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ometimes itseems like the only
consistent policy coming out of the
White House these days is vindic-
tiveness.
Case in point: Still seething over
California’s end run around its plan to roll
back fuel economy and greenhouse gas
emissions targets on new cars, the Trump
administration has launched an antitrust
investigation into four automakers that
reached an agreement with the state to
make their cars run cleaner.
The administration also sent a letter to
California officials warning darkly of “legal
consequences” if the state does not aban-
don the agreement. And it’s considering re-
voking California’s long-standing authority
to set tougher auto pollution standards
than those required by the federal govern-
ment — an authority Congress has provided
at least since 1967 in recognition of the
state’s own efforts to clean its dirty air.
This is a blatant attempt to use the
power of the federal government to bully
companies that disagree with the president.
It’s especially galling that the administra-
tion would use the threat of a Justice De-
partment investigation to pressure au-
tomakers to make cars that are worse for
consumers, worse for the environment and
worse for a rapidly warming planet.
In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced
that the four companies — Ford Motor Co.,
Volkswagen of America, Honda and BMW —
had reached a deal with the state in which
they agreed to ignore the Trump adminis-
tration’s plan to relax tailpipe emissions
standards. Instead they would continue
making their fleets more fuel-efficient and
cleaner, albeit at a slightly slower pace than
the original Obama-era rules required.
The rationale behind the deal was
straightforward and hardly the kind of ne-
farious backroom dealing suggested by the
Trump administration. California has the
unique authority under the Clean Air Act to
set its own auto emissions standards, and
other states can adopt California’s rules.
Carmakers plan their fleets years in ad-
vance and don’t want to sell different cars to
meet different standards state by state.
They want one nationwide standard. Au-
tomakers pushed the Trump administra-
tion to forgo the rollback, saying it would
hurt their bottom lines and produce “unten-
able” instability. They wanted a compro-
mise with California. The administration re-
fused. So a handful of companies volun-
teered to meet California’s standard.
Sources told the Wall Street Journal that
the Justice Department’s antitrust enforc-
ers had acted on their own — really? — out
of concern that the four major automakers
had conspired to limit competition by
agreeing to a tougher California standard.
Under the department’s logic, consumers
would be harmed by reducing the availabili-
ty of lower-mileage vehicles in the state.
But it’s routine for regulators to get in-
dustry feedback on rules they’re developing.
And antitrust experts say there’s nothing il-
legal about industry figures banding to-
gether to support a public policy, even when
members of that industry take opposing po-
sitions on what the policy should be. There’s
so little legal justification for what the Jus-
tice Department is doing, Congress should
conduct an inquiry into why it’s happening.
It’s laughable to think that the Justice
Department is suddenly worried about car-
tels. According to the American Antitrust
Institute, enforcement of federal antitrust
law has taken a nosedive in the last two and
a half years. Meanwhile, the administra-
tion’s torching of federal regulations has ter-
minated countless pro-competitive policies
adopted by its predecessors.
No, the Justice Department’s move fits
into a pattern of the Trump administration
bringing the hammer down on those who
rile the onion-skinned president. Examples
include the department’s lawsuit against
AT&T’s acquisition of CNN’s owner, Time
Warner (the lawsuit failed), its effort to deny
local policing grants to states like California
that don’t support the administration’s im-
migration policies, and the president’s
threat to withhold disaster aid to Califor-
nia’s fire victims because of the state’s log-
ging rules.
Now the president is mad that car com-
panies don’t want the regulatory relief he’s
proposed, and he’s mad that companies
chose to side with California. Rather than
admit he was wrong and accept defeat, his
administration is willing to use its immense
power to try to punish dissent.Bullying to stop cleaner cars
Trump administration’s antitrust
enforcers target California’s deal
with automakers to cut emissions.
