Opinion: In today’s pages: Paranoia and Proposition 13
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For Proposition 13’s 30th birthday, The Times editorial board suggests a makeover:
Proposition 13 turns 30 today, which means it’s officially no longer young. In wishing it a happy birthday and ushering it into a healthy middle age, we want it to slim down, get a checkup, consider some cosmetic surgery, hang out with a better crowd and start acting more like a mature, responsible citizen than an unruly teenager.
The board urges the U.N. to act against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his enabler, South Africa. The board also asks if Venezuelen leader Hugo Chavez has good reason to be paranoid about the U.S.
Columnist Joel Stein wishes he’d gone to sleepaway camp so he could’ve networked with future Jewish Hollywood players. UCLA School of Medicine Dean Gerald S. Levey responds to a liver transplant controvery and says doctors at UCLA don’t play God. And Advocate associate editor Neal Broverman wonders how the initiative process went so wrong that this November it could encode discrimination into the state Constitution.
Readers discuss the campaign for president. Two readers reference Martin Luther King, one demands Barack Obama pick Hillary Clinton for the No. 2 slot, and Australian Stephen Yolland asks why Americans call Obama black: ‘It must be the hair.’
*Cartoon by Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader