*At last, a little sanity at City Hall

Councilman Paul Krekorian wonders what the rush is all about in approving a downtown stadium plan, especially in the middle of the city's massive budget crisis. From the LAT:

"I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having the city set aside its other important priorities in order to go to extraordinary lengths to lay the groundwork for a stadium plan that none of us have seen," Krekorian said. "I don't think we should spend any time being distracted or diverted from the most important issue of our day, which is the budget crisis, for something that is totally unnecessary to be expedited through the city's processes right now."

Well, it's pretty clear why there's such a rush: Rather than deal with the unpopular question of what services to cut and whether to slash pension benefits, the gutless council and shamelessly opportunistic mayor would much rather extol the virtues of a downtown football stadium, especially during Super Bowl week. Never mind that boosters are tossing around crazy claims that a stadium/team will create many thousands of jobs (the experts say that those numbers are highly inflated), or that AEG has yet to provide specifics about how the stadium will be financed.

*Bob Timmermann tweets:

The Farmers Field plan is a solution to a problem that exists only in the minds of people who stand to make millions of dollars off of it.