Opinion: In today’s pages: Manny, Fidel and hot air

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The Times editorial board gives a qualified ‘no’ today to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to sell some of the state’s real estate. The idea might be worth considering, the editorial board concludes, but it’s not going to help with the state’s current financial crisis. It would take years to complete Schwarzenegger’s proposed sales of such iconic properties as San Quentin and the Memorial Coliseum, which would have to go for bargain prices in today’s market, anyway.

The board applauds Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Christine Varney’s pledge to hold big business to a tougher antitrust standard than the previous administration did, and points to the European Commission’s fine on Intel as an example of how such standards might play out. As for former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cuban President Fidel Castro, both of whom have been busily talking up the policies of yesterday while trying to forestall the progress of new administrations, the advice goes more like: You worked hard, now take a break. Spend more time with your family. And for heaven’s sake, quiet, already.

On the other side of the fold, author Lisa Sweetingham, a Manny Ramirez fan brought up short by his suspension for violating baseball’s drug rules, reviews the reasons why so many athletes -- and so many others -- have taken hormones and ‘accessory’ medications. And environmental activist Bill McKibben writes that the combined might of environment groups is still too small to push faster government action on global warming. That, he says, will take grassroots action of the type his 350.org group is promoting.

Illustration by Patrick O’Connor for the Times