I recently blogged here about misguided attempts to reduce obesity in South Central Los Angeles by banning new fast food eateries. In the wake of a Rand study that shows the folly of this plan, there are now calls to... "limit" convenience stores in the 'hood. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. These self-imagined do-gooders won't rest until no new private businesses are able to start up in that area. Also, below, I talk below about the likely big screen television ban in California. Yup - you read that right.

Jerry Hirsch of the Los Angeles Times reports on the misguided attempts to prevent obesity.

Separately, researchers looking at the shopping patterns of schoolchildren in urban Philadelphia found that more than half the 800 students they surveyed reported that they shopped at a corner store at least once a day, five times a week. Almost a third visited a store both before and after school.

On average, the students spent about $1 and purchased 356 calories of snack foods and drinks each visit. Chips, candy, sugary beverages and gum were the most frequent purchases, according to a study published online today. It also will appear in the November edition of Pediatrics, a medical journal.

How to curb such purchases is a top priority for policymakers attempting to reduce the obesity rates in poor communities.

What about free enterprise? What about freedom of choice?

"We need to look at a moratorium on these convenience stores," said Lark Galloway-Gilliam, executive director of Community Health Councils Inc., a nonprofit health policy and education organization in South Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles City Council is set to consider a proposal that would limit the density of these small food stores in South Los Angeles, said Councilwoman Jan Perry, a proponent of regulations adopted last year establishing a moratorium on new openings of fast-food restaurants whose 9th District includes much of South Los Angeles.

I know a sure-fire way to reduce obesity rates in that area: ban fat people from the area.

Marc Lifsher at the Los Angeles Times reports on the TV ban.  The industry, of course, is asking lawmakers to let consumers vote with their wallets.

But those pleas didn't appear to elicit much support from commissioners at a public hearing on the proposed rules that would set maximum energy-consumption standards for televisions to be phased in over two years beginning in January 2011. A vote could come as early as Nov. 4.

The association's views weren't shared by everyone in the TV business. Representatives of some TV makers, including top-seller Vizio Inc. of Irvine, said they would have little trouble complying with tighter state standards without substantially increasing prices.

So Vizio is happy that they'll have less competition. That's no surprise.

If all TVs met state standards, [Ken Rider commission staff engineer] added, California could avoid the $600-million cost of building a natural-gas-fired power plant.

And that’s what this is really about, right? Trying to avoid building new power plants. Sorry, but we're going to need new power plants. Start building!

The study was based on InfoUSA business data and a survey of 1,480 Los Angeles County residents. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health, with no financial support from the fast-food industry, Sturm said.

Contrary to "conventional wisdom," the density of fast-food chain restaurants per capita is actually less in South Los Angeles than in other parts of the city, said Sturm, a Rand senior economist.

They found that the far wealthier West Los Angeles has 29 fast-food chain establishments, 14 small food stores and 10 large supermarkets per 100,000 residents. South Los Angeles, by comparison, has 19 fast-food chain restaurants, 58 small food stores and three large grocery stores.

The authors said those data were at odds with "media reports about an over-concentration of fast-food establishments" in South Los Angeles.

Among those reports, the study cited a chart that accompanied a July 30, 2008, story in The Times. The chart said fast-food establishments represented 45% of all restaurants in South Los Angeles. That was a higher percentage than in any other section of the city.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, whose 8th District includes part of the area where the moratorium is in force, took exception to the Rand report.

However, the study found no difference in fruit and vegetable consumption between residents of South Los Angeles and people in other areas. Likewise, there was no difference in the proportion of people who participate in 300 minutes of exercise or more per week.

Residents of both West and South Los Angeles tend to eat out about 3.5 times a week, though South Los Angeles residents are more likely to obtain food from a food cart or truck rather than a sit-down restaurant, the study said. South Los Angeles residents also were likely to watch more television.

Most Mexicans think their lives would be better in the United States, and one in three said they'd move to the U.S. if they could, according to the latest findings on Mexican attitudes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Half of those who said they'd migrate north of the border said they would do so without permission, although recent data on immigration suggests that the flow of Mexicans north is slowing.

