LOS ANGELES

AT LENGTH-Some years ago, I was having a drink down at Ante’s bar on Palos Verdes Street in San Pedro when one of the older patrons went off on what makes America the greatest country in the world. 

GUEST WORDS--This past summer our family visited Switzerland and northern Italy. During the trip, we had numerous opportunities to ride their amazing transit systems, including several aerial trams.

MY TURN-Somewhere along the line, the Republican Party made a wrong turn from their core value beliefs and into the realm of insanity.

BCK FILE--The road to Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation had all the markings of what has become the Trump political brand: rage, divisiveness, and a hefty dose of misogyny, often from the president himself. 

ANIMAL WATCH--On October 3, Councilman Mitchell Englander, a member of the Council’s Personnel and Animal Welfare (PAW) Committee, introduced a motion (CF-16-0585-S2), based on "an increase in coyote sightings in parks, open spaces and neighborhoods endangering all people, especially children."  

@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles needs a hash tag that will sufficiently embarrass Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti into coming back to the city from parts unknown, much like a frazzled mom calling her children to dinner from playing in the neighbor’s yard. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--This is a topic that should be headlines, but is buried below the soap operas in Washington, Sacramento, and Downtown Los Angeles. But we face this drill every day, and you KNOW the drill: 

Platkin on Planning:  WIMBY stands for “Wall Street in My Backyard.”  In Los Angeles journalist Jill Stewart and former Los Angeles LA County Supervisor and City Councilmember, Zev Yaroslavsky, have popularized this term. 

EASTSIDER-Running for Superintendent of Education in November are Tony Thurmond and Marshall Tuck. We know all about Marshall Tuck, but few Angelenos know anything about Tony Thurmond, and that is not a good thing. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-What a difference a month makes. A few weeks ago, LA City Council president Herb Wesson bragged to the LA Times that his Motion to silence critics at government meetings was constitutional because it was vetted by, among others, UC Berkeley law school’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. 

GUEST WORDS--More and more sentient beings are now abandoning the Kavanaugh debacle.

CORRUPTION WARCH-In the mid 1770s, we had similar conditions to our current mess.

TRANSIT TALK-It is no secret that Proposition 6 -- repealing the recently enacted increase in the gas tax and car fees -- is a Trojan Horse being used to increase voter turnout for the November 6, 2018 election for electing John Cox, the Republican candidate for Governor. 

JUSTICE FOR WHOM?-The utter disdain for crime victims by Governor Brown and the State Legislature has been apparent for some time now.

420 FILE--Disclosure: ALL ILLEGAL CANNABIS DISPENSARIES are unregulated, untested, they don’t pay taxes on the marijuana they sell, and their product can potentially be full of pesticides, mold, and fungus.

BELL VIEW-Forty-three years ago, a gang of older kids jumped me on my way home from school.

CAL BUZZ--The just-out poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows that, with two Democrats on the ballot because of California’s top-two primary system, more than half of Republicans (52%) and a quarter of no-party-preference independents (26%) say they won’t vote for anyone for U.S. Senate.

PERSPECTIVE--There was a time when for the City of Los Angeles the area east of Main Street, south of Third Street, west of Alameda, and north of Seventh was known as “Skid Row” and was the geographical limit for the homeless.

FIRST PERSON-One question Supreme Court justice candidate Brett Kavanaugh has never been compelled to answer is, if he is so innocent of the alleged sexual charges alleged by Christine Blasey Ford and others, why has he not offered to or been required to submit to a polygraph test like Blasey Ford did? 

DEEGAN ON LA-How do you make Los Angeles less strange for strangers who are visiting?

@THE GUSS REPORT-It was an overdue yet stunning admission by LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez as she publicly apologized last week for a profanity-laced tirade by a regular City Council critic a few moments earlier in which the F-bomb was the least blush-worthy word choice.