds are kept in mesh enclosures called “battery cages,” sometimes more than six to a space no bigger than the drawer of a filing cabinet, Runkle said. Inside those close quarters, the fowl are unable to spread their wings or move much at all, he said.
In a letter to the Merced and Stanislaus county district attorneys, Runkle said the evidence supplied by the investigator “reveals a pervasive pattern of neglect that blatantly violates the standard of proper care and attention required for animals under California law.”
The letter quotes animal health experts saying that injured poultry with no hope of recovery should be euthanized immediately.
After viewing the footage, Dr. Ned Buyukmihci, a UC Davis emeritus professor of veterinary medicine, told the group that the manner of treatment was “cruel by any normal definition of the word” and violated the “norms of conduct with respect to animal welfare and veterinary care,” according to the letter.
Runkle said the group chose to infiltrate Gemperle Enterprises at random. He said the investigator, whose identify is being withheld because he remains undercover elsewhere, applied for work at several egg-producing factory farms, but Gemperle is the only one where he found work.
For the owners of Gemperle, it marked the second time in little more than two years that an animal rights group apparently gained surreptitious access to one of their facilities and shot video. In 2006, an activist working independently shot footage inside one of Gemperle’s farms that was aired by KGO-TV in San Francisco.
“They won’t stop until they destroy animal agriculture,” Gemperle said.
Gemperle said it was unclear whether the new footage truly was shot at one of his family’s farms, but said the mistreatment violated his company’s policies. He said the undercover investigator should have come forward immediately to report any cruelty.
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eric.bailey@latimes.com
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ac97181877642a92596d5d03cbae7be5 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-07-na-mccain7-story.html | What McCain expects from judges | What McCain expects from judges
John McCain has long rankled social conservatives with his stance on issues such as campaign finance reform and support for some embryonic stem cell research. On Tuesday, he sought to reassure those voters of his conservative credentials as he outlined his philosophy for appointing judges to the federal bench.
In an address at Wake Forest University, McCain pledged to nominate jurists who believe “there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power” and who are “faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States.”
McCain added that he would choose nominees with “a proven record of excellence in the law, and a proven commitment to judicial restraint.”
By way of example, McCain said he would look for people in the cast of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., and his friend the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. He called them “jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference.”
Some Democratic leaders immediately denounced McCain’s speech. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, accused McCain of pandering to the far right. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement that McCain voted for every one of President Bush’s activist judges and said McCain “promises hundreds more just like them.”
The president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, said McCain was speaking in code to abortion opponents by signaling he would appoint justices who favored overturning the abortion rights decision Roe vs. Wade.
Conservatives, however, found much to like in the speech, which was viewed as an important step for McCain in energizing the base for the fall election. Though the Arizona senator has been a consistent and reliable vote on Republican nominees, he angered conservatives in 2005 when he led a bipartisan group of senators -- known as the Gang of 14 -- that forestalled a Republican-backed rule change that would have made it more difficult for Democrats to block Bush’s stalled nominees.
But because of other shared views, the issue of judges could become a bridge to social conservatives for McCain, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “Conservatives want judges who will not legislate from the bench, because when we allow judges to legislate from the bench we get abortion on demand, we get same-sex marriage, we get everything that’s bad for society.”
Edward Whelan, a former law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said he was encouraged by McCain’s assertion that the role of judges was “one of the defining issues of this presidential election.”
Whelan noted that McCain’s promise to nominate judges with a “proven record” would be an important point with conservative Republicans. Some felt betrayed by Bush’s nomination of White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers, who was viewed as having no track record, and many have been disappointed by the rulings of Justice David H. Souter.
Introduced at Wake Forest’s Wait Chapel by conservative heavyweight Theodore Olson, the former solicitor general, McCain railed against “activist judges” who have ruled on issues “never intended to be heard in courts or decided by judges.”
McCain also contrasted his judicial philosophy with that of his Democratic opponents. Though Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama opposed Roberts, McCain criticized the criteria Obama articulated for evaluating judicial nominees as a vague “attempt to justify judicial activism.”
McCain clearly was not targeting the independent and conservative Democratic voters he has courted assiduously in recent weeks -- his remarks came on a day when many voters were more focused on the Democratic contests in Indiana and North Carolina.
But within his own party, Curt Levey, the head of the conservative Committee for Justice, predicted the speech would not only resonate with the base but with Republicans “who really did have concerns about the Gang of 14 and whether McCain’s support for campaign finance reform might influence who he chose.”
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
Staff writer David G. Savage contributed to this report.
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00402db97a11e9eb75ce8a7660fe769a | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-07-na-perchlorate7-story.html | EPA may decide not to limit toxin | EPA may decide not to limit toxin
A top Environmental Protection Agency official told a Senate committee Tuesday that there was “a distinct possibility” that the agency would not limit the amount of perchlorate, a toxic ingredient of solid rocket fuel, that is allowable in drinking water.
State officials and water suppliers across the nation have been waiting for the EPA to set a standard for several years because perchlorate has contaminated the water supplies of at least 11 million people. Last year, California, impatient with the EPA’s indecision, set its own standard.
Benjamin H. Grumbles, the EPA’s assistant administrator for water, said the EPA would decide by the end of the year whether to regulate perchlorate. Scientific studies have shown that the chemical blocks iodide and suppresses thyroid hormones, which are necessary for the normal brain development of a fetus or infant.
“We know that perchlorate can have an adverse effect and we’re concerned about that,” Grumbles told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the committee, told Grumbles that she heard from EPA staffers that there was a strong likelihood that the agency would decide against setting any standard.
In response, Grumbles said that was “a distinct possibility.”
Boxer reacted angrily, saying the EPA is leaving Congress with little choice but to act on its own. She has introduced two bills that would order the testing of water supplies for perchlorate and require the EPA to set a standard within one year, based on scientific evidence showing what levels can cause harm to fetuses.
“Congress will not sit idle while EPA fails to adequately protect our children. We must step in to require action that will ensure that our children and families can turn on their taps and be assured that what comes out is safe to drink,” Boxer said.
Much of the water contamination comes from military bases and aerospace plants, as well as fireworks companies.
The Pentagon and its contractors for years have been lobbying against a federal standard, saying there are no proven health effects at levels to which people are exposed, and that cleaning up perchlorate could cost billions of dollars.
At the hearing, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), a committee member, said telling the EPA when and how to act was “the very definition of political regulation. It is politicians here in the Senate dictating the outcome of EPA’s environmental decision-making.”
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the committee’s ranking minority member, said it was “no secret that the scientific process can be tedious and cumbersome, but that in itself is no reason for political interference.”
Grumbles told the Senate committee that Congress should not impose a deadline because if the EPA acted too fast, the result might not hold up in court. He said his staff was analyzing data that showed how much perchlorate people were exposed to by water and food.
Several experts, however, told the committee that there was enough evidence for the EPA to act now.
George Alexeeff, deputy director of California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, told the committee that California had “sufficient data” to act two years ago, when his agency determined how much perchlorate was safe.
Alexeeff said the state was particularly concerned because the Colorado River, a primary drinking water source for Southern California, is contaminated. Contamination is also widespread in much of the Los Angeles region, particularly in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The chemical also is found in dairy products and food crops, as well as human breast milk and baby formula. Scientists reported in 2005 that it was contaminating “virtually all” human breast milk samples.
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marla.cone@latimes.com
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775a5e4255c2673aff1b4202d468a6ce | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-07-sp-ncaa7-story.html | USC basketball gets penalty | USC basketball gets penalty
The USC men’s basketball team was the only major athletic program in the Southland penalized with scholarship losses as the result of a poor performance in the NCAA’s academic progress rate, according to information released Tuesday.
The Trojans lost two scholarships and were issued a formal warning after achieving a four-year APR score of 863, which was below the minimum acceptable threshold of 925. The minimum figure equates to a graduation rate of about 60%.
The academic data were collected from 2003-07 and measure student-athlete performance based on eligibility and retention.
Nationally, 700 of 6,272 Division I teams in all sports fell short of the minimum score, 174 teams were penalized with scholarship losses and 44 others were issued warning letters.
Teams that fail to achieve an APR score of 900 in three consecutive seasons could be banned from the postseason, and a fourth consecutive offense could result in banishment from Division I competition.
Among the 26 programs at the brink of a postseason ban are the football teams at San Jose State, Southern and Temple, and the men’s basketball teams at New Mexico, Centenary and East Carolina.
USC chose to accept its penalty during the 2007-08 basketball season after being informed by the NCAA last fall that it faced scholarship losses, said associate athletic director Magdi El Shahawy. The Trojans had the option to defer the penalty until next season.
The Trojans were penalized in part because Lodrick Stewart, Nick Young and Gabe Pruitt stopped attending class after USC lost in the round of 16 in the 2007 NCAA tournament, a high-ranking school official with knowledge of the situation said. The official would speak only anonymously because of the confidentiality of academic records. The midseason transfers of Jeremy Barr, Kevin Galloway and Sead Odzic also hurt the team’s APR.
“I knew that this was a possibility when I took the job and that things were going to have to be darn near perfect for us not to take a hit,” said USC basketball Coach Tim Floyd, who inherited a team with the fifth-lowest APR in the nation when he was hired in January 2005. “We just had too far to climb and grow.”
The USC football team achieved an APR of 948 and three Trojans teams -- women’s cross-country, women’s golf and women’s soccer -- ranked in the top 10% of all scores in their sports. The UCLA men’s basketball team achieved a 968 and the Bruins football team a 941.
El Shahawy said he was optimistic that the USC men’s basketball team would avoid further penalties in the immediate future even though two underclassmen have declared for the NBA draft. O.J. Mayo and Davon Jefferson both attended class through the end of the semester and needed only to attain passing scores on final exams to become eligible for the NCAA’s pro sport retention waiver.