Attorneys for Lorena Lopez, mother of 19-month-old Suzie Pena, argued in the trial that officers should have retreated and negotiated further with Raul Pena, who was delirious on alcohol, cocaine and methamphetamine and holding his daughter hostage in the office of his car dealership on July 10, 2005.

The city contended in trial that officers attempted the rescue in the best tactical way possible, and that the baby's father was the only one to blame for her death because he chose to repeatedly hold her as a shield during the hours-long standoff.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who was being interviewed by The Times when a deputy city attorney came into his office to announce the news, jumped from his chair with a cheer and high-fived the lawyer, saying millions of city dollars had been in jeopardy.

"This is a case where nobody wins except the citizens, because no one should have been sued in this case," said Trutanich, who spent four hours vetting the evidence with the city's legal team before it went to trial.

Lopez, who worked cleaning houses to provide for her four children, said Pena appeared calm and normal, even though they had had a fight the night before and she had filed a police report. Within a few hours, he emerged from his used-car dealership holding Suzie in one arm and firing at officers with the other.

Police surrounded the block as Pena threatened to kill everybody, referring to himself as Tony Montana from the movie "Scarface."

Police officers successfully rescued Lopez's older daughter Ilsy, who was trapped in the dealership in the midst of gunfire.

But when they entered the building mistakenly believing Pena had been shot down, a barrage of gunfire was exchanged and Suzie was killed by a gunshot between her eyes from a high-velocity rifle.

a resolution calling for federal legislation urging the Iraqi government to prevent the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The resolution will be used by the city's government relations office to inform the federal government about its position on the issue.

It is a recommendation only.

"This is just too horrific for us not to acknowledge it," [openly homosexual Councilman Bill] Rosendahl said today, adding that Los Angeles is the first city to approve such a resolution.

A quick Google of Los Angeles employment data turns up the following numbers from 2006: The largest employer in Los Angeles County is the county itself, with 93,200 workers. Second largest? The Los Angeles Unified School District, with 74,632 employees.

After that is the city of Los Angeles with 53,471 workers, the federal government with 53,200 and 30,200 employed by the state of California.

These figures don't include the countless thousands of vendors or outside consultants or grifters who have grabbed a slice of the public money pie but whose income is not on the books as salary.

Why isn't Los Angeles a job center? We have every possible natural advantage, including one of the great ports on planet Earth.

One in five Los Angeles County residents -- nearly 2.2 million people -- are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues.

The total includes those receiving food stamps and general relief as well as other county-administered aid programs, such as in-home healthcare. The cost -- shouldered by the county, state and federal governments -- was $334 million a month by the end of last year, according to the latest report by the county's Department of Public Social Services.

The rising demand has left public assistance offices ill-equipped to deal with the growing multitude of indigent people. In some locations, lines routinely snake hundreds of feet outside entrances.

"It's a terrible, broken system, trying to open a restaurant. It devastates people."

This sentiment is echoed by restaurant owners across the city, who say that in its quest to ensure public safety and uphold environmental standards, the local government has constructed a Byzantine system of codes, permits and inspections that has obstructed the growth of new restaurants, tied business owners' hands -- sometimes to the point where the business has to close -- and has driven developers to seek work outside city limits.

Their beef is with inspectors who rigidly adhere to a one-size-fits-all application of codes and with the lack of communication between regulatory agencies. The latter can cause an inspector from the health department to sign off on, say, having an open drain behind a bar, and a plumbing inspector to demand a month later that the drain be closed.

When a business owner is faced with contradictory demands from the dozen agencies involved in the permitting process, things can get messy and expensive. (The L.A. departments of City Planning, Building and Safety, Transportation [for parking], the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation and the L.A. County Department of Public Health are the big five.)

That's why, City Councilman Eric Garcetti says, flexibility needs to be encouraged -- within reason and without jeopardizing public safety -- when it comes to code regulation. "L.A. has become one of the great food capitals of the world, but this has happened despite government, not because of it," he says. "Planning in L.A. is a full-contact sport."

In L.A., however, the system has grown so unwieldy that it has given birth to an entire class of operators known as expediters.

Navarrette gives the example of a small restaurant in Highland Park called Fidel's Pizza. It has been in business for more than 40 years, during which time the zoning for the lot it occupies was changed from business to residential. Recently, the county health department threatened to shut Fidel's down because it didn't have enough storage space. The elderly couple who own it built storage on the back and were then cited by code enforcement for building an illegal structure.