F
or homeless people adrift on the
streets or moored temporarily in a
shelter bed, an outreach worker
can be the lifeline to everything
from a bottle of water to a perma-
nent supportive housing unit. At a time
when passersby routinely ignore homeless
people, outreach workers are the ones who
dotalk to homeless people on the street, re-
turning numerous times to win their trust,
get them services and steer them toward
housing. It’s slow, painstaking work, but it’s
essential to getting people off the streets.
But how many people is it getting off the
streets? Not a lot of them, according to a
performance audit of the Los Angeles
Homeless Services Authority. The audit,
conducted by Los Angeles City Controller
Ron Galperin, said the agency fell signifi-
cantly short of its modest goals to get people
living in encampments into housing or serv-
ices. The audit looked only at the work that
LAHSA did on a special contract with the
city to focus on street encampments there.
Out of 6,634 people contacted by out-
reach workers this past fiscal year, LAHSA
workers “engaged” (or began working with)
4,199. The goal was to place 20% of the peo-
ple engaged by workers into short-term
housing or shelter. Instead, the agency
placed 14%. Similarly, the goal was to put
10% into permanent housing, but only 4%
went into housing. The agency also hoped to
put 25% of the people who said they had a
mental illness into mental health services.
Instead, 4% sought services — that the
agency knows of.
It’s troubling that LAHSA could not
scale even these low bars that it set for itself.
The city and LAHSA need to revamp their
goals and how they get measured and then
expect them to be met.
One big problem that both the city audi-
tor and LAHSA noted was that most of the
outreach was reactive. LAHSA workers are
obligated to show up at an encampment be-
fore a Bureau of Sanitation cleanup, and
sometimes they get that call at the last min-
ute, according to LAHSA officials. Having a
phalanx of sanitation workers and police of-
ficers standing by, waiting to dismantle
tents, isn’t the ideal backdrop for outreach
work.
LAHSA officials say that they are al-
ready doing more proactive outreach at en-
campments in the city. That’s smart. But
the bigger issue here is what should be the
goal of outreach overall? LAHSA’s outreach
work and management of homeless services
span the entire county. The grim reality is
that no matter how many of LAHSA’s 851
outreach workers fan out across the area,
they cannot offer all or even most of the
county’s nearly 59,000 homeless people per-
manent housing or a shelter bed. There just
isn’t enough to go around. If being an out-
reach worker is a job that depends entirely
on whether you can get a homeless person
to trust you, telling someone that you’re
putting him or her on a mythical waiting list
for housing is the worst kind of betrayal.
In some ways, though, with the housing
supply so uncertain, outreach is more criti-
cal than ever.
Outreach can also be intervention —
helping people on the street gain access to
such essentials as trash cans, a mobile
shower and toiletries. It can mean helping
people rebuild lives — taking them to a med-
ical appointment or the Department of Mo-
tor Vehicles for a new ID, or helping them
sign up for welfare. And people still need to
be convinced by outreach workers to answer
the lengthy set of questions at the front end
of the Coordinated Entry System, which
homeless people go through to get housing
or services from LAHSA or publicly funded
agencies. The system determines who gets
priority for whatever housing does become
available.
LAHSA officials say they are already em-
phasizing these kinds of outreach efforts
and analyzing how well they are going, as
opposed to measuring only how many peo-
ple get placed into housing. They also
should get a better handle on available shel-
ter beds. Scarce as they are, they do turn
over, and LAHSA needs to fast-track an app
it has been working on to provide outreach
workers with real-time information about
the availability of shelter beds. Part of the
problem is getting shelter operators to pro-
vide up-to-date information. Why not pay
them to do so?
As LAHSA’s chief program officer, Heidi
Marston, said, “Housing will always be the
North Star.” And it should be the ultimate
goal. But, in the meantime, outreach work-
ers have to do a better job getting homeless
people the services that are available now.LAHSA’s outreach falls short
The Republicans afraid
to take on Trump need to
look across the pond to
their British cousins to see
how 23 members of Parlia-
ment from the prime min-
ister’s own party bravely
defied their leader in their
opposition to a no-deal
Brexit.
