They used to be called the Five Little Kings, each representing more constituents than any member of Congress. With the recent swearing in of Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors now can be seen as four queens and a king.
The line of people standing outside the event in downtown Los Angeles snaked out the door and down to a sidewalk—but there were no velvet ropes and it wasn’t at Nokia Center or L.A. LIVE. The venue was the Kenneth Hahn County Hall of Administration.
The hundreds who waited Tuesday morning in muggy heat had come to weigh in on a measure before the Board of Supervisors to increase the minimum wage in L.A. County’s unincorporated areas.
Perla Lagunas and her kids traveled from North Hills in the San Fernando Valley to show support. “I represent a low-income community,” she said. Her mother was a garment worker who struggled with bills and groceries. “My mom worked with people who wouldn’t pay her a good wage. We grew up so poor– sometimes we didn’t have food. We want to let the community know—wake up!”
Representatives from the National Council of Jewish Women stood in line to enter the hearing.
In 1894, in Le Lys Rouge, Anatole France wrote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”
Over time, this phrase, (probably along with “Let them eat cake”), has become the enduring expression of those things that sound like equality but, in ignoring differences in station, circumstance or means, become absurd, because, in reality, they would only be applied to one of the two groups allegedly being treated in equal fashion.
Such is the case with Prop. 32. This proposition would bar contributions of funds for “political purposes” (further defined below) only if those funds were collected through payroll deductions. The measure is crafted to look as though it is limiting the ability of both unions and corporations to make campaign contributions to candidates or measures, but, in truth,
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