I think I'm developing respiratory problems after reading Mittelstaedt's column! Yuck! This is even scarier than the illegals!!! Time to move....

Buy Gas Masks, Antonio
The mayor prefers the governor’s mansion over saving your lungs
By Alan Mittelstaedt

Last week was a horrible one for Los Angeles and anyone who plans to live here past 2010, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa dreams of commuting to his new job in Sacramento. Go ahead and pull out your Scorecard for Death and Stupidity and mark minus 10 points for clean air and a negative five for education.

For some reason, Angelenos are too fatalistic or blissfully out of the loop to revolt in the streets when the mayor blesses more heart-stopping port pollution – hooray, he forced the polluters to buy filters for public schools and double-pane windows for residents stuck in the Combat Zone of Capitalism, but why not make them pay for gas masks, too, so the kids can play at recess? – or incites more L.A. Unified political hijinks like his newest, sending his education czar into the quagmire known as L.A. Unified, to fill the No. 2 slot! Did he buy him a bulletproof vest?

You call this good government or cause for a recall? One enviro we greatly respect, the Coalition for Clean Air’s Martin Schlageter, says the deal allowing the TraPac shipping terminal to expand is actually a good one: “We’re never going to get back to the perfect starting point. But we have an opportunity to redress some wrongs, and we’re going to seize that.â€