Republican members of
Congress will likely be
judged poorly in the 2020
elections and even worse
by history.
Nato Flores
Los AngelesWalked by dogs
through life
Re “A neighborhood at the
pace of a dog,” Opinion,
Sept. 5Thank you for publish-
ing Carol Mithers’ heart-
warming account of her
many years of walking
through the same neigh-
borhoods accompanied by
her dog Casey. I was moved
by feelings of joy and sad-
ness as I could totally
relate to her story, surely as
countless other readers
could.
My wife and I walked
three generations of Ger-
man shepherds through
the same neighborhoods
and parks, greeting friends
and dogs and becoming
acutely aware of the slow
but inevitable changes
occurring over time.
Families with children
grown and long gone were
replaced by younger fam-
ilies with new children and
dogs, giving the neighbor-
hood a constant feeling of
rebirth. There were griev-
ing widows and widowers,
many who moved to live
with children, others stay-
ing put facing an unknown
future.
My shepherd Mina and
I walk alone these days, as
the passage of time has
taken my wife of almost 60
years from us. We still walk
every day, our slowing gait
a reminder that our time
together is limited. We are
sustained by the beautiful
times that we shared to-
gether and the occasional
phone call from children
and grandchildren along
our route.
Bob Constantine
Placentia::First, let me clarify: I’m
pet neutral, not a lover or a
hater.
While reading about the
appreciation Mithers
gained for her neighbor-
hood walking her dog over
many years, I had a realiza-
tion of an odd contradic-
tion.
Why is it that we, as
humans, are outraged and
disgusted by human public
urination (and worse), but
have no problem with dogs
that pee on posts, side-
walks, bushes and lawns?
Just asking.
Marty Wilson
WhittierThe inevitable
end of print
Re “A new threat to news-
papers,” editorial, Sept. 5I’m an avid newspaper
reader. I trace my obses-
sion to eagerly awakening
as a 5-year-old and being
the first to the Sunday
morning comics section.
That was in 1955.
I also can remember,
although they were already
being phased out, elevator
operators and gas station
attendants.
Until two years ago I
had the feel of newsprint in
my hands, but the paper
was getting smaller and the
price was getting higher. I
called to cancel my sub-
scription and was grate-
fully talked into trying the
electronic version. I now
receive my paper as early
as 3:30 a.m. and have more
hours to peruse it and no
longer miss the feel of
holding it in my hands.
Whether or not Assem-
bly Bill 5 is enacted and
newspapers are forced to
give costly employee pro-
tections and benefits to the
contractors who deliver
their products, it’s only a
matter of time until print
goes the way of other
anachronisms.
The Times is still the
finest newspaper in the
land and should concen-
trate on its electronic
version.
Ron Garber
Duarte::
Please, state lawmak-
ers, do not enact any legis-
lation that will curtail
newspaper deliveries.
One of the best parts of
my day is reading the L.A.
Times at breakfast. I read
all sections (except
Sports) every day and have
done so for many years. I
don’t want to read my
paper online; I want the
actual newspaper with
pages to turn and stories to
read and reread.
I also remember my
brother delivering the
newspaper from his bike
when we were children. I
sometimes rode my bike
along with him.
I do not want to hurt the
delivery people or the
newspaper business. I
simply want my daily pa-
per along with my daily
coffee.
Marlene Bronson
Los Angeles::
The Times’ Business
columnists have criticized
large companies that em-
ploy independent contrac-
tors versus regular employ-
ees to avoid paying benefits
and livable wages. It’s now
hypocritical for The Times’
Editorial Board to want to
avoid paying the delivery
people as employees and to
compare them with paper-
boys on bicycles.
I realize that news-papers are dealing with
financial difficulties, as
many of us are. But you
can’t have it both ways,
criticizing businesses that
hire independent contrac-
tors while also relying on
those contractors.