“We’ve gotten it behind us and are moving forward,” Floyd said. “As long as O.J. and Davon consider their teammates and finish their academics like they said they would, we’ll be fine.”
Sophomore Kyle Austin, who transferred to UC Riverside in December, will not hurt the Trojans’ APR because he qualified for a transfer retention waiver by achieving at least a 2.6 grade-point average and transferring to another four-year school.
El Shahawy also noted that USC’s 2003-04 APR score of 771 would not count against the Trojans in the next four-year tally, potentially giving their cumulative score a major boost.
“We feel optimistic that this time next year it’s going to look a lot better,” El Shahawy said of the basketball team’s APR.
Other local teams facing scholarship losses included the men’s soccer and wrestling teams at Cal State Fullerton, the men’s soccer team at UC Santa Barbara, the wrestling team at Cal State Bakersfield, and the baseball, men’s outdoor track, women’s volleyball and men’s soccer teams at UC Riverside.
The men’s basketball teams at Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge received warnings.
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ben.bolch@latimes.com
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d3e6e21ab564ed018ef3e0691f4fa1ed | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-08-oe-feingold8-story.html | Government in secret | Government in secret
The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA’s controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law -- and it is law -- we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key.
It’s a given in our democracy that laws should be a matter of public record. But the law in this country includes not just statutes and regulations, which the public can readily access. It also includes binding legal interpretations made by courts and the executive branch. These interpretations are increasingly being withheld from the public and Congress.
Perhaps the most notorious example is the recently released 2003 Justice Department memorandum on torture written by John Yoo. The memorandum was, for a nine-month period in 2003, the law that the administration followed when it came to matters of torture. And that law was essentially a declaration that the administration could ignore the laws passed by Congress.
The content of the memo was deeply troubling, but just as troubling was the fact that this legal opinion was classified and its content kept secret for years. As we now know, the memo should never have been classified because it contains no information that could compromise national security if released. In a Senate hearing that I chaired April 30, the top official in charge of classification policy from 2002 to 2007 testified that classification of this memo showed “either profound ignorance of or deep contempt for” the standards for classification.
The memos on torture policy that have been released or leaked hint at a much bigger body of law about which we know virtually nothing. The Yoo memo was filled with references to other Justice Department memos that have yet to see the light of day, on subjects including the government’s ability to detain U.S. citizens without congressional authorization and the government’s ability to bypass the 4th Amendment in domestic military operations.
Another body of secret law involves the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In 1978, Congress created the special FISA court to review the government’s requests for wiretaps in intelligence investigations, which is -- and should be -- done behind closed doors. But with changes in technology and with this administration’s efforts to expand its surveillance powers, the court today is doing more than just reviewing warrant applications. It is issuing important interpretations of FISA that have effectively made new law.
These interpretations deeply affect Americans’ privacy rights, and yet Americans don’t know about them because they are not allowed to see them. Very few members of Congress have been allowed to see them either. When the Senate recently approved some broad and controversial changes to FISA, almost none of the senators voting on the bill could know what the law currently is.
The code of secrecy also extends to yet another body of law: changes to executive orders. The administration takes the position that a president can “waive” or “modify” a published executive order without any public notice -- simply by not following it. It’s every president’s prerogative to change an executive order, but doing so without public notice works a secret change in the law. And, because the published order stays on the books, Congress and the public have no idea that it’s no longer in effect. We don’t know how many of these covert changes have been made by this administration or, for that matter, by past administrations.
No one questions the need for the government to protect information about intelligence sources and methods, troop movements or weapons systems. But there’s a big difference between withholding information about military or intelligence operations from the public and withholding the law that governs the executive branch. Keeping the law secret doesn’t enhance national security, but it does give the government free rein to operate without oversight or accountability. Even the congressional intelligence committees, which are supposed to oversee the intelligence community, have been denied access to some of these legal opinions.
Congress should pass legislation to require the administration to alert Congress when the law created by Justice Department opinions ignores or even violates the laws passed by Congress, and to require public notice when it is waiving or modifying a published executive order. Congress and the public shouldn’t have to wonder whether the executive branch is following the laws that are on the books or some other, secret law.
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bc52b45b9f7d717d1998cf01c157e930 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-09-fi-apple9-story.html | Apple agrees to refunds to settle power adapter lawsuit | Apple agrees to refunds to settle power adapter lawsuit
Apple Inc. agreed to pay refunds of $25 to $79 to as many as 2.3 million Macintosh computer owners to resolve claims that some of its power adapters were prone to spark.
Customers who bought certain replacement adapters for PowerBook and iBook computers are eligible for the settlement, according to documents filed in federal court in San Jose. U.S. District Court Judge James Ware granted preliminary approval of the agreement March 24.
The class-action suit, filed in 2006, alleged that Apple misrepresented problems with the power adapters. In 2001, Apple recalled about 570,000 adapters sold with PowerBooks after reports of overheating. Apple advised customers to stop using the adapters and offered free replacements.
The adapter “dangerously frays, sparks and prematurely fails to work,” the plaintiffs said in court filings.
Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., will give cash payments to customers who bought an adapter made by Apple or another company to replace a failed one, according to court documents.
A hearing on final approval of the settlement was scheduled for Sept. 8.
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a61c0905a7479c0a0e717002794da6db | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-09-me-birds9-story.html | A new toxic threat to bird of prey | A new toxic threat to bird of prey
California’s peregrine falcons, once driven to the edge of extinction by the pesticide DDT, now are contaminated with record-high levels of other toxic chemicals that may threaten them again.
State scientists have found that peregrines in Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco contain the highest levels of flame retardants found in any living organism worldwide.
The findings parallel studies that have detected high concentrations of the chemicals, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, in human breast milk, particularly in California women. The compounds, which mimic thyroid hormones and can damage developing nervous systems, have spread to wildlife and people worldwide, working their way up food webs.
The concentrations found in California’s urban peregrines are similar to those that cause neurological damage in lab mice and rats, resulting in reduced motor skills and altered behavior.
Scientists said the peregrines, the fastest and most agile birds, are being contaminated with the industrial chemicals from eating urban pigeons that scavenge on city streets.
The chemicals are used as flame retardants on electronics and furniture cushions. They begin as indoor pollutants, building up in household dust, then migrate outdoors, where they pollute urban environments.
Kim Hooper, a scientist with the state Department of Toxic Substances Control’s environmental chemistry laboratory who led the study, said the PBDE levels in the peregrines have doubled every 10 years, and might still be increasing.
Hooper and his colleagues suspected that because household dust contains PBDEs, top predators in big cities would have the worst contamination, so they tested the eggs of peregrines in 42 locations, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Newport Beach, Coronado and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Their hunch was right. The eggs in rural inland and coastal areas had only trace amounts of PBDEs, but the urban eggs contained up to 52 parts per million, and one dead chick contained 95 ppm. Scientists consider those concentrations extremely high -- substantially higher than nearly any chemical measured in any species worldwide in recent years.
“We think urban wildlife are sentinels for exposure to indoor pollutants in big cities,” Hooper said.
Hooper said a PBDE compound called deca is largely responsible for the birds’ contamination. Deca, used in electronics since the 1970s, is produced in large amounts in the United States -- about 80 million pounds a year.
The peregrine is known for its torpedo-like dives, reaching speeds of up to 200 mph. Hunting from skyscrapers in large cities as well as from steep cliffs in rural areas, they inhabit much of North America. They normally shun prey on the ground, choosing to capture birds mid-flight.
One bird egg, taken from the Port of Long Beach, had the highest level of any egg -- 52 ppm. Other birds with highly contaminated eggs had nested on high-rises in San Francisco and downtown L.A., including the Union Bank building. Included was a popular pair that San Francisco residents named George and Gracie.
“We’re always concerned when a high level of contaminants is found in a species,” said Alex Pitts, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. PBDEs “are showing up everywhere and they are more concentrated in urban areas, which is challenging for urban wildlife.”
Because the levels have been increasing, “it’s very possible they could reach levels in the food web that could be unsafe for predators such as peregrine falcons,” Pitts said.
Janet Linthicum of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, said the high contaminant levels are “disappointing and disturbing” but she has “no idea whether there are any effects.” The two dead chicks and 95 unhatchable eggs that were tested came from the Santa Cruz group’s archive and had been collected at nesting sites between 1986 and 2007.
Avian experts say if a bird’s nervous system is altered, it might change how it hunts and raises its young, and perhaps eventually reduce populations.
“Whatever happens to the peregrines, we will be surprised by it, just like we were surprised when DDT thinned eggshells,” Hooper said.
A half century ago, peregrines, bald eagles and brown pelicans were nearly wiped out by DDT, an insecticide that weakened their egg shells and caused nearly complete reproductive failure.
Like DDT, the brominated flame retardants are slow to break down in the environment and build up in animal tissues, reaching high levels in species that top the food web.
PBDE levels in the birds’ eggs are about a hundredfold higher than the amounts found in the breast milk of California women, who have among the highest concentrations of women tested worldwide, the scientists said. Children are five to 10 times more contaminated than adults because they are exposed to more dust from playing on floors.
The recovery of the peregrine, known as the bird of kings because of its prized role in falconry, has long been hailed as one of the nation’s greatest ecological success stories.
In the 1970s, its numbers in North America plummeted to about 300 breeding pairs, including only two pairs in California. But its populations have been growing since DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, and the bird was removed from the nation’s endangered species list in 1999. About 3,000 pairs inhabit North America, including about 200 pairs in California.
California recently banned two PBDEs, known as penta and octa, because they were accumulating in human breast milk, but deca is unregulated in the state. It is banned or being phased out only in Maine, Washington state and Sweden. However, some large manufacturers of computers and other electronics have voluntarily stopped using deca.