Sprinkler use would be restricted to two days a week under the proposal and, by summer, could be cut to one day a week if the drought continues, Villaraigosa said. The restrictions -- the first of six levels have been in place for more than a year -- and rate changes could be enacted by spring if approved by the City Council and DWP.

Water restrictions are nothing new in California, but since the last major drought in the early 1990s the state's population has grown by 9 million.

Court rulings to protect the delta smelt in the Sacramento Delta and a prolonged drought along the Colorado Basin also have reduced Southern California's water supplies from Northern California and the Colorado River.

A protest over the fatal shooting by a BART police officer of an unarmed man mushroomed into several hours of violence Wednesday night as demonstrators smashed storefronts and cars, set several cars ablaze and blocked streets in downtown Oakland.

The roving mob expressed fury at police and frustration over society's racial injustice. Yet the demonstrators were often indiscriminate, frequently targeting the businesses and prized possessions of people of color.

• Show up at any public meeting to demand that not one cent of taxpayer money be spent to address the conditions in any way other than finding the rioters, arresting them, prosecuting them, and incarcerating them.
• Discourage charities from spending any money to help any family in the area with a member of the household who participated.
• Encourage insurance companies to pressure those making claims to relocate out of the area, and to charge those who stay rates that will not shift the costs to their customers outside of the area.
• Discourage businesses from giving any preference to hiring or accommodating (such as company-provided transportation) people from those areas.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday will unveil a $5-billion, five-year plan to build housing for the poor and middle class.

The blueprint, which calls for thousands of new homes along subway and bus lines, and developments with people of all incomes living together, would, according to the mayor's deputies, alter the look and feel of the city forever.

But the plan, which many City Council members and business and housing groups said they had not yet seen, is being released while the housing market is a shambles, the state is facing a massive budget shortfall and the economy is teetering -- challenges that lead some to wonder whether it is feasible.

"I know that budgets are tight . . . credit is almost nonexistent," Villaraigosa said Saturday to a room full of community and labor groups pushing for more affordable housing. "But we're going to reject the cynics . . . and build a brighter future for those kids who are in the corner over there."

The mayor got a standing ovation at the union hall near downtown Los Angeles, and chants of "Si, se puede" ("Yes, we can") from the dozens of people in matching red T-shirts in his audience.

Some developers object to a so-called mixed-income provision that would require [subsidized] housing to be included in new housing developments. They say that such a policy -- which labor and housing groups have been pushing for years -- would cast a pall over entrepreneurial efforts.

"It is going to make housing less affordable for everybody," said downtown activist Brady Westwater.

On the other hand, community and labor groups, key players in the city's politics, are lobbying hard for the so-called mixed-income plan.

Los Angeles was designated the least affordable metropolitan area in the country last year, according to the Business Council report, because so many people pay so much of their incomes for housing.

The city also has the largest homeless population in the nation.

In addition, although private developers have built many high-end apartment units and condos over the last few years, there has not been a similar increase for households earning less than $75,000 per year.

Under the mayor's plan, the city would pledge $200 million a year for five years from various sources, including the city's Housing Authority, its affordable housing trust fund and its Community Redevelopment Agency, to build affordable housing.

New condominium projects in neighborhoods such as Brentwood, Studio City and other affluent parts of Los Angeles could be required to include units for very poor people if the City Council approves a new housing plan as expected today.

The commitment to a so-called inclusionary zoning law, which has been a contentious topic in Los Angeles for years, is part of a comprehensive housing plan that the city must adopt to be eligible for hundreds of millions of dollars in state housing bond funds.

Advocates for the poor hail the plan as a significant symbolic move.

"The city is taking a huge step forward in figuring out how to address the housing crisis," said Peter Kuhns, an organizer for the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a group of low-income residents.

On Tuesday, a council committee gave preliminary approval to Councilwoman Jan Perry's proposal to ban new fast-food eateries in South L.A. for a year, with possible six-month extensions beyond that.

In so doing, the council sent a clear, offensive message to South L.A.'s residents: Unlike other Angelenos, you can't be trusted to make your own dietary decisions. You need us, your exalted leaders, to make such choices for you.