Opinion: In today’s pages: Taco trucks and 401(k)s
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UCLA graduate student and Chow Digest senior editor C. Thi Nguyen bemoans L.A. County’s requirement that taco trucks move after one hour, and New York attorney Scott Horton analyzes UC Berkeley professor John Yoo’s role in the Bush administration’s stance on torture. Former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan hopes LAUSD will repair its relationship with charter schools, and Gregory Rodriguez scratches his head at Americans’ insistence that politicians act like the average Joe:
Sure, high-ranking politicians of humble origins can lay at least some claim to being ‘common.’ But that’s really a ruse. Because the best politicians wouldn’t get as far as they do if they hadn’t already successfully convinced large numbers of people that they were distinct from -- read: better than -- the rest of us.And therein lies our dilemma. We hold to the belief that we are all equal, yet we yearn for distinctiveness for ourselves and those we choose to represent us. In a nation whose form of government exalts the illusion of uniformity among its citizens, we are collectively engaged in a struggle to be recognized as unique by our peers.
The editorial board publishes its endorsements for 17 seats on the Los Angeles Superior Court, and puts its money behind a House bill to force 401(k) managers to clarify the fees they charge ‘Jack and Jill Cubicle’:
Unfortunately, as this newspaper detailed in a series of articles in 2006, many employees aren’t being told how much of their nest egg is being frittered away on fees paid to the companies managing their 401(k)s. Buried in the fine print of incomprehensible forms or not disclosed at all, those fees can consume thousands of dollars over time. To address that problem, several lawmakers have introduced bills that would require mutual funds, insurers and other providers of retirement plans to make complete disclosures of their fees to employers and workers.
Readers react to the Supreme Court’s decision finding legal injections humane. Writes Joy Buckley, ‘State-sanctioned killing is barbaric, cruel and should be highly unusual. We should join the civilized countries of the world in eliminating it.’