Until recently, deca wasn’t detected much in the environment. In this study, the state scientists are reporting that it contaminates the birds by breaking down into the toxic compounds that were banned.
“What’s striking is that the peregrines are contaminated with the highest brominated ones, the deca, which had not been found previously at such high levels,” Hooper said. “It may be time to look for green alternatives for deca.”
Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), has introduced a bill that would ban all brominated and chlorinated flame retardants. Chemical industry representatives oppose the bill, saying deca is important to protect people from fires in electronic equipment and that there is little evidence that it is responsible for the contamination.
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marla.cone@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
The peregrine falcon
Description: Peregrines have bluish-gray wings and backs, with pale bellies and black-and-white faces. They are about 15 to 20 inches long, with a 40-inch wingspan.
Behavior: They are the world’s fastest bird and the most skilled hunters. They are long-lived, surviving up to 15 years, and mate for life.
Habitat: Urban and rural areas throughout North America. They nest high, often on skyscrapers and mountain cliffs.
Food: They feed mostly on smaller birds, catching them in midair, and hunt over a 25-mile-diameter range.
Population: About 3,000 pairs in North America, including at least 200 pairs in California.
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Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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7b2eeee9cbeaa1daee749becc5313529 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-10-et-pollack10-story.html | Indiana Jones & the lost hat | Indiana Jones & the lost hat
When audiences flock to see the fourth “Indiana Jones” installment in less than two weeks, chances are slim that the first sight of Indy’s weathered fedora and leather jacket back on the big screen will elicit anything more than a quick smile of recognition. No one will ponder how tough it was, after nearly two decades, to re-create the archaeologist’s signature look. Or who was charged with the task.
But just so you know, that would be Bernie Pollack.
Pollack’s goal when he became involved with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” as Harrison Ford’s wardrobe designer was to re-create the classic costume so flawlessly that audiences would never question its authenticity. But he would quickly find out that making an identical outfit would be more difficult than he’d expected.
“The last film was made 18 years ago,” says Pollack (yes, he’s Sydney’s brother). “Everybody that worked on it was out of business. The hat maker was gone. The costumer was gone. So I had to start from scratch. I had to find fabric, find people who could make it. I mean, I’m making an iconic movie. He has got to look as good or better than in the other films in the series. If he looks less than that, I’m an ass.”
Steven Spielberg, upon seeing Ford in character, was relieved with what Pollack had pulled off after an exhaustive search for fabrics, styles and craftsmen. “The first day we went in to test the hat,” Pollack recalls, “Steven said, ‘Oh, thank God -- I lost sleep wondering if you were going to be able to come up with the look of the hat that I wanted.’ ”
Ford, who has worked with Pollack on multiple films (including “Firewall,” “What Lies Beneath,” “Random Hearts,” “Sabrina” and “Clear and Present Danger”), was equally pleased. “He’s not just a designer who can read a script and say, ‘This would be appropriate for this character and I suggest this,’ ” the actor says by telephone. “I consider costume critical to the representation of the character and as clues to his identity. What people see is far more important than what they’re told. . . . He has a sense of storytelling and drama.”
Pollack has helped flesh out characters for some of Hollywood’s most celebrated films (“Ordinary People,” “All the President’s Men,” “Tootsie,” “Rain Man”), working steadily with such talents as Ford, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Interestingly enough, it’s a career that he never planned to have.
The Pollack brothers had hoped to come to L.A. from their South Bend, Ind., home and find success as actors (Sydney, of course, went on to direct, produce and sometimes act). But along the way, dreams were replaced by necessity, and jobs became about paying the bills.
Bernie Pollack landed a low-on-the-totem-pole job working for costumer Ted Tetrick and designer Edith Head in the Redford-Natalie Wood film “This Property Is Condemned.”
“I felt in the beginning,” says Pollack from his San Fernando Valley home, “that I wasn’t sure I could do it. But somehow I seemed to fall in easily. I enjoyed the work and the creativity.”
That first film was a random opportunity that sparked Pollack’s longtime collaboration with Redford, rising to costume supervisor and then designer on more than a half-dozen of the actor’s movies.
“My experience with Bernie over 40 years has amounted to a journey and a lasting friendship,” Redford says. “The strongest feature has been his professional and creative skill. He is simply the best -- not to mention his patience, as I have many times been a pain in the ass.”
First, Pollack breaks down the script to identify the characters and their backgrounds. Era-specific films like “The Natural” or “Havana” require extensive research and photos from that time to ensure an authentic re-creation. For movies set in the present day, he often looks to the world of fashion, then adds his own twist, putting Hoffman and Cruise in high-collared, tie-less shirts and jackets in “Rain Man,” for example.
“I worked with Bernie on ‘Rain Man,’ ‘Tootsie,’ ‘Straight Time,’ ‘Marathon Man’ and ‘All the President’s Men,’ ” Hoffman says. “Suffice it to say, those characters would not have existed without his artistic input. He is a rare bird.”
And yet, for all the praise, Pollack’s hope is that audiences don’t realize what he’s done. “If I do my job well, then nobody notices the wardrobe. It just assists in telling the story and creating realistic characters.”
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Wear many hats
After Bernie Pollack re-created Indiana Jones’ iconic look for the fourth in the film series, he ran amok with it -- for good reason. As insurance against damage from water, fire, blood, dirt, stunts and anything else the narrative might throw at the action hero-archaeologist, Pollack had to create:
30 identical fedoras
30 leather jackets
60 pairs of khaki pants
72 shirts
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c477b776be275feb59b39776707558c1 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-10-fg-lebanon10-story.html | In show of might, Hezbollah takes control of West Beirut | In show of might, Hezbollah takes control of West Beirut
In one swoop, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah took over a large section of Lebanon’s capital Friday, altering the country’s political balance and demonstrating a level of military discipline and efficiency that left the pro-Western government struggling to exert its authority.
Within 12 hours, the Iranian-backed group dispatched hundreds of heavily armed Shiite fighters into the western half of Beirut, routing Sunni Muslim militiamen, destroying opponents’ political offices and shutting down media outlets loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and to Sunni leader Saad Hariri’s Future movement.
At least 10 people were killed in the fighting, security officials said. Hezbollah used a lot of gunfire but inflicted minimal damage to public infrastructure, they said.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese army largely stood aside, underscoring its reluctance to take sides in a political stalemate that has left the country without a president since November.
The clashes were troubling far beyond Lebanon’s borders. The country, long an arena for competing regional interests, has become one of a number of political and military battlefields where allies of the United States compete against Iranian-backed interests. The U.S. sees the moderate, Western-leaning government as a model for the region; Iran, which nurtured Hezbollah from its birth, considers the Lebanese militia a major strategic asset.
The White House condemned the Hezbollah offensive, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying that the militant group had turned “its arms against the Lebanese people and challenged Lebanon’s security forces for control of the streets.”
On Friday, fighting that had raged for three days in the capital appeared to subside, though more confrontations were reported elsewhere, between Shiite militiamen and Druze and Sunni fighters. Beirut’s international airport remained closed. Lebanese and foreigners fled the prospect of more fighting by heading across the Syrian border.
In West Beirut, Hezbollah fighters, wearing their signature ammo vests and black baseball caps, patrolled the streets, napped in the shade and directed traffic, politely stopping some vehicles to ask drivers and passengers for identification cards.
“During lunchtime if you place food on the table, by the time you’ve finished eating, we can take over,” boasted one grizzled Hezbollah fighter patrolling famous Hamra Street.
He identified himself only by the nickname Zam-Zam. He held what he described as an Israeli-made M-16 assault rifle equipped with a night-vision scope and a laser sight.
“It was an insult for us to fight these people,” he said of the Sunni militia loyal to the government. “We fight great armies.”
However, few observers expect Hezbollah to try to take over Lebanon or even continue to police West Beirut, especially areas long dominated by its political rivals. The group’s fighters avoided storming government buildings such as the Grand Serail, the gracious Ottoman-era palace that houses the prime minister.
Instead, the offensive was an “object lesson” meant to demonstrate the group’s ability to quickly subdue its domestic rivals without exposing its arsenal of heavy weapons meant to target Israel in a potential war, said Boston University’s Augustus Richard Norton, author of “Hezbollah: A Short History.”
The conflict was triggered Tuesday when the government challenged Hezbollah’s de facto autonomy by outlawing its strategic fiber-optic communications network. Hezbollah fighters responded by pushing into the heart of the capital from strongholds in south Beirut and southern Lebanon, an escalation in the political crisis that seemed to catch the Siniora administration by surprise.
Some of the government’s major political backers appealed Friday night to the international community, the United Nations and other Arab countries for support. The crisis prompted calls for an emergency meeting Sunday among leaders of the Beirut government’s Arab allies.
‘Changing the equation’
“It’s definitely changing the equation,” said Oussama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, a think tank. “Hezbollah is reshuffling the cards and redrawing the balance of power.”
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has long vowed that the group would not turn its considerable arsenal of weapons on fellow Lebanese, though it has for at least a year been allowing proxy groups to do just that.
But he said he had no choice this time. He described the Cabinet decision to declare the group’s private telecommunications network illegal a “declaration of war.” He said it put the government in the camp of Israel, which Hezbollah fought to a standstill in a 2006 war that left more than 1,000 dead. Rather than wait for the government to try to enforce its decision, Hezbollah targeted the political powers behind it.
Government supporters called the move a coup d’etat meant to strangle Lebanon and bend it to Hezbollah’s will.
“What happened in Beirut and its surroundings and in its international airport is an armed coup that was implemented by Hezbollah,” said Samir Geagea, leader of the pro-Western branch of the Maronite Christian community.
