Opinion: In today’s pages: Obama, Latinos, animal-rights “terrorists” and automakers
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The Opinion Manufacturing Division cranks out two Latino-flavored analyses today of exit-polling data from the Nov. 4 election. Columnist Tim Rutten slices and dices the numbers to reveal that even socially conservative Latino voters in L.A. strongly backed Barack Obama. The bad news for the GOP, Rutten writes, is that the results portend a long-term political realignment in the West. And in the editorial stack, the Times’ board -- long a supporter of a comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy -- urges the President-elect to show his Latino constituency that he’s taking a new direction on the issue:
He could put a stop to the factory raids the Department of Homeland Security has launched in Iowa, Mississippi and other states, including California, rounding up hundreds of undocumented workers. He might also forge bipartisan support for the so-called Dream Act, which would allow high-achieving, undocumented high school students to seek permanent residency if they go to college or enter the armed forces.
The editorial board also urges Congress again to stop playing political football with the Colombian free trade agreement, which is ‘good for Colombia and good for the United States.’ And it mocks the City Council for dropping a plan to let voters settle a dispute over whether the City Controller (currently, Laura Chick) can audit programs run by local elected officials:
When council members discovered that they too might come under controller scrutiny, they suddenly found the issue too important to put to the voters. Jose Huizar worried about a program he controls using a special fund from his district. Richard Alarcon demanded that someone audit the controller. Tom LaBonge pointed out, apropos of nothing, that Chick once gave a briefing to mayoral candidates challenging James K. Hahn (Alarcon neglected to mention that he was one of them).
Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, medical researcher and author P. Michael Conn draws a parallel between two trends in the law: as more communities adopt ordinances to redefine pets as ‘animal companions,’ Congress is redefining the extreme tactics of some animal-rights activists as ‘terrorism.’ And Douglas Olin, a deputy assistant secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration, urges Congress to demand more fuel-efficient cars and a better approach to labor relations from the Big Three automakers in return for a bailout:
With millions of jobs at stake and the potential repercussions of seeing an entire section of the industrial base collapse so soon after the fallout on Wall Street, it is a political, economic and social imperative for the government to do something. But why not do it in a way that challenges this key industry to also help address society’s need to reduce consumption of foreign oil, curb greenhouse gas emissions and increase safety on our highways?
AP Photo/Ivan Moreno