The Week in Review
11.20.09.

1. UC Increases Feed - This summer, a diminished state budget left our UC Regents with a difficult choice: drastically cut school spending, and subsequently cripple the once-prized public schools, or raise tuition costs and face the wrath of its students. In the end, the Regents opted for the latter, finally deciding to hike annual undergraduate fees above $10,000 this past week. And although the powers-that-be did plea for $1.8 billion from the state in order to avoid any increases (a gesture that might hint at some shred of guilt), it doesn't seem to have been enough for those students who have since run amok.

2. Students Protest - Yep, feeling forgotten in the midst of budgetary crisis, undergraduates seized control of buildings at both UCLA and UC Berkeley this past week. More recent reports allege of officers even tazing two UCLA students--certainly a bad idea at a school with such a robust history of police-student tension. Will this be the beginning of a long-term battle? Or will our well-known historical amnesia soon set in?

3. BART Murder Trial Moves South - And that's not the only tension in the southland. Authorities have also decided to transfer the infamous BART murder trial down to Los Angeles, a case in which the prosecution alleges that a Bay Area police officer shot an already docile black man inside an Oakland BART station last New Year's Eve. The transfer to Los Angeles, rather than to the less crowded courthouses of San Diego, hence comes as a result of the case's proceeding racialization, something that has certain people worried that the case will rile up the supposedly diluted tensions of the Rodney King era.

4. Murders Down, Hospital Back - In search of evidence of social progress? You'll be happy to know that Los Angeles, barring catastrophe, is on track to register less homicides this year than in any other of the so-called 'modern era'. The current tally is at 265 since January, sixty-three less than this time last year. When compounding that surprising figure with the reinvention of the infamous Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, now under hopefully more competent management, these difficult times do appear at least a bit more manageable.

5. Marijuana Dispensaries - Yet, what do we find our City Council working on? Certainly not crime rates or health care for the poor. Nope, it's almost exclusively marijuana that holds the hearts and minds of Los Angelinos right now. And even if the City Council is flashing its pro-marijuana wings, the District Attorney would like you to know that he will be having none of it. In fact, he's now going right at City Council, announcing he has every intention of closing down all eight hundred dispensaries.

6. Council Talks Cats, Should Talk Subways - If not marijuana, what else do we find on the City Council agenda? Well, for some reason, they've decided it's time to get to the bottom of cat declawing--an issue for the ages? LA Weekly certainly ripped into the council on this one, claws and all, wondering how they could discuss such a trivial point of policy when over one in ten Californians are propped up on a couch, desperately searching for an income source. Still, as far as local incompetence is concerned, it's kind of nice to see something passed at least every once in a while. And by the way, before it's too late, maybe they should reconsider that Westside subway plan. I mean, wouldn't a more elaborate network on the Eastside make a bit more sense? After all, the truth is that the average commuter isn't exactly parked up along Wilshire Blvd.

7. Scraping the Constitution - Getting off that frustration station, polls seem to be indicating that Californians are set on scrapping our robust, convoluted state constitution, opting to start from scratch instead. If you haven't noticed, it's those budget initiatives that are causing the annual conundrums, as we, the citizens, continue to ask the state to provide more and more services, only to then express outrage when they have to raise taxes in order to fund them. Hello?

8. Changing of the Governorship - It's a mess up there in Sac-town, and no one knows that better than our lame duck governor, who has decided that politics isn't all it's cracked up to be. Yes, Arnold will be exiting out of politics altogether when all is said and done next year. But very quickly, the seemingly inevitable return of Jerry Brown doesn't seem quite so inevitable, as ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman surprisingly received 40% of the vote in a recent poll. Maybe Ms. Whitman can teach us how to auction off even more of our state than we already have