For now, Hezbollah’s offensive achieved one significant military goal: crushing the budding forces of Hariri’s Sunni Future movement, a constellation of poorly trained and lightly equipped government supporters organized around neighborhood offices and private security companies run by retired army officers.
It also exposed the government’s weak hand. Hezbollah was able to quickly take over the capital, its commanders rolling into town in late-model Chevrolet Suburbans -- and with the country’s armed forces at times coordinating rather than impeding the militia’s progress. Future movement fighters fled for their lives.
Offensive carries risks
Hezbollah’s move carried risks, threatening to damage Nasrallah’s considerable popularity in the Arab world, to jettison the delicate sectarian power-sharing arrangement that has kept Lebanon at peace since the end of a civil war in 1990 and to widen the rift between Shiites and Sunnis.
But mostly, analysts said, Hezbollah’s response was aimed at giving itself and its Iranian and Syrian backers the breathing room to achieve their long-term strategic objectives of confronting Israel and deterring U.S. plans for the Middle East. The militant group did so by further weakening a Lebanese government it has perceived as a minor impediment to a broader vision. For Iran, Hezbollah is a key strategic asset in its standoff with the U.S. and Israel over Tehran’s nuclear program and quest for regional influence.
“They’re creating the necessary political space to protect what they think they’re about,” said Safa, of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. “They see the government as at least hurting them in their plans to rebuild their weapons and make their great designs for the region. They cannot afford a bit of uncertainty about the future of their weapons.”
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daragahi@latimes.com
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Daragahi is a Times staff writer and Rafei a special correspondent.
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303076d631e8cb77ef96764d7a069947 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-10-fi-facebook10-story.html | Facebook users’ profile data to be portable | Facebook users’ profile data to be portable
The popular online social hangout Facebook Inc. says it is setting up a new system that will allow its 70 million users to take their personal profiles with them as they surf other websites.
Users will be able to automatically copy pictures, personal information and other customized applications established on Facebook to other websites without extra effort once the changes that were announced Friday take effect.
The privacy settings attached to a person’s Facebook profile will remain in effect at external websites.
Palo Alto-based Facebook unveiled its intention to extend its reach into other websites the day after its larger rival, Beverly Hills-based MySpace Inc., announced a similar plan.
Both social networks say it will be several more weeks before their users’ data become portable.
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34c73b98581966bb4ec85627a384ff62 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-10-fi-garage10-story.html | As sales dwindle, Mercury may come to end of the road | As sales dwindle, Mercury may come to end of the road
Is Mercury headed for the junkyard?
Speculation is mounting that Ford Motor Co., preoccupied with reviving its Ford and Lincoln brands, might decide to retire the Mercury nameplate rather than spend scarce resources trying to restore its former luster.
Despite denials from Ford, the conjecture got a boost last week when Jerome York, a former auto executive and advisor to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, said shedding the brand would be a smart move for the struggling automaker.
York’s opinion carried some weight, considering that Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corp. recently revealed that it owned 4.7% of Ford and said Friday that it might raise its stake to more than 5.5%.
An even more influential vote on Mercury’s future is being cast in auto showrooms across America.
After regularly selling half a million vehicles a year during the mid-1980s, Mercury sold only 168,000 cars and sport utility vehicles last year. Its U.S. sales are down 23% this year -- the biggest drop for any brand except Chrysler and Hummer.
“Mercury has one more product cycle left in it, and then will almost certainly be retired as a brand,” analyst Aaron Bragman of market researcher Global Insight wrote in a report this year.
It would be a sad end for a marque that had generated its share of automotive history. Launched in the 1939 model year as a “step-up” car for buyers between economy Fords and upscale Lincolns, Mercury was known for its powerful V-8 engines and became popular with hot rodders.
James Dean drove a black ’49 Mercury Club Coupe in the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause,” cementing the brand’s place in American pop culture.
“It became an icon for teenagers,” said Gary Richards of Sun City, Calif., a member of the International Mercury Owners Assn. “James Dean was cool; he drove a Mercury; ergo, Mercury was cool.”
Mercury cruised through the ‘60s and ‘70s on the momentum of popular cars such as the Cougar. But by the late 1980s, the brand was suffering an identity crisis. Most products were “twinned” with nearly identical Ford models, and beyond the badge and distinctive grille (it resembles a waterfall) there was little to differentiate a Mercury from a Ford except for the higher sticker price.
“It’s hard to sell a Mercury when it looks just like a Ford that’s priced at $4,000 less,” said Tom Libby, an auto industry analyst at J.D. Power & Associates.
Eyebrows went up a couple of years ago when Ford opted not to produce a Mercury-badged version of the much-anticipated Edge crossover SUV. The vehicle has been a strong seller for the blue oval and could have given the Mercury lineup a boost, analysts say.
As its product lineup has aged, so has the brand’s customer base. The average Mercury buyer is 55, according to J.D. Power, well above the industry average of 47. The yacht-like Grand Marquis skews even older, with an average buyer age of 72.
Brand loyalty is flagging as well, with 35% of Mercury owners opting to buy the same brand of vehicle compared with an industry average of 45%, according to market research firm R.L. Polk & Co.
Ford insists that it has no plans to sell or scrap Mercury. Although there are no all-new vehicles on the drawing board for the brand, an updated version of the Mariner mid-size SUV is scheduled to be in showrooms this summer, and updated versions of the Milan sedan -- including a hybrid -- are due early next year.
“Rumors of Mercury’s death have been greatly exaggerated,” Ford spokesman Mark Schirmer said this week. “We’ve been very clear to the dealers that no decision has been taken to discontinue the brand.”
The dealers, in fact, could be the key to Mercury’s fate. Although there are no stand-alone Mercury stores left, about 1,900 dealerships sell the brand in combination with Ford or Lincoln or both.
Because of franchise agreements and state laws that protect car dealers, killing off a line of vehicles can be a real pain, as General Motors Corp. discovered when it pulled the plug on Oldsmobile eight years ago. GM set aside almost $1 billion to handle the transition and still spent more than five years battling dealer lawsuits.
“Discontinuing a brand isn’t as easy as you might think,” said Libby of J.D. Power. “It’s a long-term process and it can be very expensive.”
Given all of the other issues on Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally’s plate right now, the headaches that would accompany the demise of Mercury might help keep the brand alive -- at least for now, said Lonnie Miller, director of industry analysis for R.L. Polk.
“I think it’s premature for Ford to cross that bridge when they have so much else to worry about,” Miller said. “Beyond two or three years, though, anything goes.”
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martin.zimmerman@latimes.com
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e62f44ff0090cc8e5aaae5b724e4e254 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-10-fi-pink10-story.html | Serbian media tycoon is chasing big-screen dreams | Serbian media tycoon is chasing big-screen dreams
During the darkest, most stifling years of the Balkan wars, one Serbian television broadcaster was able to shine through, if only by dint of its mindless programming.
Pink TV blithely ignored the wars of the day, the politics and anything else smacking of news.
It was hugely popular and grew into one of the region’s largest and most lucrative media empires.
In today’s more democratic Serbia, Pink Media Group and its energetic, youthful owner, Zeljko Mitrovic have reinvented themselves, gained a patina of respectability and started looking to expand into international movie production and other ventures.
The latest project is a 452,000-square-foot film studio complex boasting state-of-the-art sound stages and production facilities. Mitrovic hopes that the complex, 15 miles outside of Belgrade, will capture a share of the growing movie production taking place in Eastern Europe by offering top-quality venues and crews at lower-than-average prices.
“It will be one of the biggest in Europe, and I am sure people will come,” Mitrovic said of the new complex.
He believes that Serbia could be the next great destination for film production, just as companies have flocked for years to the Czech Republic, Hungary and, more recently, Romania. But now that those countries are members of the European Union, Mitrovic said, their labor and other costs are going up. Serbia is still a great deal, he says.
Mitrovic, 40, spoke in a recent interview in the glass-and-chrome offices of Pink TV in downtown Belgrade. Dressed in a black suit and black shirt, with longish hair carefully disheveled, he appears part nouveau-riche gadabout, part hard-knuckle businessman.
Like Serbia itself, Mitrovic has some difficult baggage to shed as he becomes a global entrepreneur welcome, he hopes, in the salons of Hollywood and other filmmaking capitals.
A former rock guitarist who played gigs all over the former Yugoslavia, Mitrovic in the 1990s joined a leftist political party run by Mirjana Markovic, wife of the late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. His affiliation gave him favored status to acquire and build Pink TV, and he obligingly permitted the broadcaster to serve as a tool of the regime, primarily by eschewing serious programming.
An oft-repeated criticism of Pink TV during those years was that by focusing on tawdry music, telenovelas and other escapist material, it cynically allowed Serb viewers to ignore the horrors their government was committing.
“I thought it would be the most secure model to protect my television from political interference,” he now says by way of apology.
“If I had had political programming, I would have not been able to withstand the political pressure.”
Once Milosevic was ousted in 2000 and the regime toppled, Mitrovic’s transformation, and that of Pink TV, began.
With his commercial interests in mind, Mitrovic these days is an enthusiastic supporter of Serbia’s emergence from isolation and its tentative rapprochement with the West. Serbia’s commitment to that path will be tested this weekend, when national elections might return Milosevic’s ultra-nationalist allies to power.
Mitrovic does not comment directly on national politics anymore, but it is clear he believes that radical, anti-Western nationalism is not good for business: “We have to have politicians who are looking to a better future. Nobody can survive a long time in a scenario of dragging the country backwards.”
The Pink Media empire includes television and radio broadcasting and production, satellite TV production, music recording, advertising and even a small corporate airline. The TV programming, in marked contrast to the past, includes a smattering of serious newscasts, along with the staple fare of reality shows, soaps and American sitcoms.
