That was the last time I’d seen such disaster-torn earnestness — until last Friday at City Hall, after the legislative train wreck in the Council Chamber that left the mayor’s long-planned city-business-tax proposal lying on its side with its wheels spinning. It seemed a tremendous derailment of the mayor’s all-time favorite cause.But there are those, and they include Councilman Mike Feuer, who believe that the cause has actually been won. The mayor didn’t get exactly what he’d wanted — an omnibus proposal on the June ballot. But the city will probably glean from its wreckage all the modifications to the business tax it needs, as an amended proposal wends its way to eventual council enactment.”Things could get better,” Feuer said, “if [the proposal] doesn’t get stuck in committee.”I’ll hazard that nobody, anywhere, understands all the aspects of the city’s business tax. But there is a widespread perception, particularly among such passionate wights as write Wall Street Journal editorials, that L.A.’s impost is only slightly less business-friendly than the Soviet constitution.