This faceoff is a battle of institutions.

Personally, I would not have picked the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Police Department as two of the “worst things about Los Angeles.”

I think the LAPD is – for all its high-profile abuse cases and street-level bad-ass reputation – generally doing the best job it can with horribly outnumbered ranks and still managing to keep the bulk of the city safe at night. Nearly all LAPD officers do their jobs well.

I also think the Times is – for all its high-profile gaffes, blowhard op-ed columnists and tragically slow-on-the-uptake history of web strategizing – doing the best job it can with a horribly shrinking budget and still managing to show us news of some worth about the other institutions governing our lives. Nearly all L.A. Times journalists do their jobs well.

But the Metblogs audience insisted they face your vote because, perhaps, the Times and the LAPD are so damned important and should be so much better … Read the rest of this entry →

Oooh, this is a tough one because – in a sense – we brought both these curses on ourselves.

L.A. has the worst air in the United States because, by and large:

• We got addicted to cars early and permanently
• We then engineered one of the nation’s great public transit systems (the Red Car) out of existence
• We’re too lazy/busy/cheap/classist to use existing public transit, bikes or other alternative transportation, and
• Damn, we do like owning vintage V8s, gas-powered leaf-blowers and one of the largest, most diesel-spewing ports on the planet …

Read the rest of this entry →