Opinion: In today’s pages: Hollywood, healthcare, Prop 8 and brown lawns

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The editorial board mulls over a few topics today, starting with healthcare for illegal immigrants in the proposed reform bill currently floating through Congress. While the editorial board says it may be economically sound to extend coverage to illegal immigrants, it concludes that including such a provision in the bill would kill the measure.

Comparing Hollywood’s stance on restrictive Chinese policies to the studios’ opposition to novel technologies in the U.S., the board admonishes the studios for attempting to centrally control how people consume their products:

One lesson from the technology industry is that there is a trade-off between controlling products and unleashing the innovation that spurs growth. Just look at how well the iPhone has fared since Apple invited independent developers to create applications for it. Hollywood should remember the principle underlying the case against China: Centralized control stifles a market. Rather than trying to stop potentially disruptive technologies and business models, Hollywood should find a way to harness them.
Finally, the board argues that although gay and lesbian couples should not have to wait -- or campaign -- for their right to marry, the Equality California and Courage Campaign should unite their efforts and wait to put a revamped Proposition 8 on the ballot in 2012 instead of 2010:

It’s not as though waiting three years means idly letting injustice prevail. There is plenty to do between now and 2012 -- forging alliances with minority groups, lining up financial support and vetting the best campaign managers. Advocates of same-sex marriage already have a just cause; coupled with campaign smarts and money, they also will have voter support.
On the op-ed side of the pages, Robert M. Hertzberg and Thomas McKernan, co-chairmen of California Forward, lay out their solution to California’s budget crisis and preventing this year’s mess from happening again. Their plan includes keeping government local, defining agencies’ goals and purpose in the budget and the institution of a two-year budget as well as a pay-as-you-go approach to new programs.

Emily Green, author of the weekly Dry Garden column for the Los Angeles Times, writes in about Southern California’s rather silly obsession with green lawns and argues that brown is both natural and beautiful.

Finally, columnist Gregory Rodriguez responds to those who have decried the disruptive protesters who have been coming out in droves to town halls about healthcare in the past couple of weeks. His thoughts? It’s as American as apple pie, and a crucial part of the democratic process (as annoying as it may be):

So as much fun as it may be for some of you to blame idiot right-wingers for the invention of ill-informed political haranguing, it’s really an all-American tradition. It’s in the same spirit of all those lefty bumper stickers that read “Question Authority.” It’s embodied in Benjamin Franklin’s famous advice along the same lines: “The first responsibility of every citizen is to question authority.”

It’s not a pretty process, and it clearly has its dangers. But it’s the price of democracy to suffer fools.
-- Catherine Lyons