Opinion: Tuesday’s tidings

Campaign finance reform doesn’t keep money out of politics, as the price inflation demonstrates. It merely skews the market, making it harder for rookies and amateurs to get in and easier for the pros and incumbents to game the system. Indeed, it’s a lot like government tuition aid intended to keep costs low, which has had the effect of causing college tuitions to explode by skewing the market and allowing schools to shift costs onto government. The richest kids can afford to go to college without government help or big loans (and they can afford to pay for tutors and consultants in order to get into their preferred school), but few others can. Similarly, the richest candidates or the candidates with the biggest war chests -- surprise! they tend to be officeholders — love campaign finance reform because it puts burdens on the competition.

I was sorely disappointed by Ramona Ripston’s complete distortion -- in a column on this page -- of our efforts to stem the lawlessness, suffering and human misery that was commonplace on skid row just a few months ago. I am outraged that Ripston, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, implied that our officers are violating the very Constitution they are sworn to uphold and protect. The officers in skid row, who all volunteer for the assignment, have one of the lowest rates for the use of force in the city. And I am even more appalled by her views because she walked skid row streets with our officers and rode around in a black-and-white last year and was shocked then at the horrific conditions under which our most vulnerable citizens survived. How quickly she forgot!

As to the ‘scandal’ that caused my integrity to be questioned, I can assure readers that I had no knowledge that any friend of mine did publicity work for Hollywood producer Brian Grazer when he was asked to guest-edit Current, a decision taken by three editors in our department and approved by the publisher. And I never dreamed that any friend of mine or any firm employing a friend would be asked by Grazer to help publicize his involvement with Current. When that turned out to be the case, I flagged the apparent conflict to the publisher and our in-house publicist.

appointed The Times’ reader’s representative, Jamie Gold, to determine whether personal or professional connections improperly influenced previous content in the editorial pages. [...] Reader’s representative Gold said she would begin her review of past opinion-editorial decisions immediately. She said she was not sure how long her investigation would take. Hiller said Gold would try to discern whether any undue influence had taken place. ‘She will report to me and ultimately, if appropriate, to the readers, who are first and foremost our concern,’ he said. Martinez said in an e-mail response to a question that there was ample evidence the editorial pages leveled tough scrutiny at Hollywood and played no favorites. ‘The suggestion that I was currying favor with friends on the editorial pages is silly to anyone who knows me,’ Martinez wrote, ‘but I can understand the need to find some justification retroactively for a terrible overreaction that has undermined the autonomy of the paper’s opinion pages and stained the newspaper’s reputation.’