LOS ANGELES

CAL MATTERS--When phone bank worker Melissa Mendez, age 26, felt financially squeezed a few months ago—“I was short on cash and needed to pay rent”—she walked into a Cash 1 storefront in Sacramento and took out a payday loan. The annual interest rate: 460 percent.

RANTZ & RAVEZ-First, a personal note: When it all began: It was August 1 when a little boy was born into the loving arms of Alice and Phillip Zine. While both Mom and Dad have passed onto Heaven, I will always remember the love and attention they showed me over the many years of my childhood and into adulthood.

GELFAND’S WORLD--I think that the word ordeal is too strong a term.

EASTSIDER-You have to hand it to Jose Huizar.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-On Thursday, July 26, 2018, the Department of City Planning unveiled a secretive and still skimpy Purple Line Extension Transit Neighborhood Plan (TNP).

GUEST WORDS--Brandishing a wire coat hanger, New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon took the podium at a rally against the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court earlier this month.

BCK FILE--The events lining up to Election Night 2016 read like a political thriller, in the vein ofThe Manchurian Candidate.

@THE GUSS REPORT-Who is funding the lavish lifestyle of Herb Wesson, the Los Angeles City Council President, and his wife Fabian?

PERSPECTIVE-In keeping with the city’s long-term commitment to overdevelopment, the Planning Department is hatching another scheme to build, baby, build.

AT LENGTH-There’s something in the American psyche that fundamentally believes that all new things are good.

EDUCATION POLITICS--The three-year scandal that has embroiled the Los Angeles Unified school board concluded anticlimactically this week when besieged District 5 board member Ref Rodriguez tendered his resignation.

FIRST PERSON-Over the last nine years I have written about the purposeful failure to educate predominantly Latino and African American children in still segregated public school districts like LAUSD.

DUBIOUS DEVELOPMENT DECISIONS-It's clear that the City of LA needs to take action to deal with the homeless crisis.

CORRUPTION WATCH-China’s Liu Qiangdong, founder of China’s “Amazon,” variously known as Jongdong, JD.com or simply JD, provides insight as to why the American judicial system is making America non-functional.

NEW GEOGRAPHY--Progressives praise California as the harbinger of the political future, the home of a new, enlightened, multicultural America.

DEEGAN ON LA-Citing his “creative eye, and his understanding of urban design” Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced that Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the Los Angeles Timessince 2004, was joining his administration as Chief Design Officer.

ALPERN AT LARGE--There's a lot of us who have been, remain, and will be volunteers.

CORRUPTION WATCH-Without people, there is no need for values, but without values, people’s lives are short, nasty and brutish.

SOUTH OF THE TEN-Was Inglewood Mayor James Butts involved in covering up a crime committed by an LAXPD officer? Department insiders say that’s affirmative. 

GUEST COMMENTARY-Prop 47 ushered in an increase in property crime statewide because many theft offenses were made inconsequential misdemeanors that carried little likelihood of incarceration.

MY TURN-Yeah, remember 2010 Midterms? Remember the look on President Obama’s face when he realized that we lost so many seats?