LOS ANGELES

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Elizabeth Warren, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, gets on her knees to pick spinach while discussing single-payer health care with farmworkers in the Salinas Valley. Beto O’Rourke, in a wetsuit with his campaign logo, tries to stand on a surfboard in the waves off La Jolla, but falls face first into the water.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Once upon a time, in world far, far away, Los Angeles called itself the city of the future. In 1985 Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley assembled a blue-ribbon panel drawn from the city’s elites to chart the future of Los Angeles.

EASTSIDER-Lots of folks have written about DONE GM, Grayce Liu, leaving for a posh City job in the Personnel Department, but she isn’t gone yet. And so far, neither she nor the rest of the City bureaucracy has stopped interfering with the NC system. Consider this: 

BCK FILE--Six months ago, FBI agents raided the third story suite of Councilman Jose Huizar.

ENVIRONMENT POLITICS-The above map is from the Federal EPA’s Radiological Study Report.

ONE MAN’S OPINION--Since the 2020 election is a year and one-half away, the tea leaves are barely in the cup and reading them is quite premature. 

 NEW GEOGRAPHY-A metropolitan economy, if it is working well, is constantly transforming many poor people into middle-class people, many illiterates into skilled people, many greenhorns into competent citizens. . . . Cities don’t lure the middle class. They create it. -- Jane Jacobs 

CAL MATTERS-Mary Nichols, the powerful head of the California Air Resources Board, didn’t even need to explicitly threaten a ban on gas-powered cars last week to get the attention of carmakers. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING:  Unlike Senator Scott Wiener’s and California YIMBY’s SB 50, which could not withstand a torrent of public opposition, other supply-side housing bills have managed to survive.  The worst are SB 330 and AB 1279, whose multiple shortcomings are discussed below. 

ALPERN ON MEMORIAL DAY--My son and I again woke up early Saturday morning to help our Boy Scout troop … for whom he and I are still loyal despite my son aging out at 18 years of age … plant flags in honor of our fallen troops at the West Los Angeles Memorial Cemetery. An ocean of flags came up within minutes at each and every grave of our fallen heroes. 

HUMAN RIGHTS--Carrie Severino leads the Judicial Crisis Network, a 501(c)(4) secret-money "social welfare" nonprofit that has spent millions of dollars promoting conservative judges and plays a key role in the campaign to ban legal abortion in the U.S.

@TheGussReport – For precisely 100 tedious but remarkably uncomfortable minutes last week, the LA City Council debated ways for its 15 members to legally accept bribes for selling their votes, but without all the hubbub and inconvenience of the FBI raiding their home and City Hall office, followed by indictment, prosecution, incarceration, appeal, parole, bankruptcy, divorce, custody battle, etc.

GELFAND’S WORLD--While our giant metropolis was anticipating a long weekend of barbecues and Indi racing, nineteen neighborhood council activists showed up to work on a plan to educate our residents about saving their own lives (and health) during a natural disaster.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Back in 2011, I wrote on CityWatch : "Hollywood’s decline correlates with the number of new CRA Projects. In brief, density causes deterioration.

MAKING OUR LIVING-Since his days as a San Francisco Supervisor in the late 1990s, Gavin Newsom has spoken and written about the interplay between technology, government, and employment: how technology is changing the types and structure of jobs, how it can improve government services, how it can generate greater citizen participation. 

THE CITY--The slow demolition of Parker Center is a reminder that by now we could have housed 720 homeless Angelenos inside the famed police building.

MORE WAR THAN WE NEED--In an effort to rein in the bloated military-industrial complex and free up funds for "programs that nurture human lives rather than take them away," a coalition of nearly two dozen progressive advocacy groups on Thursday launched a campaign urging 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to support cutting the Pentagon budget by at least $200 billion per year.

VOICES--Hi, Steve. I’ve been a reader and admirer of yours for years. I’m a writer, too, having penned the screenplay for Denzel Washington’s THE GREAT DEBATERS, among other credits. I was born to a working-class family in Los Angeles, and I’ve worked with the homeless and against mansionization. (Photo: LA Times.)

SPECIAL REPORT-Even before the formal proclamation of the #MeToo Movement in October 2017, Texas State Rep. Jessica Farrar (D-Houston) had taken a bold and unique public stand against the subjugation of women to men's rules on sexual equality and abortion. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--To think that transportation/infrastructure grassroots advocates used to enjoy tackling a bipartisan, or even non-partisan, issue! It appears that the grassroots will have to take it up again, because (again!) our political leaders are failing us! 

RANTZ & RAVEZ-How many times do you have to be snookered by government officials until you begin to question the numerous tax increase proposals they claim will rectify the many quality of life and educational issues facing those of us who live in Los Angeles and the State of California?