OP-ED Articles

The Los Angeles Times editorial board, no stranger to long-term intellectual blackouts, committed perhaps its most regrettable — and deliberate — blunder yesterday. The Times’s petulant puerility, exceeding their usual juvenile behavior, has been on daily display since Nov. 9, the day after Donald Trump defeated the most dishonest woman in America public life. Yesterday’s perhaps unprecedented full-page screed against … Read More

The specter of peaches and oranges and apricots and artichokes rotting on the ground or on trees hangs over California agriculture this spring, in the wake of a series of immigration raids during the first months of President Trump’s administration. If you want to know why it’s not merely undocumented immigrants who fear the prospect of more and larger raids … Read More

Dateline Dayton — Three weeks ago, Pauline and I left for our annual Florida vacation, and this time we did something different. We started with a cruise. On a Thursday morning we were on the road by 6 o’clock and still encountered heavy traffic in Cincinnati.  Although I don’t normally make hotel reservation for this trip, we have experienced problems … Read More

[Editor’s Note: Here is a summary of how state legislators may be prevented by law from increasing taxes. In a nutshell, Prop. 4 (the Gann Limit), passed in 1979, then modified by Prop. 111, passed in 1990, limits increases in state and local spending based on a complex formula that takes into account inflation, population growth, and the change in … Read More

After suffering years of defeat through failed legislation, a high-profile lawsuit, and a ballot proposition, advocates of teacher tenure reform in California are making another attempt. A bill introduced last week in Sacramento was crafted with wide input from teachers statewide. The proposed change, extending the probationary period from two years to three, would align California with the vast majority … Read More

L.A. Watchdog — Mayor Garcetti is proposing to close part of the city’s $250 million budget gap for next year by using an estimated $50 million of Local Return money from Measure M, the permanent half-cent increase in our sales tax that was approved by 71 percent of voters in November. While the bulk of the proceeds of this new … Read More

Few questions about public education have been disputed more hotly than teacher evaluations – in a day when almost everyone agrees public schools need major improvement, how to tell which teachers are good, which are the best and which don’t deserve to be kept around. For some, the answer is in value-added ratings: How much do children improve or decline … Read More

@The Guss Report –The axiomatic history of white men hashing out shady political deals in smoke-filled backrooms has come a long way, baby. On Friday, Donna Brazile, the former CNN commentator and interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, finally confessed to that which most already knew and that she spent the past half-year denying: Rigging a March 2016 Democratic … Read More

Fellow Americans, Los Angeles Times “culture critics” Carolina A. Miranda and Christopher Knight whine about President Trump’s federal government budget “not spending a penny for the National Endowment for the Arts … while spending nearly $538 billion a year for National Defense.” What does NEA’s $148 million budget buy? 7,789,473 taco bowls but not even one mile of the 405 Freeway — http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-nea-index-trump-budget-20170318-story.html Once again … Read More

The Culver City Sister City Committee this week welcomed Japanese marathon runners Mr. Shogo Uraguchi, 26 years old and Ms. Chiaki Kishimoto 33 years old, from  our sister city in Kaizuka . They were greeted by Marathon Chair Tim Petersen and his wife Sandra, David Winslow and Jennifer Hartman who returned from Japan a few weeks ago after running the Senshu marathon … Read More