LOS ANGELES

EDUCATION POLITICS-Charter-law reform may have come to California, but the free-market logic of schools-of-choice programs continues to divide.

@THE GUSS REPORT-Love him or hate him, most everyone who follows Los Angeles politics would agree that termed-out LA City Council president Herb Wesson knows what’s going on in virtually every corner of the City of Los Angeles, and especially within City Hall. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY--Anyone who needed a poll by the LA Times and LA Business Council Institute to tell them that overwhelming numbers of Angelenos consider homelessness the city’s biggest problem hasn’t been paying attention for quite a while.

GUEST COMMENTARY--We may be months away from ending the U.S. military draft, once and for all. After a court ruled that the male-only draft was unconstitutional, a Congress-appointed Commission has been studying whether or not to draft women into the U.S. military.

GELFAND’S WORLD--It’s been twenty years since we had a decade with a proper name. Since the year 2000 we’ve had “the oughts” and then the pretty much illegible  teens.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Answer: Nothing. America has devolved into such a morass of fake news, lies, deception and corrupt gobbledygook that we cannot reason our way out of a paper bag.

CLIMATE POLITICS--China’s failure to kick a long-standing addiction to coal has thrown a knockout punch to the Paris Agreement of 2015, including its 195 signatories. Suddenly, out of the blue, the world has turned upside down! 

PLANNING WATCH-At LA’s City Hall genuine and contrived planning processes are quickly repurposed so City Hall’s little-known alchemists can transform commercial properties in aging LA neighborhoods into modern gold.

EASTSIDER-I usually stick to the local political scene, but with all the whining and hand-wringing of the establishment Democratic Party, I couldn’t help myself. 

GUEST COMMENTARY--The future of a proposed housing project on Hilgard Avenue is uncertain following the sale of an adjacent property by the project developers.

GELFAND’S WORLD--Were the impeachment hearings really as frustrating as many of us felt? In a way, they were, due to the failure of the Republicans to break ranks and admit to the terrible truth.

ALPERN AT LARGE-Lemme get this straight: crime rates are. . .down? So why is everyone I know, you know, and we all know increasingly scared? 

GUEST WORDS-Do you remember when the Republican Party was led by staunchly anti-communist Cold Warriors such as Ronald Reagan, issuing dark warnings that the Soviet Union was an “Evil Empire” posing an existential threat to America’s freedoms and way of life?

AT LENGTH-Listening to the Trumpster’s endless rebukes, Twitter attacks and denials are enough to make one question the sanity of it all.

NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL BUDGET ADVOCATES-(This is the fourth in a series of articles on the history of the Budget Advocates.) 

ALPERN AT LARGE--The lack of parking--or at least accessible parking--is a problem that we increasingly encounter in the City of the Angels. We know we need parking, but we want "someone else" to pay for it. 

SOUTH OF THE 10--Compton City Attorney Damon Brown is proposing an ordinance that will ban e-cigarettes in the city of Compton. Brown gave an oral presentation at this week’s city council meeting declaring he will return with an ordinance for the councils approval.

@THE GUSS REPORT-It’s no wonder that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti can’t stop the ever-worsening homeless crisis that ballooned on his watch; he can’t even get out the door two pigs with a safe, open sanctuary waiting for them. 

GUEST WORDS--As the struggle for immigrant rights continues to be fought across America, new battlegrounds may come into view, then fade from public attention.

EDUCATION POLITICS--Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke with her constituents in The Bronx on Sunday about a public housing plan under the Green New Deal.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-The impeachment process has removed only one President, Richard M. Nixon. Whoa! Hold your horses, I said the “impeachment process.”