LOS ANGELES

DECISION 2020 — Racial tension amid the backdrop of a pandemic that has affected disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people could significantly impact the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

VIEW FROM HERE--The de-evolution of integrity and honor in the American Republic continues uninterrupted during the hearings on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--You might say that the following is a bit of venting on my part.

PLANNING WATCH-Three former city officials have offered a proposal to stop rampant City Hall corruption in Los Angeles.

HOUSING POLITICS-“Today,” tweeted California Yimby staffer Louis Mirante on September 28, 2020, “the Gov signed 3 Ca YIMBY-sponsored bills. That’s more than any other housing organization successfully sponsored this year.” 

LEANING RIGHT--If you want to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, then vote for your guy.

OTHER WORDS-Although the United States hails itself as a bastion of representative democracy, voting regulations suppress the vote even in a normal year — and even more so during the pandemic. 

FUNDAMENTALIST DANGER-Imagine that there was a woman who had agreed to submit to her husband, who in turn had submitted to the head of a sect, who had in fact matched them, both part of a sect where there was no dividing line between personal and private life, because everything — everything — was done as a crusade for God, and if you weren’t one of the pure, you were going straight to hell. 

GUEST WORDS-“The intellectuals cast a veil over the dictatorial character of bourgeois democracy not least by presenting democracy as the absolute opposite of fascism, not as just another natural phase of it where the bourgeois dictatorship is revealed in a more open form.”

– Bertolt Brecht 

DECISION 2020--1990, I moved to LA to attend the American Film Institute; only 1 of 6 in the producing program’s second year and the sole Woman of Color producer.

SCOTUS POLITICS-Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in on the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on October 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C.

HOUSING POLITICS-A congresswoman tweets “Cancel [rent].” Others take the sentiment further, writing: “Every landlord is a fascist,” “All landlords are evil scum,” “Kill the landlords,” and “Landlords are the devil.”

PERSPECTIVE-The armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been in the local news lately.

SOAKING THE POOR-As many of us already have seen, The New York Times was able to obtain President Trump’s tax information for the past twenty years.

GELFAND’S WORLD—(Political Perspective: Center Left) When the editor of CityWatch asked me to be the other side of Jack Humphreville’s ballot recommendations, I wondered a bit about calling us left and right.

@THE GUSS REPORT-How corrupt is Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Nelson Feuer? 

EDUCATION POLITICS--School board candidate Marilyn Koziatek’s ties to groups promoting discrimination against LGBTQ people and families and to those defrauding and coercing pregnant women raises concerns about her fitness for office. 

VIEW FROM HERE-Americans love polls.  They love for their opinions to be asked and then written down. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Author Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay called “Men explain things to me.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) announced a bill to create “Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office” that would possibly attempt to invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to enable Congress to “help ensure effective and uninterrupted leadership in the highest office in the Executive Branch of government.” 

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