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GELFAND’S WORLD - There are lots of things we can say about the year 2024, but the problem is that most of them lead towards January 20, 2025. And that is 2024's legacy.
So like it or not, the legacy of 2024 is to make boorishness the official policy of the United States of America. Mind you, I don't care all that much that the former-and-future president of the United States insulted the Queen of England, but I do mind that he insulted the elected leaders of Europe and kissed up to the dictator of the Russian Federation. One is just fodder for a few English tabloids. The other led to the mass murder of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and a dangerous period of instability (soon to return) over the North Atlantic alliance.
We're left to chalk this up to democracy and hope to get on with our lives.
A tradition of New Year's optimism
Back in the early 2000's, when this thing called CityWatch LA was finding its legs, I used to see its founder Ken Draper at an organization called the Alliance of Neighborhood Councils. Ken invited me to contribute a year-end column and I invented the idea of inserting short videos. It's been an interesting time. I believe that I have sent CW something in excess of a thousand columns over the years.
I've not yet tried to do a Nostradamus or (for those of you who can remember) a Jean Dixon, but what the heck.
A surprising change in men's fashion will show itself.
A major leader will suffer a surprising turn of events with respect to health.
A new form of transportation will show itself in a peculiar way.
There will be an unhappy increase in a particular microbe.
A vast store of water will move to a new location.
Earth will be struck by an object from outer space.
A discovery will shock the world.
A mathematical question will perplex.
An angry host will pass across a previously peaceful border.
Local Government and it's all legal (except when it's not)
There has certainly been a huge turnover in the Los Angeles City Council, and it's not just from former council members who got indicted. It's true that Huizar, Englander, and Ridley Thomas were declared guilty of substantial crimes, and that Curren Price has been accused of some sleezy dealing. But the Big 3 losers from the tape scandal included Nury Martinez and Kevin DeLeon, both of whom are now gone from the council. Martinez had the good grace to resign pretty early in the scandal, while DeLeon decided to hold on and try to get reelected. He didn't.
And there were additional members of the City Council who simply failed to get reelected. The net result, when you look at the current membership, is a wholesale turnover of the Council. There is also the result of a bit of turnover due to term limits, the most significant loss being that of Paul Krekorian.
The result of all this is that a City Council that was run by Eric Garcetti for the longest time and then by Paul Krekorian is suddenly presided over by Marqueece Harris-Dawson. If you are one of the L.A. residents who hadn't heard of Harris-Dawson up to now, you are probably in the majority. That doesn't mean that there is anything either good or bad about him, it's just that most of us don't really know and won't know for much of the time leading up to the World Cup and the Olympics. It's not that we are afloat without a rudder, it's just that we don't know much about the hand that is on the rudder.
What we do know is that the chronic control over City Council elections by the municipal unions continues, which led to the recent round of salary increases, which necessarily pushed the city into another round of long-term poverty. The next time you go to some public event where your City Council representative gives an optimistic speech, ask her why she voted to force the city into virtual bankruptcy. You might print out one of the many Jack Humphreville columns from CityWatch detailing the scary details.
One more year in the neighborhood council system
Two short anecdotes: CityWatch founder Ken Draper used to invite me to breakfast every once in a while, where we would talk about the publication and about our idiosyncratic views of what was going on in the city. In one of those conversations, Ken looked at me and asked pointedly, "So when are we going to admit that the neighborhood council system is a failure?"
This was certainly an interesting claim (and maybe admission) from the guy who had invested so much time and effort in building one neighborhood council and in developing a publication that was about the neighborhood council system. At the time, I did my best to make the counterargument. I still think that the system does have some value -- or at least could have -- but as the years go by, I worry that it is not developing in the best possible way, and certainly not in a way that will prove to be sustainable.
The simplest argument that the system is a failure is this: What has it actually accomplished in recent years? Can we name even 10 things of significance that are different due to the existence of neighborhood councils? (Personally, I can name 1, but that is a low level of achievement at 23 years into the process.)