Mitrovic traverses the countries that were spawned from Yugoslavia’s dissolution, ignoring the lingering ethnic tensions and looking for a deal. He has created Pink networks in those former enemy states and even included programming with studio hook-ups in their capitals.
“Entertainment, music and business are the three strongest weapons for bringing the ethnic groups together,” he said.
In recent weeks, Mitrovic, after several unsuccessful bids over the years, also acquired a Croatian channel, Net, that will serve as the basis for a countrywide network, Pink Hrvatska, or Croatian Pink.
The movie-studio project will test Mitrovic’s business acumen and his salesmanship skills. He knows it’s an uphill battle every time he travels to the U.S. He says he has to convince wary producers that Serbia is now a safe country with an up-to-date infrastructure, with electricity and streets that are not full of gunslingers.
“We are sending the message that we are a normal country open for business and investment . . . and that we don’t have horns and are not the Tasmanian devil,” Mitrovic said.
“Without removing the negative perceptions, it will be difficult to sell the project,” he said. And in reshaping negative perceptions, Mitrovic has experience.
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tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com
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8c10fe479a3d489791057877db4a4584 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-10-sp-wnba10-story.html | WNBA’s TV spots reach out to men | WNBA’s TV spots reach out to men
The WNBA has borrowed a corner of the NBA playoffs stage in a bid to win new fans -- men, to be exact.
In a TV marketing campaign launched during Thursday’s NBA telecasts, the WNBA shows three of its top players acting the role of what might be called a typical male sports fan.
“Sorry, you couldn’t pay me to watch women’s basketball,” Sparks rookie Candace Parker says into the camera in one commercial. “Nothing exciting ever happens. Look at the WNBA. The league has stayed the same for 10 years. . . .”
A voice-over asks, “She wouldn’t say that. Would you?” The commercial ends with game film of Parker.
The WNBA acknowledges that most male viewers probably didn’t give the commercials much attention -- if they watched. Yet, as the league prepares to begin its 12th season in one week, it has reason to think it can change that attitude.
“Men really control sports consumption and conversations,” said Hilary Shaev, the WNBA vice president of marketing. “Some men have misperceptions about the level of play in the league.”
So they tested that theory.
“We took a controlled group of men and women and showed them game footage and, with the men,” she said, “the positive perception of the game increased by 25%.”
The three new commercials, one by Parker and the others by veterans Tamika Catchings of the Indiana Fever and Cheryl Ford of the Detroit Shock, target the usual comments the league hears from men -- no defense in the women’s game and wide-open jump shots -- and debunks them.
Think the comments aren’t usual? Two Lakers fans at the National Sports Grill in Anaheim might be proof enough.
“I don’t think it’s that physical,” said David Moser of Corona. “I don’t think it’s competitive as much. Not to be a male chauvinist too, but it’s women playing ball. . . . We’re ready for the Lakers game, that’s a real man’s sport.”
Mario Pineda, the other jersey-wearing fan, has never been to a WNBA game, but said, “It’s a little slow-paced . . . and what makes the game is the fans, the atmosphere. You go to those games and you barely get, what, 5,000 people?”
Parker, who has dunked, said winning male fans is tough, but “once they see it, I feel like they’ll come back.”
She also said men should expect a “fundamentally sound” game rather than high-flying dunks or powerful inside moves. Men may “jump higher and are stronger and faster,” she said, but “from a skill perspective, John Wooden has said it best, that women played the purest form of the game.”
David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute, said that fundamentals are pleasing, but “nobody pays $3,000 for a courtside seat to see Kobe make a perfectly placed bounce pass.”
Carter cautioned the WNBA about two things: Don’t guarantee a quality of play that would compare to the NBA, and balance “the athlete with the sex appeal that’s an undercurrent throughout sports.”
Added Parker: “Just getting people to open their eyes to understand that our game is completely different than the men’s, and different isn’t bad.”
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dan.arritt@latimes.com
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208a5f1a420d5a2214a43e535a9c038e | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-11-na-detainees11-story.html | Pentagon advisor is barred from trial | Pentagon advisor is barred from trial
A Navy judge has barred a Pentagon legal advisor from participating in the war crimes trial of Osama bin Laden’s former driver, saying the advisor lacks independence.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal advisor to the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, must be replaced before next month’s scheduled trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Capt. Keith J. Allred ruled Friday.
Hartmann’s office did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
At an April 28 hearing, former chief prosecutor Air Force Col. Morris D. Davis testified that Hartmann had pushed for “sexy” cases that would capture attention.
Defense lawyers say Hartmann rushed proceedings in hope of speedy convictions and sought improperly to select cases based on their potential to sway public opinion of the tribunal process.
Hartmann’s job is to counsel the official who makes key decisions such as whether to approve charges against individual Guantanamo detainees.
Prosecutors argued that Hartmann never subjected subordinates to unlawful influence.
Friday’s ruling directly affects only Hamdan’s case, but a civilian attorney for Hamdan said it raised questions about the validity of charges that Hartmann was involved in preparing against other terrorism suspects at Guantanamo.
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4893d0405a1e05d0fbf17aa7e707d2c6 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-12-fg-security12-story.html | Private force no match for Hezbollah | Private force no match for Hezbollah
For a year, the main Lebanese political faction backed by the United States built a Sunni Muslim militia here under the guise of private security companies, Lebanese security experts and officials said.
The fighters, aligned with Saad Hariri’s Future movement, were trained and armed to counter the heavily armed Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and protect their turf in a potential military confrontation.
But in a single night late last week, the curious experiment in private-sector warfare crumbled.
Attacked by Hezbollah, the Future movement fighters quickly fled Beirut or gave up their weapons. Afterward, some of the fighters said they felt betrayed by their political patrons, who failed to give them the means to protect themselves while official security forces stood aside and let Hezbollah destroy them.
“We are prepared to fight for a few hours but not more,” said one of the Sunni fighters in the waning moments of the battle. “Where do we get ammunition and weapons from? We are blocked. The roads are blocked. Even Saad Hariri has left us to face our fate alone.”
The head of a conventional private security firm in Beirut, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the Sunni force was “not really ready.”
“You can’t just spend millions of dollars to build an army in one year,” he said. “They have to be motivated and believe in something. They have to be willing to die.”
Lebanon’s U.S.-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition led by Hezbollah have been mired in a political stalemate for more than a year. The country has been without a president since November.
Amid the political crisis that has sharpened differences among various religious communities, Lebanon’s army and Internal Security Forces had played a peacekeeping role, preventing clashes without confronting any of the different armed groups. They feared any robust intervention would break the unity of the armed forces and plunge the country into civil war.
But the crisis has created a power vacuum. Hariri’s deputies have denied his movement was building a militia, though ranking military officials, independent analysts and employees of the security firm, called Secure Plus, say it was doing just that.
Private security firms are the latest arrivals to a hodgepodge of armed groups that include Islamic militants inspired by Al Qaeda, Palestinian militias based in the country’s dozen refugee camps and Hezbollah.
With speed that surprised observers, Hezbolllah last week took over West Beirut and crushed the Future movement’s fighters.
Hezbollah said its move was aimed at stopping the government, which had outlawed the militant group’s private communication system, from hampering its ability to confront Israel. But it appears the Shiite militia’s main targets were the Future fighters, some of them operating under the guise of Secure Plus.
For months, Lebanese security officials in the army and the Internal Security Forces warily watched the growth of the Future-Secure Plus fighting force. Officials close to and inside Hezbollah said they were monitoring the growth of the potential threat.
Over the last year, Secure Plus went from a small security company to an organization with 3,000 employees and unofficial associates on the payroll, mostly poor Sunnis from the country’s north. Some were armed with pistols and assault rifles.
“We have . . . thousands of young people in plainclothes working with us all over the country,” a company official said before the clashes started.
Even those who feared the development hoped the Future movement’s growing military capacity would create a “balance of terror” with the more heavily armed Shiite fighters, government officials and members of the group say.
“On the one side, Hezbollah has trained military groups allied with it,” said a high-ranking official with the Internal Security Forces, which has received $60 million in training and equipment from the U.S.
“On the other side, the Future movement has created security firms to protect itself.”
Secure Plus declined multiple requests for interviews. It was the largest of dozens of security firms that have sprung up in recent years. Run by retired Lebanese army officers, it ostensibly provides security for banks, hotels and offices. Hariri’s media office denied there were any official links between Secure Plus and the Future movement.
“Future bloc has members of parliament, not fighters,” said Hani Hammoud, a spokesman for Hariri. It “believes in the rule of law, and that it is up to official security and military agencies to resolve any problem that might arise.”
Secure Plus employees, in beige pants and maroon shirts, were drilled for months in basic military training, including hand-to-hand combat. At least two dozen informal offices were opened in Beirut.
For a monthly salary of at least $350, they served eight hours a day guarding offices, patrolling neighborhoods on motorcycles, communicating via walkie-talkie and remaining on call to defend against threats to Sunni neighborhoods or offices of the Future bloc, employees of the company said. Though the group was officially barred from carrying weapons, many had them anyway. One said he bought guns from Hezbollah.
In the last few months, fighting regularly broke out between Sunni supporters of the Future bloc working formally or informally with Secure Plus and Shiites allied with Hezbollah and Amal, another militia. The clashes often took place in West Beirut, a patchwork of Sunni and Shiite areas.
The government became so worried about street battles that in February it convened an emergency meeting of military officials and government and opposition leaders. All agreed to stand by the army and the security forces if they intervened, even if it meant some of their own fighters would sustain casualties. But Lebanon’s weak government made little attempt to interdict the arming of such groups.
“We cannot ask the Christian Lebanese or Sunni Lebanese to give up their arms when others have arms,” said Ahmed Fatfat, a leader of the Future bloc and a Cabinet minister.
When the clashes began last week, the Sunni fighters proved no match for Hezbollah’s firepower, discipline and intelligence capabilities.
