LOS ANGELES

BCK FILE-Last weekend at a Costa Mesa house party, a group of Orange County high school students played beer pong. During the evening, some of the students arranged the red cups into a swastika. A dozen or so partygoers posed around the display, raising their arms in a sieg heil salute, an image some of the students shared on Snapchat and other social media sites. 

GUEST VIEWPOINT-UCLA is playing Jenga with students. And soon enough, it’ll all come crashing down.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Whose job it is to revive local journalism in California?

FIRST PERSON-Why would any Los Angeles property taxpayer in their right mind vote on June 4 this year to pay an average increase of $450 on their property tax bill to subsidize a still purposefully mismanaged LAUSD that has remained on the verge of bankruptcy for years? 

ANIMAL WATCH-At the February 26, 2019 meeting of the Los Angeles Animal Services Commission, appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, two of the three expenditures on reports for which General Manager Brenda Barnette was asking approval did not include an estimated cost or dollar limit. These omissions were brought to the attention of the Commission by a member of the public prior to consideration of the items. 

DEEGAN ON LA-Wildfires in the local mountains and hillsides, where the tinder-dry and abundant brush acts as kindling, set off the vicious and deadly burn cycle that is then exacerbated by mudslides when rain soaks the charred hillsides.

CORRUPTION WATCH-You thought that devil baby’s name in Roman Polanski’s 1968 movie Rosemary’s Baby was Adrian, but instead it’s Arbitration.

ALPERN AT LARGE--Credit should go to where credit is due, and Councilmember Paul Koretz (CD5, West LA east of the 405 freeway and the adjacent San Fernando Valley) did something that too many in our City have failed to do: defend the ability of our City to best decide how to create more appropriate and affordable housing for its residents.

GELFAND’S WORLD--Fox knew about the Stormy Daniels payoff before the 2016 election but "killed it to protect Trump" according to TPM. 

Read it. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-In his familiar pearl-clutching tone, Los Angeles City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell (photo, above left center) last week declared human use of drinking straws “a major environmental calamity.” 

PERSPECTIVE-The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 was a big deal as 195 nations agreed to take steps to mitigate global temperatures to +2°C, but preferably +1.5°C, post-industrial or over the past 250 years. When temperatures exceed those levels, all hell breaks loose with our precious life-support ecosystems. 

OTHER WORDS-An Arkansas lawmaker wants to cut school lunch funding for schools that fail to improve their students’ reading levels.

I’m sorry, what? 

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Shall we blame the Liar in Chief whose regard for the truth is less than the null set? Shall we blame former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who testified before the U.S. Congress on February 27, 2019 that every day when he and other Trump employees came to work, they knew they would be lying to advance Donald Trump’s interest? 

CAL MATTERS-Hoping to save California taxpayers some money after spending nearly $1 billion to fight wildfires last year, three officials say it’s time to look at purchasing disaster insurance for the state.

VOTER DISCRIMINATION--Legislators in Oregon and California have introduced bills this month to give more teenagers the right to vote.

IMMIGRANTS HAVE RIGHTS TOO-A California lawmaker has launched a bid to block the state from contracting with companies that funnel intelligence to federal immigration agents, in a move that would bolster the state's protections for undocumented residents targeted by the Trump administration. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Ya wanna know what's funny? The way that the majority of ALL residents, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, geography, and immigration status keep pushing and paying for more transit amenities AND parking but are told the former is great while the latter is a "no-go". 

WORDS COUNT-The day-long testimony of Michael Cohen - "a loser with nothing to lose" who knows where the bodies are buried, and thus Trump's worst nightmare - gave us the sordid if cleansing spectacle of "a liar, lout, thug, bully, scumbag, and admitted criminal (testifying) about his former client and our liar, lout, thug, bully, scumbag and criminal in chief."

EASTSIDER-So why would a happily retired 74-year old politician named Jackie Goldberg be running for the LAUSD School Board? As it turns out, for very good reasons. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--The way that one Washington Post columnist summarized yesterday's congressional hearing, Donald Trump is guilty of 5 felonies if Michael Cohen told the truth.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-The universe of laws is bizarre, obtuse, and shifting. As Natalie Wolchover writes in the New Yorker Magazine, “A Different Kind of Theory of Everything,” while physicists work to understand the universe, their endeavor is shadowed by the Rashomon effect.