Opinion: In today’s pages: Metrolink, Wall Street, the California budget and John McCain’s computer use
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It’s a big news day on the editorial page, as the Times’ board responds to wrecks on train tracks, in Sacramento and on Wall Street. In response to the horrific Metrolink crash, the board calls on Congress to help rail systems cover the cost of installing electronic traffic-control systems. The board lauds Washington for not bailing out Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and American International Group, although it calls on the feds to come up with a better mechanism to guard against financial bubbles. And it blasts state lawmakers for adopting a budget that highlights rather than surmounts their dysfunction:
What Californians would get in exchange for this irresponsible worry-about-it-next-year budget is, lawmakers say, no borrowing, although that’s demonstrably untrue. And no tax increases -- except for the fact that many taxpayers will have to pay earlier, which will ultimately cost them because money is more valuable today than tomorrow.
On the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg comes up with a new criticism of Barack Obama: he’s lousy at negative campaigning. He focuses on the Obama ad that mocks rival John McCain, whose war injuries make typing painful, for not knowing how to send an e-mail. As Goldberg points out, this is the same Sen. McCain who, as a member and former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been steeped in telecom and Internet legislation.
Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University (and my former boss in the Times’ Biz section), sees elements of John Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ repeated in today’s America, even though the current economic downturn is nothing like the Great Depression that sent Tom Joad’s family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California’s Central Valley:
Most notably, income inequality today is at its highest level since the late 1920s. Adjusted for inflation, median household income was actually lower last year than in 2000. Hunger is on the rise. Fueling a considerable amount of hardship is the mortgage industry crisis -- an episode that brings to mind Steinbeck’s depiction of banks as rapacious monsters.As in the 1930s, the issue is what to do about all this.
Finally, Hugh Pope, who directs the Turkey project for International Crisis Group, sees signs of rapprochement in a World Cup preliminary match between teams from Turkey and Armenia:
The 2-0 victory for the Turks was beside the point. All eyes were on the two countries’ presidents, sitting together in the stadium -- albeit behind bulletproof glass -- in a brave attempt to bury one of the Caucasus’ most bitter legacies.