Opinion: In today’s pages: Gangs, voters, animals and legislators
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Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo pens an op-ed on two of the city’s fastest-growing exports: a pair of Latino gangs. It’s an international problem that requires a coordinated, multinational solution, Delgadillo writes:
In the 1990s, the U.S. strategy centered on deportation: Undocumented gang members convicted of crimes were sent back to their country of origin after their prison sentences. But this only exacerbated the problem, spreading both gangs like a virus until they grew into transnational ‘super-gangs’ with countless cliques in southern Mexico and Central America in addition to their presence in California, Nebraska, New York, Texas, Virginia, Oregon and even Canada.
Elsewhere on the page, Frankie Trull, president of a trade group that supports the use of animals in research, decries the tactics of extremists in the animal rights movement; columnist Gregory Rodriguez contrasts recently invaded Georgia with another former Soviet republic that has warmed to the West, Azerbaijan; and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), a host of the coming Democratic National Convention in Denver, offers his frequently absent colleague Barack Obama some pointers on how to win critical electoral votes in the West.
Meanwhile, the editorial board urges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign bills that would effectively sideline the electoral college (SB 37) and shield faculty advisors to school newspapers against retaliation by public-school and university administrators(SB 1370). It also scolds state lawmakers for doing more to raise campaign cash than close the state’s budget gap:
It means little to elected officials that they don’t get their paychecks while the state budget is past due, as long as they scoop up the important stuff -- political cash. That’s the flow that needs to be cut off pending an adopted-and-signed spending plan. Political fundraising by state legislators and the governor should be banned when the budget is past due.
The 2005 photo of the Honduran gang member with the Mara Salvatrucha billboard inked across his forehead is by David de la Paz/EPA.