Secure Plus and Future movement offices and strongholds were pummeled. Hezbollah first targeted Future movement positions in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, easily defeating them.
Meanwhile, the Shiite militiamen encircled but did not enter Sunni strongholds, terrorizing fighters into giving up without causing huge casualties on either side.
Hezbollah also shut down the Future movement’s media outlets, cutting off its ability to rally public support.
The Sunni fighters may have been lulled into a false belief that Hezbollah would not enter into full-fledged confrontation. The security company executive said the Future fighters were caught off guard by the speed of the offensive.
“Maybe they thought they could hold Hezbollah off for a few days or a few weeks before help arrived,” he said. “They faced an onslaught that they had never planned for.”
After the Future movement fighters gave up, Hezbollah handed them over to the Lebanese army, freeing itself of caring for prisoners while preventing the captured fighters from reentering the battle for at least a few days.
At a hospital near the scene of some of the heaviest fighting, a Future movement fighter employed by Secure Plus wandered stunned in his pajamas with his two sons, who also served in the Sunni militia. His sons had suffered minor wounds after being beaten up by Hezbollah fighters.
Once he realized that Hezbollah’s victory was inevitable, he and his sons tried to escape their rivals’ clutches by staying home. But to no avail; Hezbollah knew where they lived.
“I didn’t leave my home,” he said. “They came for us.”
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daragahi@latimes.com
Daragahi is a Times staff writer and Rafei a special correspondent.
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40426aa102b4ae5cd58845b257a53341 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-et-book13-story.html | ‘Morning’ shouldn’t see daylight | ‘Morning’ shouldn’t see daylight
Bright Shiny Morning
A Novel
James Frey
Harper: 512 pp., $26.95
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“Bright Shiny Morning” is a terrible book. One of the worst I’ve ever read. But you have to give James Frey credit for one thing: He’s got chutzpah. Two and a half years after he was eviscerated by Oprah Winfrey for exaggerating many of the incidents in his now-discredited memoir “A Million Little Pieces,” he’s back with this book, which aims to be the big novel about Los Angeles, a panoramic look at the city that seeks to tell us who we are and how we live.
Clearly, HarperCollins, Frey’s publisher, expects a lot from this book; it reportedly paid a million and a half dollars for it. You can interpret that in a few ways: as a shrewd business decision (as of this writing, the novel is No. 52 at Amazon.com) or as yet another symbol of a book industry in crisis, with publishers grasping at whatever straws they can to manufacture buzz.
Ultimately, though, it is still what’s on the page that matters, and “Bright Shiny Morning” is an execrable novel, a literary train wreck without even the good grace to be entertaining.
Written as an Altman-esque collage, it follows several parallel story lines that never coalesce. The idea is to trace a collective vision of the city, high and low, from Hollywood to the Valley to East L.A. -- an attempt to get at the fluidity of Los Angeles.
There’s Old Man Joe, a drunk who inhabits a bathroom on the Venice boardwalk and seeks mystical affirmation in a daily ritual. Or Amberton Parker, a St. Paul’s and Harvard-educated Oscar-winning actor, who lives a perfect life with his wife and children and has a secret. (Bet you can’t guess what it is.)
As a connective device, Frey interweaves a series of short passages outlining the history of L.A., beginning with the founding of the Pueblo and extending to the present day. Yet this strategy ends up as a metaphor for all that’s wrong with the book. These bits read like encyclopedia entries, devoid of soul or personality, so generic as to be inconsequential, as if Frey has no interest or engagement in what he has chosen to write about.
That’s the issue with “Bright Shiny Morning” -- or one of them, anyway. Frey seems to know little about Los Angeles and to have no interest in it as a real place where people wrestle with actual life. There are obligatory riffs on freeways and natural disasters and a chapter on visual artists that lists “the highest price ever paid for a piece of their work in a public auction.” There are also occasional installments of “Fun Facts” about the city, as if to give the illusion of a certain depth. Did you know that it is “illegal to lick a toad within the city limits of Los Angeles”? Neither did I. But I also don’t know what this has to do with the larger story of the novel, except as another example of L.A. as odd and quirky, a territory in which we all “live with Angels and chase their dreams.”
Frey, of course, intends this to be amusing, lighthearted and witty in tone. (“Learning fun facts is really an enjoyable, and sometimes enlightening process,” he writes. “And, of course, it’s fun too!!!”) It comes off as two-dimensional, however, not to mention poorly written and conceived -- much like the book’s narrative elements.
Esperanza, a Chicana from East L.A., forgoes a college scholarship after being embarrassed at a high school graduation party over the size of her thighs. Eventually she takes a job as a maid for a tyrannical white woman in Pasadena, only to fall in love with the woman’s son.
That’s nothing compared to the story of Dylan and Maddie, two crazy kids from Ohio who come to L.A. with only their faith in each other to sustain them.
After nearly 300 pages, living on $20,000 they’ve stolen from a vicious drug-dealing motorcycle gang, Maddie turns to Dylan and says: “You know how I read all the gossip magazines while I’m at the pool? . . . And they’re all about these famous people, actresses and singers and models and stuff. . . . Well, I think that I want to be an actress.”
“An actress?” he asks.
“Yeah, I want to be a movie star.”
How do we reckon with a novel in which the desire to become an actress is treated as original and organic, in which the only Mexican American character is a maid?
How do we reckon with a book in which the city is flat and lifeless as a stage set, in which Frey uses broad generalizations (“Thirty-thousand Persians fleeing the rule of the ayatollahs. One-hundred and twenty-five thousand Armenians escaping Turkish genocide. Forty-thousand Laotians avoiding minefields. Seventy-five thousand Thais none in Bangkok sex shows.”) to try to animate what his imagination cannot?
Yes, this is Los Angeles, in the way a cheap Hollywood movie is Los Angeles: superficial, a collection of loose impressions that don’t add up.
Whatever else his failings as a writer, Frey was once able to move his readers; how else do we explain the success of “A Million Little Pieces”? It’s just one of the ironies of this new book that his fictionalized memoir is a better novel than “Bright Shiny Morning” could ever hope to be.
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david.ulin@latimes.com
David L. Ulin is book editor of The Times.
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ef94c61e73a4dafcfd6cede36fc81f47 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-me-octa13-story.html | $12 million approved for transit studies | $12 million approved for transit studies
In Anaheim, planners are mulling a monorail to move passengers from the city’s train station to its resort district.
In Santa Ana, the idea is a bit more old school -- trolleys.
In an effort to get such wide-ranging projects off the ground, Orange County transportation leaders Monday approved spending $12 million to complete environmental studies for inner-city public transportation projects.
As part of Anaheim’s plan to transform the area near Angel Stadium into a vibrant residential and retail community, the city wanted an inviting, if not entertaining, way of moving people from the train station to their destination, said Mayor Curt Pringle.
“With the expansion of the Disneyland area, we need to keep cars off the streets” to keep traffic down, Pringle said.
Critics note that monorails are expensive compared with other forms of transportation.
But supporters say the 2.5-mile Disneyland monorail has achieved iconic status, something the city hopes to share, Pringle said.
The monorail opened at a cost of $1 million in 1959.
By contrast, it will cost $6 million alone for environmental and preliminary engineering studies just to determine whether the idea is feasible, said Orange County Transportation Authority planners.
Santa Ana, working with Garden Grove, also received nearly $6 million to study moving Metrolink riders five miles from the Santa Ana train station to Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove.
City planners envision using a trolley or bus system that would run along the old Pacific Electric Railway right of way.
Metrolink service in Orange County is scheduled to expand, and planners have pushed cities to explore ways to get riders from train stations to area employers, malls and hotels.
By 2010, the goal is to have commuter trains running every 30 minutes, from 5 a.m. to midnight, weekdays between Fullerton and Laguna Niguel. Seven locomotives and 59 passenger cars have been ordered, new track has been laid and parking lot improvements are scheduled or underway at stations in Fullerton, Orange, Tustin, Irvine and Laguna Niguel.
Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman John Moorlach and other board members expressed concern about using the right of way in Santa Ana and Garden Grove and the veracity of ridership numbers submitted by Anaheim and Santa Ana.
Anaheim estimated at least 2.4 million riders annually by 2030. Santa Ana projected 4.2 million a year by 2030.
Art Leahy, OCTA’s chief executive, assured the agency’s board that its action Monday was meant to determine whether the projects were feasible. He said cities and OCTA would conduct separate analyses on ridership.
OCTA board member and Tustin Mayor Jerry Amante wants cities to verify their ridership projections.
“I have no assurance that these numbers have been scrubbed,” Amante said. “I want to know that at the end of $6 million, we will know how many riders they’re going to have.”
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david.reyes@latimes.com
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125bf72205802dd6051755731532309d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-me-quakereact13-story.html | Chinese in U.S. try to reach family, send aid | Chinese in U.S. try to reach family, send aid
Xiao Xuemei received a phone call at 2 a.m. Monday from a friend in her home city of Chengdu telling her that a massive earthquake had struck Sichuan province, killing thousands.
Xiao, a waitress at a Sichuanese restaurant in Alhambra, panicked and immediately started calling family members there on their cellphones to make sure they were safe.
“I couldn’t get through,” said Xiao, 50. “There was no connection.”
Luckily, Xiao received another call from Chengdu a few hours later. This time it was from her older sister, who said she had to evacuate her sixth-floor apartment and camp out on the street, but all their family members were fine.
“We are very nervous. We are very worried because we are so far away,” said Xiao, who left China three years ago for Alhambra. “All my family is in Chengdu.”
Such concerns were echoed across the San Gabriel Valley, home to one of the largest ethnic Chinese communities in the United States, as news of the magnitude 7.9 temblor dominated conversations and television sets. There was great concern about the death toll, which officials estimated to be at least 10,000.
