Opinion: In today’s pages: A tale of two Koreas
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Italian columnist Massimo Franco heralds the Vatican’s first official visit to the U.S. by explaining what took them so long, and cartoonist Rob Rogers wonders if the people running American Airlines into the ground are flying the Iraq war, too. Former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy calls on the U.S., North Korea and South Korea to repair their damaged relationships, and Gregory Rodriguez considers boycotting Absolut vodka for its ads that raised Americans’ ‘reconquista’ paranoia:
Last week I was in Las Vegas, and I found myself having a depressing chat with a Croatian maid at the Mandalay Bay hotel. ‘Your name is Rodriguez, are you Spanish?’ she asked. ‘No,’ I told her, ‘I’m Mexican American.’ To which she responded glumly, ‘then pretty soon, this land will be yours. You are taking over.’
The editorial board looks into public workers’ immunity from traffic tickets and tolls, and finds a ‘disturbing recalibration of public accountability.’ The board also approves of President Bush’s call for the government to guarantee loans for sub-prime borrowers, and expects Mayor Villaraigosa to prove in his State of the City address that he has a ‘firm grip’ on the budget and gang violence:
The issues are intertwined. Villaraigosa has adopted as his own the priority his predecessors placed on increasing the number of Los Angeles Police Department officers ready to serve. The LAPD of today is larger -- and the city safer -- in part because the mayor insisted on increasing the fees that residents pay to get their trash picked up. Those higher fees aren’t earmarked for more officers, and they still don’t cover the cost of garbage collection, but the new revenue has given the mayor and the City Council the flexibility they needed to increase police hiring.
Readers size up Army Gen. David Petraeus’ ‘ribbon creep’ against other military icons. Eric Johnson points out:
Ike went on to lead this country ably, if quietly, warning us against the military-industrial complex gaining so much power, and Marsdhall earned the gratitude of an entire generation of Europeans, including those we defeated. Where are the generals of that caliber now?