Parking pass
Re "L.A. officials get special clout on parking tickets," May 20, and "L.A. drops its parking Gold Cards," May 21
Sporting event tickets, concert tickets and now parking tickets: It's been a tough year for L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
The city continues to cry poverty and look for ways to increase fees and taxes, and yet it paid a contractor to provide favors to insiders by reducing parking fines or voiding tickets entirely, without explanation.
Reviewing City Controller Wendy Greuel's findings, I have a suggestion for filling L.A.'s coffers: If you actually collect on the tickets for which police and firefighters have been given a pass "for many years," you could probably help pay the salaries of those police officers and firefighters enough to stop threatening them with layoffs because of budget constraints.
Gary R. Albin
Long Beach
In my 34-year career in law enforcement, one of my assignments was to manage the parking enforcement program of an L.A. suburb. Parking enforcement, while necessary, creates a good deal of resentment among the public. My experience was that we had a constant battle to avoid improper pressure to void or cancel citations for people with political connections.
Los Angeles (despite some hollow denials) institutionalized special treatment for people with political connections with the aptly named "Gold Card" program.
As with so many of these sad issues reported by The Times, I am reminded of Orwell's phrase: "All animals are equal , but some animals are more equal than others."
Chris Keller
West Covina
Toward peace in the Middle East
Re "Netanyahu pushes back in U.S. visit," May 21
If President Obama is going to impose on Israel that acceptance of the pre-1967 borders with land swaps is the starting point rather than the end point of negotiations, why doesn't he also impose on the Palestinians acceptance of the reality that the claims of Palestinian refugees and their descendents will be resolved outside the boundaries of Israel?
As the statements of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Nakba Day demonstrate, even for so-called Palestinian moderates, this conflict at its core is more about 1948 than 1967.
Rick Stampler
Los Angeles
It seems very odd that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others insist that the pre-1967 borders would be "indefensible" when Israel did such an amazing job of defending them in 1967.