At Xiao’s workplace, Szechwan Best Restaurant on Main Street, flat-screen televisions were tuned to Chinese news stations showing earthquake coverage.
Xiao and her co-workers said they were trying to move the earthquake to the back of their minds so they could focus on the lunch rush -- but it was hard. Xiao said she planned to keep calling China to get updates from her family.
Sichuan immigrant Annie Wang didn’t hear about the disaster until co-workers at her foot massage spa in San Gabriel switched on Chinese television and said, “Annie, your Sichuan had an earthquake.”
Although all her immediate family has moved to the United States, Wang said, her stomach sank as she thought about friends and relatives.
“I’m not very positive about the location,” said Wang, 44, as she rubbed the feet of a client. “I think it’s in the poorer areas. If so, my cousin goes out there often for work. I’m worried about my friends and classmates. I can only call them once I’m off work.”
Wang, who has been in the U.S. for a year, says Los Angeles is home to many Sichuan immigrants. It’s a community that mostly reflects the working-class character of the province. Many came to Southern California to work in restaurants and, like Wang, found jobs in the dozens of foot massage parlors that dot the San Gabriel Valley.
Many leaders of the area’s Chinese community scrambled to organize relief efforts as soon as word of the earthquake surfaced.
Sue Zhang, the chief organizer behind the Beijing Olympic Rose Parade float this year, said she had been on the phone with community leaders all morning to plan a fundraising event. She hopes to announce a weekend concert soon, with proceeds going to quake victims. She said the community has been galvanized in recent weeks by a string of rallies defending China’s policies and promoting the Beijing Olympic Games.
“Everyone feels like they need to do something,” Zhang said.
Mei Mei Zhou, president of the Southwest China Assn., said she was going to solicit donations for relief efforts soon and will contact officials in her home province of Sichuan to determine what they need.
“Even though we are overseas, we are from the same root,” said Zhou. “Our hearts are together and we feel sorrow.”
Chen Shijie, a spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, said his office had been flooded with calls from mostly local Chinese asking how to donate money to aid the disaster victims. The consulate also received a call from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office expressing sympathy and an offer to help.
Chen suggested prospective donors either contact the Red Cross or send money to the consulate.
“We will ensure it gets to the disaster area,” he said.
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david.pierson@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
How to help
These are some of the charities accepting donations to help victims of Monday’s earthquake in China:
AmeriCares
88 Hamilton Ave.
Stamford, CT 06902
(800) 486-4357
www.americares.org
Mercy Corps
Dept. W
P.O. Box 2669
Portland, OR 97208
(888) 256-1900
www.mercycorps.org
Save the Children
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
(800) 728-3843
www.savethechildren.org
World Vision
P.O. Box 9716
Federal Way, WA 98063
(888) 56-CHILD
www.worldvision.org
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3e7f52239a0838e16200ddbfd8af4cd9 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-na-barr13-story.html | Former GOP lawmaker joins presidential race | Former GOP lawmaker joins presidential race
Bob Barr, a onetime Republican congressman from Georgia, on Monday announced his plan to run for president as a Libertarian, promising to rein in federal spending and limit military involvement abroad.
“The government has run amok fiscally,” Barr said at a news conference. During the first quarter of this year, he said, the private sector lost millions of jobs while the federal government was “hiring with enthusiasm.”
Barr, who left the Republican Party two years ago, is expected to win the Libertarian Party’s nomination during its convention this month in Denver.
On Monday, he said presumed Republican nominee John McCain was not a true conservative.
“There’s not a great deal of substance there in terms of a commitment to cutting the size of government,” said Barr, 59.
Besides, he said, no one who had crafted campaign finance changes -- as McCain did -- that capped individual donations could call himself a conservative -- “at least with a straight face.”
Barr also lashed out at Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying that the U.S. should “obliterate Iran” if that nation threatened Israel’s existence.
Calling the New York senator’s statement “tremendously dire,” Barr said he had seen no evidence to indicate that Iran was close to possessing nuclear weapons.
Saying that both the Republican and Democratic parties had “bought into a system of running a charity called the United States of America,” Barr criticized programs that used public funds to educate children of illegal immigrants and maintain foreign military bases “that have no more efficacy in the 21st century.”
“The federal government needs to get away from the notion that simply because we have all this money in the treasury -- or we can borrow more money -- that we can provide all these services,” he said. “That is not responsible government.”
Political commentators debated the effect of Barr’s entry into the campaign.
Some argued that -- as with Ralph Nader, who in 2000 pulled votes away from Democrat Al Gore -- Barr could take enough votes from McCain in 2008 to give the Democratic nominee the election.
Barr confirmed that he was asked by McCain supporters not to run, but he defended his decision, saying that “American voters deserve better than simply the lesser of two evils.”
Christopher R. Barron, a Republican political consultant, said it was equally plausible that Barr could hurt Democrat Barack Obama if he was the eventual nominee.
“I think Bob Barr’s candidacy could impact the race, but I don’t know at this point which candidate he is likely to help or hurt,” Barron said. “If Barr’s candidacy is fueled by the same people who supported Ron Paul -- college students, antiwar advocates and hard-core libertarians -- then I think it is unlikely to hurt Sen. McCain in any significant way because these are not the type of voters McCain is reaching out to. I could actually envision a scenario under which Barr’s candidacy actually helps McCain by siphoning off some of the enthusiasm among college voters and antiwar advocates for Obama.”
Jennifer E. Duffy of Cook Political Report said of Barr: “I think he is only a threat if he gets on the ballot in a de- cent number of battleground states.”
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johanna.neuman@latimes.com
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863a91c2f3024068d4e2e04ea68229be | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-oe-kolesnikova13-story.html | OMG, KMN before my head asplodes | OMG, KMN before my head asplodes
Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between a person LOLing and crying -- but I am definitely weeping. The cause for my earth-shattering depression is an April 25 Pew Research Center study that polled 12- to 17-year-olds on their attitudes about writing. A heart-stopping 38% said they let chat-speak -- such as LOL (for “laughing out loud”), ROFL (“rolling on the floor laughing”), BRB (“be right back”), TTYL (“talk to ya later”) -- slip into essays and homework.
I propose a new chat term: KMN. “Kill me now.”
I’m an occasional tutor in San Francisco public schools with 826 Valencia, a writing-based community outreach program, and I have seen some linguistic horrors in the trenches. I’ve been asked how to spell “here” and “one” by high school seniors and seen more your/you’re, there/their, to/too mix-ups than a homophone workbook. But at least those students were using actual words. I dread my first encounter with text-speak, but I know it’s coming: “Marcel Marceau lived in France and totally brought the LOLz.” Even more gut-tossing is the fact that 25% of teens in the Pew study have used emoticons on tests, homework and essays. Oh, imagine the history papers: “When President Abe Lincoln was gatted, the whole country was =(, even though some in the South must have been =P.”
KMN, KMN, KMN.
Linguistic butchery while texting is one thing. In school assignments, it is quite another. What’s worse is how popular culture is encouraging this madness. A notorious offender called ICanHasCheezburger.com is a cute enough diversion -- it posts adorable pictures of cats, “lolcats” as they’re called, with funny captions. But persevere beyond your first gag reflex and you’ll notice that the captions are written in lolspeak.
Lolspeak has its own wiki-dictionary online -- sorry, a dikshunary -- where fanatics go to linguistically out-mangle one another. A recent entry on ICanHasCheezburger.com featured a cat looming over a laptop with the caption: “Just when u thot it wuz safe 2 go bak on teh interwebs.” Another features a kitten: “why ur hed just asplode? wuz it my cuteness? sry.”
Why did my head just “asplode,” kitty dear? Because I could not transcribe that caption without Microsoft Word’s AutoCorrect going into overdrive. And because ICanHasCheezburger.com receives 50 million page views every single month. Only 50% of users are between 18 and 49 -- which means a large chunk of the under-18 set is picking up lolspeak when they should be learning English.
Hollywood’s already in on it. Last month, racy advertisements for the teen TV series “Gossip Girl” got a lot of buzz for printing “OMFG” in giant type under a photo of the sleek stars in a slutty, hazy embrace. Also last month, the U.S. Department of Education released the Nation’s Report Card on Writing 2007. The results suggested that only 33% of eighth-graders demonstrated abilities at or above proficiency level. James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, introduced these findings with a comment about “the slow destruction of the basic unit of human thought -- the sentence.” ROFL, James, the sentence is dead and buried. AOL Instant Messenger is dancing on its grave.
Yet according to the Pew survey, 86% of teens believe that good writing is an essential skill for later in life.
So teens, put your hands up and step away from MySpace while you’re doing homework. Teachers, tutors, parents, it’s time to face the enemy: lolspeak. It’s fight now or face a sentence-less future of three-letter words. OMG.
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484403c4b6c69732bb68302a6f327a3d | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-13-sp-mayo13-story.html | NCAA, Pac-10 open Mayo investigation | NCAA, Pac-10 open Mayo investigation
The NCAA and Pacific 10 Conference on Monday opened an investigation into whether former USC basketball player O.J. Mayo received benefits in violation of college rules before and during the one season he played for the Trojans.
Allegations that the top NBA prospect received gifts totaling tens of thousands of dollars were made by former Mayo confidant Louis Johnson during a segment on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that was broadcast Sunday. USC issued a statement that it was working with both groups “in a cooperative investigation to review these new allegations.”
At the center of the controversy is Rodney Guillory, a Los Angeles-based events promoter who Johnson said funneled to Mayo, in the form of a high-tech television, cash, clothes and other services, a portion of more than $200,000 provided to Guillory by Bill Duffy Associates Sports Management.
Last month, on the day he announced he was making himself available for the NBA draft, Mayo said that he had selected BDA’s Calvin Andrews as his agent.
