The Lakers Lesson

That’s the sense of it. But as we all saw Friday, you can‘t always put a price tag on what such a team might come to mean to Los Angeles. Whatever that is, it can even make a cop smile.

Unjust desserts

After 15 years of generally distinguished service as 6th District councilwoman, Ruth Galanter deserved better. But she didn’t get it. Her colleagues, not without a good dollop of saccharine hypocrisy, last week catapulted her district from the Westside into the heart of the San Fernando Valley. All for the good of people in her district past and future. Even after all of the constituents in both areas who were present spoke against the proposal.

So for the next eight or nine months, Galanter and staff will have to learn an entire raft of new communities, streets and constituents. And by the time they can reasonably be expected to have done that, they‘ll very likely be out of their jobs after next March’s election. This has never before happened to a living Los Angeles council member.

But its accomplishment suggests something that no one thought to predict about term limits when they were passed 10 years ago, supposedly to protect us from professional career politicians. Instead of a bunch of little Cincinnatuses, returning to their plows after a couple brief terms of office, what we got looks more and more like a pool of political piranhas, intent on using their eight-year spans to prepare the ground for election to a higher office. And doing whatever they have to do to reach that goal.