Plenty of fuel to stoke the fury

I’m not going to claim otherwise. I’m angry.

About what?

Come on, all you’ve got to do is lay down 50 cents, read the paper and hear the pounding of your pulse. Not that we don’t publish cheery news as well. Take, for instance, the photos of Wall Street execs in handcuffs and roughly 400 other real estate industry miscreants charged with mortgage fraud.

But on the home front, three stories in particular have got me riled, beginning with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s weeklong trip to Israel with 17 flunkies in tow.

Yes, that’s 17 city employees. If I had taken that large a battalion to the Middle East, I certainly would have included Deputy Mayor Jaime de la Vega, who could have demonstrated some nifty Hummer maneuvers for the Israeli army. But De la Vega is apparently one of the few people at City Hall who didn’t make the trip, which was reportedly budgeted at roughly a quarter of a million dollars.

After the trip, Villaraigosa wasn’t back in L.A. long enough to get his dry cleaning done before he headed to the airport again. This time the destination was a weekend conference in Florida, where he planned to sneak in a fundraiser hosted by a former LAX concessionaire.

It’s neck-and-neck right now as to who’s out of town more often -- the mayor or the Dodgers.

It’s not that I think the mayor of a world-class city shouldn’t do a bit of traveling now and then (although as you may recall, I did recently trail Villaraigosa to Texas to remind him his first priority was Los Angeles and not Hillary Rodham Clinton).

I even agree, basically, with what the mayor said in defending his trip to Israel:

“I’m mayor of the city of Los Angeles, not some small town in the desert somewhere. We are a global city.”

Sure, Tony. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting: We’re a global city with a $300-million budget gap. So did you really need 17 hand-holders if all you were going to come home with was a few measly ideas on water conservation and airport and port security? Couldn’t you get that with a phone call?

Not that I’m cynical, but it’s hard to rule out the possibility that the whole thing was an attempt to win the hearts, and campaign donations, of L.A.’s Jewish community.

Now I move on to an even more troubling subject:

The unspeakable torture of a 5-year-old boy from South Los Angeles, allegedly at the hands of his mother and two other women, all of whom have been charged with abuse.

It’s hard to read the details without having some dark part of your being wish that the guilty parties could be subjected to the same abuse suffered by the boy, who was hung by his wrists, whipped, left in his own feces and urine, burned with cigarettes on his body and genitals, and forced to put his hands on the burner of a stove.

But just as maddening is the fact that the child’s suffering could have been prevented if not for the failure of public agencies whose job it is to protect kids. Several state and county agencies, including the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, were aware of one or more aspects of the case.

The boy’s mother is believed to have been a gang member. She served time for battery, robbery and petty theft, and there was an allegation of child neglect three years ago.

In other words, the circumstances should have added up to an inter-agency scream:

“Watch this child closely!”

But as county Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Gloria Molina said last week in calling for reforms, related agencies don’t necessarily speak to each other and share data or issue alerts.

“How is it possible that he was bounced around . . . our system and the only person . . . who was observant enough to see what was going on,” asked Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, “was some random passenger on the Green Line, who was standing on the platform and saw this kid was undernourished and had some scars?”

Good question. And I don’t want to hear about large caseloads at DCFS, where most of the social workers do fantastic work. They were actually twice as large three years ago, according to a staffer in Yaroslavsky’s office.

In past years, I’ve had my hands on confidential DCFS reports that make one thing clear:

Although it’s difficult to ensure the well-being of every child in the county, given the number of inept and violent parents, there often is nowhere near the vigilance and aggressive follow-up that should be routine in cases where there’s suspicion of an unsafe home.

So sure, better interagency communication is one answer. But someone needs to climb up on a desk at DCFS and shake a finger, and if that doesn’t happen, the supervisors need to do more than their usual public scolding followed by a quick disappearing act.

The last item on my agenda today is same-sex marriage.

You would think that in a world of hatred, war, natural disaster, deadly disease, incomprehensible suffering and certain death for all, people would have better things to do with their time than to get worked into a lather over people finding love.

But a gaggle of readers felt compelled to write to me and demand to know why I was so godless as to write a tribute to my friends Stuart and Jamie on their plans to marry.

“And now they can finally stop living in sin,” I said in my Wednesday column, which shook readers to their core.

“The last time I read about Sodom & Gomorrah in Genesis 19, same-sex relationships were still called sin,” wrote a guy named Bob. “Don’t blame me. I didn’t write the Bible. . . . God did. It behooves everyone to pay attention. We might not like what Scriptures say, but we should at least be aware of their content.”

Why quote Genesis? Why not, in the name of God, go straight to Leviticus?

“If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death.”

If you read the Bible closely enough, Bob, and interpret it literally in the year 2008, you’ll also discover that purchasing and owning slaves from other countries comes highly recommended. And that disrespectful children should be dealt with swiftly and harshly.

“For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.”

My eye is twitching.

My pulse is pounding.

It’s been a tough week, and I’m angry.

--

steve.lopez@latimes.com