LOS ANGELES

GUEST WORDS-As a pastor, there are times when I must speak on behalf of the everyday concerns of my congregation and community. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-On any given day, the LAUSD is a trudging bureaucracy. But over the course of a year trying to get it to address a multitude of school safety issues in the wake of nationwide school shootings, including one this school year in LA, the risks to LA school kids is far worse: it is an agency paralyzed by fear of having its security problems exposed, rather than being an agency eager to proactively confront and fix them. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY--What’s an oligarch to do? The putative tech masters of the universe now face unprecedented criticism from both leftand right. The reasons extend from wanton privacy invasions of the people once described by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerbergas “dumb f***ks” to President Trump’s typically hyperbolic assaults on Amazon’s success at tax avoidance. (Photo above: Jeff Bezos, the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon, purchased the Washington Post in 2013.)

FIRST PERSON-I have written extensively about the purposefully segregated, inherently inferior public education system in de factosegregated school districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) where there is little attempt to educate predominantly minority students and teach them critical thinking skills they need to get a post-secondary education or well-paying job. I always assumed that expensive private schools did not suffer from the same self-inflicted malady. But I was wrong. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-In Snow White, the Wicked Witch asked, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of them all?”

ANIMAL WATCH-LA Animal Services and Mayor Eric Garcetti announced on January 25, that L.A had reached its "no-kill" goal for dogs in 2017 and is close to a similar declaration for cats. Barnette has explained publicly that pet cats are being adopted and the only problem left for LA. shelters is Pit Bulls and feral cats. 

LA WATCHDOG--The development of the 27 story luxury high rise development at Catalina and 8th Street in Koreatown (photo above)has hit a snag as Superior Court Judge Joanne O’Donnell ordered a full Environment Impact Report for this neighborhood destroying development that will have an adverse “impact on traffic, public services, and land use.” 

CAL MATTERS-As the capital of the nation’s most complex and populous state, Sacramento is no stranger to protest marches and other forms of political expression. 

CORRUPTIONISM-Answer: for the same reason that so many people are fat. There is a lot of junk information and it makes us feel good. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--From a political standpoint, the Chinese are right to counterattack in the trade war by going after soybeans. That is a direct message to Trump supporters. (Darn! I was intending to write a piece without mentioning this particular president, and there I go right from the outset.)

ALPERN AT LARGE--SB 827--you know, the Wiener Bill from Sacramento that proposes ending city oversight over zoning and environmental law near rail lines, bus lines, bus stops, and anything resembling transit because, you know ... affordable housing and pro-transit and the homeless crisis, and all that.  Right? 

FIRST PERSON--Amy Wax.began dealing with- or if you will- stubbornly failing to deal with, what remains the intractable issue of racism in the United States, that continues unabated to negate any possibility of a more perfect and fully integrated union, we might now beatify a dead Martin Luther King 50 years after he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennesee, but I have no doubt that his life might be just as much- if not more- be in danger in a 2018 America as it was back in April 1968. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY-For much of the past century, Southern California has been driven by ever increasing population growth. That era has now ended as the region’s demographics stagnate, a trend that, according to the latest Census numbers, is, if anything, accelerating. This follows a distinct national trend, notes demographer Wendell Cox, where the largest metropolitan areas are losing domestic migrants and growing far more slowly than smaller, often less expensive regions.

EASTSIDER-Wow! This is far from the acquiescent Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council I was part of back in the day, quietly controlled by USC’s David Galaviz as Council President. No sir, this NC and Community is spunky, calling out the bait and switch of Measure HHH, a so-called $1.2 billion dollar “Homeless” Measure. 

CAL BUZZ--According to the New York Times, “President Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to order the military to guard parts of the southern border until he can build a wall and tighten immigration restrictions, proposing a remarkable escalation of his efforts to crack down on migrants entering the country illegally.” In light of this, we offer here our report from February 2017 predicting exactly this.

SKID ROW, DTLA-For well over a decade, Downtown’s revitalization efforts, which include luxury housing, high-end hotels, and expensive bars and restaurants -- some with celebrity Top Chefs in their kitchens -- have been deemed a success in all places except Skid Row, aka, “the homeless capitol of America.” A map of development projects in DTLA looks like a well-glazed donut -- a whole lotta sweet stuff all around but Skid Row is stuck in the hole in the center with no donut and definitely no glaze! 

LA WATCHDOG--The Fire and Police Pension System had an unfunded liability of $3.3 billion in 2016.  So why did Mayor Eric Garcetti and the other four members of the Executive Employees Relations Committee (Councilmen Wesson, Englander, Kerkorian, and Koretz) make a decision behind closed doors in February of 2016 to ignore the recommendations of Miguel Santana, the City Administrative Officer, to terminate the very expensive Deferred Retirement Option Plan (“DROP”) that had cost the Pension System $1.6 billion since its inception in 2001? 

BELL VIEW-An assassin took the 39-year-old Martin Luther King 50 years ago this week. King came to Memphis to support a garbage-workers’ strike – the one where strikers carried signs proclaiming, "I AM A MAN" – a simple, seemingly uncontroversial message reminiscent of “Black Lives Matter.” 

For a man who cannot stop talking on Twitter about every single thought that pops into his head, Donald Trump's silence on the killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento says all you need to know about how the President of the United States of America views the death of young black men. 

URBAN PERSPECTIVE--The tragic fatal shooting of  Stephon Clark has captured the nation’s attention and elevated the conversation around whether police can and should investigate themselves, especially when the public’s trust weighs in the balance.

TRANSIT TALK--Because I am a transit rider since 1992 in what is many times called a not-transit-rich Los Angeles, I am quite interested in this bill. I am a transit rider because I am worried about air pollution in the Los Angeles Basin which after years of improvement is now slipping backwards toward more polluted. With the Trump Administration and EPA Secretary Pruitt ready to gut mandatory vehicle mileage requirements it seems certain air pollution will now get worse.