The counterargument came from Raphe Sonenshein a couple of weeks ago when he spoke at the Neighborhood Council 25th anniversary celebration. He claimed that within the corridors of government, the officials are concerned about how much power the neighborhood councils have. Since we don't pass laws or taxes and don't have our own fire department, it seems questionable, but there is one possible explanation: When you have 99 organizations that collect public input and make it public, you have a system which communicates public sentiment, and oftentimes it will be a sentiment that the elected officials would prefer not come out. For example, neighborhood councils often oppose development deals -- exactly the deals in which the developer and the City Council representative have been huddling over and hope to pass quietly.
Of course, the counterargument to this counterargument is that the Planning and Land Use Management Committee over in City Hall managed to pass all those zoning changes (and commit quite a few felonies in passing) in spite of what we had to say.
So, let's just say that it's a work in progress.
The Military Conquest of Greenland, Panama, and Canada
OK, so I already told you to close your eyes and try to ignore the stuff that flows from the nostril that is Trump's social media conduit. So what if Trump claims that ownership of Greenland is a critical security interest of the USA? But there are a couple of observations that need to be made in response to this latest bit of silliness.
The first is that even a sober saber-rattler such as Ronald Reagan was able to land troops on a Caribbean Island and take it by force. Admittedly we did not claim Grenada as our own, but it was within the military capabilities of the Reagan administration and not too far from the political will of the moment. We might also remind ourselves that John F. Kennedy engaged in a serious act of war when he ordered the blockade of Cuba. In previous decades and centuries, the USA took the land that we currently live on (You know, California and all that), and did so by force of arms.
So, the idea of an aggressive, expansionist USA that believes in its own Manifest Destiny is not something that never was.
The problem is that the president-elect seems to be ignorant that times and international norms have changed.
But still, the USA, armed to the teeth and led by an idiot, is potentially a danger to international peace and tranquility. It's important that the congress get itself together and make sure that we act like a republic and not as a dictatorship. And like it or not, this depends on at least a few Republicans in the senate who have to maintain at least a bare semblance of sanity. In a slightly worse scenario, it would depend on finding 20 Republican senators willing to vote for conviction after a third impeachment. Perhaps we can hope that the congress will notice that the more power it gives to the president, the less power it maintains for itself. Generations of congressional leaders have been greedy enough in terms of holding onto power. It is, after all, in the job description, so why not fight for it?
The Carter legacy and a telling comparison
The news has just come down of Jimmy Carter's passing. He came to power at a moment when the Nixon scandals were in the forefront, and famously promised never to lie to us. I suspect that Carter mostly kept that promise. By contrast, we have the current president-elect, who lies about anything and everything and, even when caught in a direct lie, just continues to lie. Interestingly, Trump has suddenly found it necessary to tell a few small truths, namely that pretty much every campaign promise he made was a lie.
It is also of note that Donald J. Trump will take office as the first president already convicted of a felony, and will serve with that distinction for as long as he can.
There is also the comparison over Panama. Carter was OK with turning the canal over to its native country, an action which doesn't seem to have hindered the USA very much. Trump is acting annoyed over current charges (apparently the free-market economy is OK when it involves Trump Vodka but not when it involves some foreign country charging canal fees) and so Trump is now doing his own saber rattling over Panama.
We can discount the whining about Canada. It's just Trump being a jerk. I wonder why the national press doesn't just say it. The headlines could read, "Ho Hum, Trump Being a Jerk about Canada Once Again." Kind of says it all.
By the way, can anybody actually explain the obsession over Greenland? I mean, the US has had a military presence there since WWII. Here's one possible explanation that I read elsewhere. In the standard map of the world known as the Mercator projection, Greenland seems a lot bigger than it actually is. That's just an artifact of expanding the width of everything as it gets further north. What a thought -- fighting a war over differential geometry.
So goodbye to the year 2024, a year in which we had a competent president who began to suffer from aging at the worst possible time, a year in which Vlad Putin continued to act like the fumbling version of a 1940s style dictator, a year in which science continued to make great advances in this, the golden age of biological science, and a year in which global warming continues and with it a severe contribution to climate change.
So here's to 2025. May it bring 2026.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He may be the longest functioning CityWatch columnist at present. He can be reached at [email protected]).
