Public Interest

The "heavy hand of government" is often that of the public interest yelling, "Stop, thief!" CHARLES T. NEWTON Del Mar

Citing a state investigation of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum's top executive, City Councilman and stadium Commissioner Bernard C. Parks demanded Friday that a Monday vote on surrendering stewardship of the venue to USC be canceled. Parks also asked the Los Angeles County district attorney's office to investigate Coliseum Interim General Manager John Sandbrook, who recently became the subject of an inquiry by state ethics officials. They are looking into allegations that the executive illegally sought a job with USC while he was representing the public interest in lease negotiations with the private university.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is poised to greenlight the proposed merger of the big cable company Comcast Corp. with the huge entertainment conglomerate NBC-Universal. Genachowski wants to impose several conditions on the deal to ensure that the resulting entertainment behemoth can't use its dominating power to shut down competition, jack up rates for customers, and generally undermine the public interest. The likely result of those conditions?

The two groups of high school protesters — one dressed as graduates with caps and gowns, the other donning orange jail jumpsuits — huddled together outside Van Nuys City Hall on Monday chanting: "Pre-med! Pre-jobs! Not pre-prison!" Inside, a special meeting of the City Council's Public Safety Committee discussed a proposal that would strike down a long-standing law allowing police to cite students who are late to class. About 100 high school students dressed up to depict what they called the criminalization of students for tardiness.

If you’re not alarmed by caramel colorings, you soon might be. A consumer group has urged the FDA to ban some of them. One guess as to which group. Yes, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "The "caramel coloring" used in Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other foods is contaminated with two cancer-causing chemicals and should be banned," the organization announced. Its news release helpfully links to the petition it filed with the FDA. The American Beverage Assn.

The Federal Communications Commission says that, in exchange for the right to use the airwaves we all own, a broadcaster must operate in the "public interest," airing "programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community." From what a USC Norman Lear Center study has concluded -- Los Angeles television news stations manage just 22 seconds of local government coverage for every half hour on the air -- broadcasters follow FCC rules like L.A. drivers follow stop signs: as helpful reminders for anyone who doesn't happen to be in a big hurry.

Last month, America's drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, stood alongside President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich to announce a five-year, $1-billion TV ad campaign urging teenagers to "say no to drugs" like marijuana, cocaine and heroin. The commercials are far from perfect: They fail to target alcohol abuse and say nothing about drunk driving, for example. But the biggest problem with McCaffrey's latest campaign is the $1 billion being paid to TV networks out of taxpayer money.

Industry discharged 1 billion pounds of toxic chemicals into U.S. waterways from 1992 to 1996, and the Mississippi River was the most heavily used dumping site, public interest advocates said Friday. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group charged that many of the chemicals are known to cause health problems and called for more information about them. "Millions of Americans rely on our waterways for drinking water sources, and swimming and fishing destinations.

Now that Inglewood voters have firmly spanked Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in the company's attempt to circumvent local ordinances and the City Council, it would be gratifying to see other business leaders abandon such attempts to take their cases "to the people" by spending lavishly on initiative elections. Gratifying, but unrealistic.

THERE'S a story about a group of university professors gathered for drinks in the rooms of a distinguished Viennese colleague. In the course of the evening, their talk turns to what each might want, if they could have anything in the world. Their wishes take a variety of forms, until finally the choice comes round to the host, who takes a long pull on his pipe and says, "Well, if I really could have anything I wanted, anything at all, I think I would choose ... permanent delusions of grandeur."

The panel that oversees the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum had an opportunity in 2007 to work out a long-term lease and management agreement with the stadium's primary tenant, the University of Southern California, and this page urged the commissioners not to miss their chance. The Coliseum was still making money at the time, but the university was threatening to leave, and without USC football as a guaranteed big ticket every other Saturday each autumn, the commission would have been hard-pressed to turn a profit.

A cracked cosmonaut helmet, footsteps in the moon dust, a mysterious flash of light outside a spaceship window — these are some of the images the Weinstein Co. has released from "Apollo 18," a documentary-style sci-fi thriller opening Friday that the studio is marketing as a movie culled from "found footage" from a U.S. space mission. "In 1972, the United States sent two astronauts on a secret mission to the moon," the trailer says. "Despite decades of denial by NASA and the Department of Defense, classified footage of the mission was leaked to the media.

A judge has ordered the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to pay legal fees to The Times in litigation over the release of identities of officers involved in shootings, finding that the issue was a matter of public interest. Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ordered the department to pay nearly $173,000 in attorney's fees incurred over a year and a half of litigation in a California Public Records Act lawsuit filed by The Times in 2009. The newspaper had sued after the department denied a request for the names of deputies involved in three fatal shootings.

Policymakers in Washington agree that more airwaves should be made available for wireless services, but they clash over some important details — for example, how to make the most efficient use of the prime airwaves occupied by TV broadcasters. There's also a philosophical split over whether to set aside some of these additional airwaves for unlicensed uses, rather than selling them all to the highest bidders. Lawmakers should heed the lessons of history on that front. The experience with Wi-Fi shows that making spectrum available for wireless spurs innovation and broad public benefits, although it's impossible to predict what that innovation will look like or what those benefits will be. The demand for spectrum is being driven by the phenomenal popularity of smartphones and mobile applications.

Marion Stiebel Siciliano, an abstract painter and philanthropist who was active in environmental causes and inner-city development, died July 17 at her Beverly Hills home. She was 86. FOR THE RECORD: Marion Stiebel Siciliano: An earlier version of this article misspelled Marion Stiebel Siciliano's maiden name as Steibel. The cause was complications of a stroke, said her son John. Siciliano was a self-taught artist who began painting in 1969. In a major show at Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Fine Arts Complex in 1997, she displayed what Times art critic William Wilson described as a "hard-edge abstract style" that bore the influences of the German Bauhaus and artists such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly.

The absurdity of the Dodgers' situation came into particularly sharp focus Friday. On the field, the last-place Dodgers edged the San Diego Padres, 1-0, to move to within one game of their offensively inept visitors. On the phone from Arizona, a popular former player with his own well-documented history of financial troubles was saying that his public interest in purchasing the Dodgers had resulted in his dismissal from their front office. "It doesn't take away from my love for the team," said Steve Garvey, a 10-time All-Star who won a World Series with the Dodgers in 1981 and played on the Padres' 1984 World Series team.

Who among us could calculate how many bottles of beer were sold when the movie "Total Recall" featured Miller Lite and Miller Genuine Draft on nine different occasions? Or how many bottles of Coors sold because its advertising sign popped up five times in the same cinematic classic? And how about that one call for Killian Red? Did it stimulate the marketplace and the palate?

Last Sunday, The Times reported that Gov. Jerry Brown has been taking thousands of dollars each month from donors to pay the rent on his Sacramento loft, while refusing his official state housing stipend. In the same day's paper, it was reported that as part of a "public-private partnership," corporations and foundations would pay several million dollars toward the successful Summer Night Lights anti-gang program in L.A. parks this year. And a few weeks earlier, the paper noted that the Los Angeles Unified School District was taking money from developer Eli Broad, entrepreneur Casey Wasserman and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pay the salaries of about 20 top officials in the school bureaucracy.

Beneath a crown of black curls, Benjamin Salinas offers his clients encouraging words about past courtroom victories and the chance to make history. Salinas, 21, and six equally earnest colleagues seated with him in a sterile conference room have yet to graduate from law school. But their clients, half a dozen homemakers and retirees with hearing aids and support hose, seem unbothered. They are desperate to recover their life savings, lost in an alleged investment scam, and this may be their best chance of getting justice.