Alan Yamashiro
San Juan CapistranoAddiction
awareness
Re “No easy matter to get
off his drug,” column, Sept.
6David Lazarus’ column
on his battle to beat de-
pendence on antidepres-
sants is courageous, in-
sightful and very human. It
puts a face on addiction to
prescription drugs.
Drawing readers into
his struggle with diabetes
and dependency on the
medication used to treat
related chronic insomnia
helps lift the stigma of
addiction, drug dependen-
cy and other behavioral
disorders.
Lazarus is a successful
and well respected profes-
sional who took a risk on
the public stage, exposing
very private details of his
life. At the same time, he
explained to us the magni-
tude of the problem he
shares with many other
people — the rich and poor,
young and old, executives
and high school students,
and everyone in between.
A spotlight like this on
prescription drug depend-
ency and the issues that
surround it are crucial to
promoting the awareness
that those who suffer are
certainly not alone.
Rhonda Medows, M.D.
Renton, Wash.
The writer is president
of population health man-
agement at Providence St.
Joseph Health.::
What most people fail to
understand is that some
mental illness is the result
of malfunctioning aspects
of the brain, and to talk
about weaning people off a
helpful medication is like
talking about weaning
heart patients off their
statins or weaning diabet-
ics off insulin.
Regardless of what the
causes may be, depression
is real, and the use of medi-
cations that relieve suffer-
ing and allow people to
lead happier and more
productive lives should not
be attacked as some kind
of special dependency that
is indicative of a moral
failing.
Bruce Stenman
Prunedale, Calif.So long, MD-80
Re “Loved and hated,
MD-80 plane is retired by
airline,” Business, Sept. 5My fondest “memory” of
the MD-80 was trying to
get off of one as quickly as
possible.
I was one of those Mc-
Donnell Douglas employ-
ees who volunteered to be
part of the federally man-
dated 90-second emer-
gency evacuation test.
What started out as a
Saturday morning casually
sitting in a fully occupied
MD-80 turned into a frantic
effort to deplane as quickly
as possible. It didn’t help
that one of the emergency
exits was deliberately
blocked, to imitate a real-
life possibility.
Running back and forth
between the wing and rear
exits, I finally saw my best
chance was the tail emer-
gency ramp, and out the
plane I went. We cheered
when the last person exited
the plane.
We were later invited to
view a video made of the
evacuation. I can still re-
member my embarrass-
ment as my fellow evacuees
and I viewed my indecisive
jaunt up and down the
empty aisle.
I wish I could have been
on one of those final flights.
With luck, it would have
been my best exit.
Jim Endsley
LakewoodProfiles in patriotism
Re “Lawmakers vote to stop no-deal Brexit,” Sept. 5Members of the British Parliament demonstrated
their patriotism and concern for the welfare of their
constituents by passing a bill to block Prime Minister
Boris Johnson’s foolish move to leave the European
Union by Oct. 31 even without an agreement.
C-SPAN covered much of the debate, and the
arguments presented in support of the bill were well
reasoned and illustrated an informed concern for the
nation’s welfare. It is ironic that the country our
Founding Fathers left to ultimately create a “more
perfect union” is properly exercising checks on the
imbalance exerted by Johnson.
However, the Republican-controlled Senate in our
country repeatedly fails to check the conduct of the
executive branch. President Trump has repeatedly
engaged in acts contrary to both the spirit and the letter
of the Constitution.
Perhaps the Senate should learn from the House of
Commons what it means to serve your country.
Terry Shenkman
Culver CityChris J RatcliffeGetty Images
ANTI-BREXIT demonstrators rally outside Par-
liament in London on Wednesday before a key vote.EXECUTIVECHAIRMANDr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
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FOUNDED DECEMBER 4, 1881 Sue Horton OP-ED ANDSUNDAYOPINIONEDITOR