LOS ANGELES

FIRST PERSON-For the generationally entrenched, self-serving LAUSD administration and the vendors who own them, the collection of Average Daily Attendance (ADA) money from the state and federal governments for students present at school -- whether they are learning anything or not -- will always trump any other consideration. This includes students’ justifiable safety concerns about what seems to be the ever more frequent use of guns to kill students on campuses across the country. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Hubris might not be the exact word to describe Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, but it is close enough to the idea expressed by the Greek tragedians. There is pride and there is arrogance, there is cruelty and there is a colossal level of foolishness. Together, these character defects have led to this latest bit of posturing that may ultimately damage the national economy and in so doing, destroy Trump's presidency. The problem for the rest of us is that the tariff, should it actually be effectuated, is likely to do significant economic damage to the whole western world. 

CAL WATCHDOG-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom appears comfortable with borrowing from Bernie Sanders’ playbook and embracing single-payer health care in his bid to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown in the June open primary and the November general election. 

DEEGAN ON LA-It got ugly at a meeting hosted by City Council President Herb Wesson (CD 10) a few days ago, where he was attempting to bring both sides of a development dispute together -- community stakeholders and the developer -- in an attempt to reach consensus. The dispute, that led to a threat of assault weapon violence by the developer, Dr. David Lee of Jamison Services, has pitted some of the Koreatown community against a major K’town developer. 

CAL MATTERS-The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on a high-profile case that could slash the power of public-employee unions. But California labor leaders are already planning to push for new state laws to blunt the impact of an unfavorable ruling. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY--Once seen as the saviors of America’s economy, Silicon Valley is turning into something more of an emerging axis of evil. “Brain-hacking” tech companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, as one prominent tech investor puts it, have become so intrusive as to alarm critics on both right and left.

GELFAND’S WORLD--Have you ever noticed that when a suspect in a TV crime show says "I swear" to the detectives, it is a subliminal signal that the guy is telling the truth? It's actually a little weird when you think about it. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-The column hopefully begins to examine the connections between City Hall and real estate investments pouring into Los Angeles. While this story gets to the foundation of municipal politics, the mainstream news media either ignores it completely or only reports small snippets of the big picture. 

EASTSIDER-The news media is all over their headline that Kevin De Leon and “progressive dems” at the Democratic Convention in San Diego this weekend “denied” right-wing Senator Dianne Feinstein the party’s endorsement. So, is it true or is it horse puckey? 

MY TURN—(Jasmyne Cannick is an LA writer and a contributor to CityWatch.) If you ask Vincent Cook about the first 56 years of his life he’d probably tell you his proudest moments were were being handpicked by the late comedian Richard Pryor and singer Luther Vandross to be their opening acts during their respective tours. But mention former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Cook lights up and smiles as he recounts opening for Clinton during one of his California Primary appearances.

ALPERN AT LARGE--Increasingly, ours is a society who acts based on emotions and "feel-good" politics instead of smart, outcomes-based and tough decision-making.  We expect our children and student population to go out there and protest, and the adults are supposed to follow their lead...or something like that. 

RESISTANCE WATCH-High school students have courageously led a national conversation about ending gun violence after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, and have prompted the planning of school actions across the country. This has been an urgent reminder that one of the primary purposes of public education is to prepare students to be engaged citizens. It's pretty clear the Parkland students are more than prepared. 

TRUMP WATCH-Leave it to Donald Trump to parrot the most demented proposal out there to try and finally respond, even in some small way, to the epidemic of gun massacres in America. We all know the problem is too many guns. And the answer is supposed to be more and more guns out there? 

OTHER WORDS--Let’s do a mental exercise.

Imagine that Jose moves to the United States from El Salvador. He comes here legally — he applied for the diversity visa lottery and he won! Then he quickly gathered together the required papers to prove to the U.S. that he was who he said he was, and he wasn’t a criminal, and he moved to New York.

CAL MATTERS-Early in 2011, Bill Allayaud was so fed up with what he saw as dereliction of duty by California’s oil and gas regulator that he began to catalog grievances: unregulated fracking, allowing companies to inject oilfield wastewater into clean water aquifers, little or no oversight into critical practices affecting public health and safety. 

CAL MATTERS--As California’s Democrats wrapped up their party’s annual convention Sunday, they left San Diego as they arrived: a party still fraying at the seams after the 2016 election, held together by one strong bond—a unifying dislike of President Donald Trump.(Photo above Billionaire activist Tom Steyer at Dems convention.)

BELL VIEW--Can America pay attention long enough to do anything to save itself from destruction? The massacre in Florida already feels like ancient history to everyone except the people who lived through it. The slaughter in Syria quietly churns on beneath the surface while Americans have lost the ability to connect two opposing ideas to create a real debate. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-The crime of bribery has two sides – the bribe payer and the city officials who accept the money. On Friday, February 23, 2018, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey felt the heat from David Zahniser’s and Emily Alpert Reyes’ October 30, 2016 LA Times article exposing the bribery racket that runs Los Angeles City Hall. Thus, she tried to cool the furor by issuing felony warrants for the developer Samuel Leung and his secretary Sophia David. But things are deeper than they seem from the warrant. 

THE POWER OF BIG PHARMA-The opioid epidemic has left no part of the country untouched, yet California can be considered one of the luckier states. Close to 115 Americans die each day of an opioid-related overdose, but California’s death rates have begun to taper off. Public experts surmise that a diverse demographic makeup and the type of heroin available in the area have contributed to the stabilization. But, this is only one barely shining light at the end of a long tunnel. 

FIRST PERSON-For quite a while now I have believed that the longstanding, preprogrammed and well-orchestrated failure of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) (along with other public school districts like it around the state and country) can only be changed for the better by a radical restructuring of its openly entrenched self-serving bureaucracy. It is a system that, by its very nature, has put the interests of its vendors before those of its students, teachers, families, and communities.