Opinion: In today’s pages: Nipplegate, baby-making, tax-hiking
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The editorial board urges Inglewood’s police chief to answer public concerns about an officer-related shooting, and thinks a state constitutional amendment to ensure special-interest-free judicial races goes too far. The board also notes the end of nipplegate:
You’d think that policymakers would have learned by now that the government runs afoul of the Constitution whenever it substitutes its judgment about offensive content for a parent’s choices. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.On Monday, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission acted arbitrarily when it fined CBS $550,000 for airing a half-second shot of Janet Jackson’s right breast loosed from its studded leather mooring.
Columnist Rosa Brooks says Radovan Karadzic fits right in with a long line of mass murderers before him, all convinced they were healers. Columnist Patt Morrison tells Angelenos to stop being grossed out by so-called toilet-to-tap water. University of Alabama bioethics teacher Gregory Pence notes the 30-year anniversary of in vitro fertilization. And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says we should actually want a sales tax increase:
The political will is now here. We have the opportunity to create a greater Los Angeles no longer chained to its cars and dependent on foreign oil, and where we are making smarter investments to ease traffic congestion and improve our quality of life.The measure other board members and I are proposing -- which will raise the sales tax from 8.25% to 8.75% -- would bring in $40 billion over 30 years while costing the average Angeleno less than the price of half a tank of gas per year.
On the letters page, readers discuss the impending increase in parking meter rates. Encino’s Francine Oschin recalls a song: ‘Along with the recent series of hikes for trash pickup, this will be a tax way beyond what is reasonable or justifiable. As the song says, ‘If you drive a car I’ll tax the street ... If you take a walk I’ll tax your feet.’’
*Cartoon by Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette