LOS ANGELES

PLANNING WATCH-In the 1960s, 75 percent of Angelenos voted in local elections. In the Villaraigosa-Garcetti era less than 20 percent of the electorate bothers to vote

MY TURN-At the time that Beck abruptly left LAPD he left the LAPD in shambles, multiple civil lawsuits filed by Los Angeles police officers which named Los Angeles Police Command staff  members as defendants, wide spread Infidelity by LAPD Command staff and violent crime on the rise.

PROFIT IS KING-In the fight over Proposition 21, the battle lines are clear: Wall Street landlords versus California renters.

LEANING RIGHT--It is no secret that the LA City Council and Mayor are under harsh scrutiny by the FBI for "pay to play" politics with ruthless, scurrilous developers who are promoting oversized projects with undersized mitigations that will destroy neighborhoods and crush longstanding, taxpaying constituents who want appropriate and affordable housing for more Angelenos to live.  

CLIMATE POLITICS-When I attended Catholic grade school, once a year, every year, a fireman would come to school and talk about fire.

2020 ELECTION--Democrats are running out of time to protect the voters they need the most. 

INSIDER REPORT--Los Angeles, with more than sixty-six-thousand homeless residents, is experiencing a housing disaster.

OTHER WORDS-Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito just issued a statement implying they may seek to overturn the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

VIEW FROM HERE--While almost all Americans labor under the false impression that America is a democracy, the powers-that-be are politically dismantling us.

ALERT---Justice Clarence Thomas issued an opinion today that repeatedly attacked the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges – which legalized marriage equality in all 50 states – as unconstitutional because it “bypassed” the “democratic process” and cause people “with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage” to “find it increasingly difficult to participate in society.”

CITYWATCH TODAY-This report comes under the ICYMI label. In Case You Missed It, here’s Ted Koepple’s report from CBS News Sunday Morning.

GELFAND’S WORLD--Did Donald Trump already know he was Covid-19 positive on Tuesday September 29, the day he left for the first presidential debate of the 2020 election?

GUEST COMMENTARY-Over a year ago, in an attempt to reduce emissions caused by the idling of diesel trucks and buses on the streets and freeways of Los Angeles,

@THE GUSS REPORT-For most of 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti lectured us daily on TV about Corona Virus Disease (“COVID”) and devised insane, unscientific orders like allowing us to walk on the damp sand of a shore but prohibiting us from lying on the dry sand of its beach while telling us he “listens to scientists” who gave no such warnings. 

EASTSIDER-Newsflash: This post is being submitted early, because the meeting of the Planning Commission on this Project is scheduled for Thursday October 8, at about the time the article would normally  post online. Thought the Planning Commission could stand a reality check before they vote. 

LEANING RIGHT-Although "woke" lately has come to mean being sympathetic to the rights and potential double-standards of criminal standards and police interactions of black Americans versus white Americans, another consideration of "wokeness" has also occurred:

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA-How will Californians ever recover from this year of apocalypse and conflict, of pandemic and fire, when landscapes and lives were broken, seemingly forever? Where can we find a miracle? 

NEW GEOGRAPHY-They paved paradise...And put up a parking lot...With a pink hotel, a boutique...And a swinging hot spot...Don't it always seem to go...That you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone -- Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi,” 1970 

CLIMATE POLITICS-As of September 29, Brazil’s Bolsonaro government has fired the civilian-run National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which has monitored the Amazon rainforest for the past three decades.

VIEW FROM HERE-Yahrzeit is Yiddish for the anniversary of someone’s death.  For political purposes, truth is dead, but exactly when and how did it die? 

GELFAND’S WORLD--With all due respect to the learned statisticians and pollsters, the simple question of who finished the debate ahead on points – who educated the voters more on issues of federal reserve policy or steel tariffs -- isn’t very important.