LOS ANGELES

EASTSIDER-Boy do we have a feast of elections in 2020; City Council (even numbered districts), County Board of Supervisors (District 2 & 5), District Attorney, LAUSD (all but one), Assembly District 43 & 53), and a bunch of Cities and Judges! Here’s an overview. 

PLANNING WATCH-The mainstream and alternative press are in rare agreement that the worsening climate crisis places humanity at the abyss.

CAL BUZZ-California Sen. Kamala Harris quit the presidential race Tuesday not because, as she put it, “My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”

THE CITY--The Los Angeles City Council just unanimously passed a law that tightens the rules on how much money developers can contribute to their political campaigns.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-“Two people tell The Daily Beast they’ve heard Trump talk about how he’d like to have the now-cleared Clint Lorance, Matthew Golsteyn, or Edward Gallagher show up at his 2020 rallies, or even have a moment on stage at his re-nomination convention in Charlotte next year. Right-wing media have portrayed all three as martyrs brought down by “political correctness” within the military.” (The Daily Beast Nov 26, 2019)

OTHER WORDS-“Is Trump a racist?” I have two answers to that question. First, most white Americans misunderstand racism solely as intentional beliefs held by individual racists who hate people on the basis of race.

ALPERN AT LARGE--Gone is the Bush/Clinton/GW Bush era where it was encouraged for as many Americans as possible, including young people and minorities, to be homeowners.

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.