BDA in a statement denied “any conduct . . . that could have remotely jeopardized O.J. Mayo’s collegiate eligibility.”
Attempts by The Times to reach Mayo and Guillory on Monday failed. In a statement issued through BDA Sports to ESPN, Mayo denied he had taken part in any wrongdoing, supported Guillory as “a strong African American male presence in my life,” and said he’d already been cleared during previous investigations by the NCAA and Pac-10.
Responding to the allegations on Sunday, USC in a statement also alluded to previous examinations of Mayo that “did not identify any amateurism violations.” Those reviews, conducted by the school’s compliance office in conjunction with conference and NCAA authorities, were extensive, said a source with knowledge of the situation who wouldn’t speak unless guaranteed anonymity.
In a statement to The Times on Monday, the NCAA said the allegations made on the ESPN show were “new to the NCAA. This information was not available when the NCAA examined Mr. Mayo’s academic and amateurism status prior to his collegiate enrollment, and we will review the information in conjunction with the institution and the Pac-10 conference.”
There could also be criminal investigations. California law prohibits sports agents from providing cash or gifts to student athletes, and Johnson also alleged that Guillory used donation money from a fake charity for his expenses after BDA cut off payments to him last summer.
A check Monday found that the National Organization of Sickle Cell Prevention and Awareness Foundation is not registered with the state attorney general’s charitable trust office as required by law, although it has filed other state documents.
The sickle cell organization registered with the state Franchise Tax Board in 1999, and subsequently received tax-exempt status. A board spokesman said it appeared that the group had not filed any tax returns since then, perhaps because it had raised less than $25,000 each year, the threshold for submitting a return.
A search of a leading database of federal tax returns for charities also found no record of the foundation. The IRS has a similar $25,000 threshold for filing returns.
Attempts to reach Amonra Elohim, who is listed on state forms as the head of the foundation, were unsuccessful. ESPN identified Elohim as an alias for Guillory friend Tony Hicks, who also appears on the state forms as onetime chief executive of the group.
Times staff writers Gary Klein and Paul Pringle contributed to this report.
--
ben.bolch@latimes.com
--
Begin text of infobox
The key players
The NCAA has opened an investigation into allegations that O.J. Mayo received cash and other gifts before he enrolled at USC and during the time he played for the Trojans basketball team, which would be a violation of NCAA rules. Here’s a who’s who of those involved in the story:
* O.J. Mayo -- A 6-foot-5 guard from Huntington, W. Va., he raised eyebrows with his choice of USC over more successful college basketball programs. The leading scorer for the Trojans last season as a freshman, he recently announced that he would enter the NBA draft and is considered a likely lottery pick.
* Louis Johnson -- Former Long Beach Press-Telegram sportswriter and Mayo confidant told ESPN that a Los Angeles-based events promoter provided the player with a flat-screen TV, cellphone service, cash, meals, clothes and other benefits dating to when Mayo first entered high school.
* Rodney Guillory -- The man Johnson says received more than $200,000 in cash and benefits from BDA Sports Management and used a portion of it to fete Mayo with gifts in violation of college rules. He has longtime ties to the L.A. basketball scene and was identified by the NCAA in 2001 as a “runner” for another sports agency, which led to sanctions against Fresno State and one of its players.
* Bill Duffy -- Chairman and CEO of BDA Sports Management, which allegedly paid Guillory to influence Mayo’s choice of sports agents. Mayo recently announced that BDA would represent him as a professional.
* Calvin Andrews -- The BDA agent who Mayo says will represent him.
* Tito Maddox -- Former Compton High star and Fresno State player says Guillory, who befriended him in 1998, arranged for him and his family to receive about $30,000 and cars from a Las Vegas-based agent in violation of NCAA rules.
* Jeff Trepagnier -- Another Compton High product, he was suspended by USC during the 2000-01 season for accepting airfare to Las Vegas from Guillory. He plays for Pau in the French league.
* Ron Delpit -- Former president of now-defunct Las Vegas-based agency Franchise Sports, which the NCAA implicated in sanctioning Maddox and others.
Los Angeles Times
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93568471f6c2de4ba13ccfcecef99ac8 | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-14-fg-briefs14.s1-story.html | Iraq charges against GIs dropped | Iraq charges against GIs dropped
Spain’s National Court said it had dropped charges against three U.S. soldiers who opened fire on a Baghdad hotel in 2003, killing a Spanish journalist.
The soldiers had been charged with homicide and a crime against the international community -- defined under Spanish law as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during wartime -- for the death of TV cameraman Jose Couso, killed when a U.S. tank shell hit the hotel where he and other journalists were staying.
A Ukrainian cameraman working for the Reuters news agency, Taras Protsyuk, also died.
The court agreed that the firing of the shell was not a crime but an accident of war.
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9d3d3bb55db90bba076970acbf0a36de | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-14-fg-image14-story.html | Amid the tragedy lies opportunity | Amid the tragedy lies opportunity
On television screens around the world, images of protesting Tibetan monks and an Olympic torch doused by protesters have been replaced by footage of Chinese rescuers pulling children out of the wreckage of this week’s massive earthquake.
The country is in pain and mourning.
But the tragedy that struck Monday, and has taken more than 12,000 lives, also has given China an opportunity for a dramatic image makeover. After months of relentless coverage of Tibetan clashes and human rights abuses, the earthquake shows a new China, one that is both compassionate and competent.
Given how difficult it is for journalists, foreign or Chinese, to reach the mountainous epicenter, much of the footage seen at home and abroad so far comes from state-owned CCTV television.
Rescue workers in crisp orange jumpsuits dig efficiently through the rubble. Troops well-equipped with face masks and helmets handle cranes, forklifts, bulldozers. Nurses look capable as they carry out victims, IV bottles held above their heads. Even the victims appear well-dressed as they emerge from the dust, faces contorted in shock and pain.
The coverage strikes a delicate balance between eliciting sympathy and depicting China as a developed country. For the domestic audience, the Chinese media have given extensive coverage to messages of condolence and offers of assistance from President Bush and other world leaders.
Jin Canrong, a professor at People’s University in Beijing, said it should allay the anger of the many young Chinese complaining lately about “China bashing” by Western countries. “The earthquake can help to relieve the mutual distrust and resentment from both sides,” he said.
In the days to come, China’s handling of its worst natural disaster in three decades will be closely scrutinized at home and abroad. How open will the government be about the number of casualties and extent of damage? How competent will it be in the rescue effort?
China will have a chance to prove that it is not neighboring Myanmar, which came under sharp condemnation for its reluctance to accept foreign aid after it was hit by a cyclone this month, and that it is not the same old China that used to cover up its misfortunes.
In 1976, the last time an earthquake comparable to Monday’s magnitude 7.9 temblor struck here, China refused aid from the United Nations. It did not allow foreigners into the most affected city, Tangshan, for seven years.
This time, wary of any suggestion that China is closed to outsiders, officials are taking pains to be gracious about international assistance, accepting offers of supplies while profusely apologizing that they cannot admit foreign aid workers.
Catastrophes, whether natural or man-made, frequently are challenging to authoritarian governments, which have an almost knee-jerk reaction to conceal bad news.
When the earthquake struck Monday afternoon, the Chinese government at first followed its natural instinct. Within a few hours after the quake, the Communist Party’s central propaganda department issued an order that Chinese news organizations not send reporters to the scene, but instead only use material from CCTV or from the official New China News Agency.
What happened next, however, indicates how much China has changed.
Realizing the symbolic importance of the moment, Premier Wen Jiabao rushed to the scene, and was widely photographed kneeling in the wreckage, consoling victims and advising rescue teams.
And Chinese media broadly ignored the propaganda department’s order. Many newspapers and regional television stations sent reporters to the scene.
By Tuesday, the propaganda department appeared to have given up, and simply instructed that journalists “implement the spirit of the central government and use a reporting tone stressing unity, stability and positive publicity,” according to a journalist who had read the order.
“We are in a completely different era now -- the propaganda department can’t stop journalists from reporting,” said Li Datong, former editor of a supplement of the China Youth Daily.
Although reporting on subjects such as Tibetan unrest or protests over the coming Olympics remain taboo, Li said, the government has grudgingly accepted that it must allow free reporting of disasters to prevent people from panicking.
“There is no shame associated with natural disasters,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs a media blog out of Beijing.
Goldkorn, a frequent critic of China’s media policies, said the Chinese government was doing a “pretty good” job of getting out information on the earthquake.
“That doesn’t mean that everything is going to be groovy and liberal from now on, but considering where they came from, you can see how much has changed,” he said.
China badly needs to repair its international image in time for the Olympic Games, which will begin in Beijing on Aug. 8.
Many VIPs have threatened to sit out the opening ceremonies because of concerns about China’s human rights record.
The relay of the Olympic torch from Athens to the Chinese capital was a global embarrassment, with protests at nearly every stop over issues ranging from Tibet to Darfur.
Critics accuse China, which has close economic ties to Sudan, of failing to pressure the government to stop what Washington has termed a genocide in the African country’s western region.
Scandals over tainted products from China also have damaged Beijing’s standing with the international community.
A swift and competent reaction to the earthquake is crucial domestically, as well.
The Chinese government came under criticism at home for a lethargic response to freak snowstorms that paralyzed the south of the country during the Chinese New Year.
Wen, who is also a geologist, offered not only sympathy but also expertise on the nature of earthquakes.
Peng Zongchao, a crisis management expert as Qinghua University, said that China would try to show its own people and the world that it can handle a disaster more effectively than a democratic country such as the United States.
“If you compare this to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the United States could not get the military involved quickly, you will see the Chinese government has big advantages in mobilizing,” Peng said. “They want to show that they are capable.”
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barbara.demick@latimes.com
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