LOS ANGELES

GUN SHOWS VS. GUN LAWS-Firearms-related deaths and injuries increased 70 percent in parts of California in the weeks after gun shows in neighboring Nevada, which has fewer regulations on such events, a University of California, Berkeley study released on Monday found. 

WHAT, CITY HALL WORRY?—At a site known simply as Jefferson, 36 oil wells are pumping closely – too closely, residents say — to occupied multi-unit apartment buildings at a drilling site on Jefferson Boulevard, just west of the University of Southern California.

EASTSIDER-Can you be both fiscally responsible and socially progressive? Two very different democratic candidates for governor visited the EAPD on October 24, and the small group of dedicated political activists who chose this meeting over the World Series Game 1 got a real treat. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--A judge ... a California judge ... a California AND an Obama-appointed judge ... just rejected a bid by 18 of our United States to revive subsidies to health plan for covering patients as part of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA.  Should we call that a defeat for health care?  Shall we call it a victory over federal government over reach?  Or both? 

GUEST COMMENTARY-The legislative season is over, and we finally have begun to see our California legislature act on the housing crisis in this state. The Governor signed 15 bills that were intended to smooth the way to more housing being built. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Like jackalopes and unicorns, NIMBY’s (Not in my backyard) are imaginary beings. Nevertheless, real estate “developers” still spread much ill will about them. They are also endlessly pilloried by City Hall lobbyists, campaign consultants, hired pens, mainstream journalists, Internet trolls, and neo-liberal academics – all of whom have joined the welcome wagon for real estate speculation. 

BELL VIEW-I started out life as a good kid, a nice guy. As my interest in the opposite sex increased, I began to notice that the bad boys got all the girls. So, I switched. I started smoking, drinking, hanging out with the bad kids, and acting like I didn’t care about anything. Deep down, I like to think I was still basically a nice guy – but I have my regrets. 

420 FILE-A new Gallup poll finds the highest level of public support for marijuana legalization since the organization first posed the question almost five decades ago. (Editor’s note: Recreational marijuana becomes legal in California next January 1.) 

ALPERN AT LARGE--No need to belabor this point, because we see it every day:  LA’s homeless  numbers are getting worse. So while I am sure that I will be excoriated as a hater, a monster, a racist, and an unfeeling demon (regardless of the fact that I treat and offer free health care to the homeless and poor every day), let's go back to a language we can all understand:  the ABC's. 

A as in Hepatitis A:  It's become a statewide emergency; While not untreatable, it can put people in the hospital and even be fatal.  Mother Nature doesn't give a rip about social justice causes--in fact, she's a real witch.  But when any state or nation allows homelessness to rise and run rampant, infectious disease will inevitably follow. 

B as in Behavior:  Throw more money and resources and love at lawless behavior, and you get more of it.  We passed Measure H and HHH after demonstrating years to decades of poor spending habits and lousy records of truly helping the homeless.  So what could go wrong? Shocker--we have more, not fewer, homeless amongst us. 

C as in Childishness:  Children scream to "help the poor" and "help the environment" and "end homelessness", which is how children SHOULD be thinking ... with their hearts.  But adults might be motivated with their hearts yet realize they must think with their heads.  Not all homeless are the same, and some will need help but most need a combination of help but also RULES to re-establish their place in society. 

D as in Denying the Citizenry their rights.  Allowing people to live in tents and on the streets not only leads to more disease and crime, but it also denies those in the majority (who are overtaxed, exhausted, and working multiple jobs) of their rights.  Ridiculous and out-of-touch judges may make decrees, and Sacramento may disempower the working majority, but cities can fight back and do what's right to really, really, REALLY reduce the homeless amongst us. 

E as in Eliminating Roadblocks to Affordable Housing: The truth will set you free.  Affordable housing almost always means SENIOR affordable housing, STUDENT affordable housing, and WORKFORCE affordable housing.  When we create policies that reward small, appropriately-sized and sustainable affordable housing, and not gobs and gobs of gentrification, we'll get more affordable housing. 

F as in Forever demolishing the middle class:  By raising utility, taxes and other costs, the City of Los Angeles keeps smashing the middle class and promoting developments that were meant only for the wealthy while claiming it was for the poor.  City Hall is run by developers and professional liars.  This may infuriate the wealthier of the middle class, but the lower middle class is being run out of town.  And that's just not fair nor economically smart. 

G as in Good Policy.  Policy that demands responsibilities and rights for all of us.  Policy that states that if you are homeless with ties to the community, you will have to abide by the rules or leave.  Policy that states that those without ties to the community do NOT have to live here.  Policy that prevents this City of the Angels from being the homeless magnet from hell. 

H as in the road to hell.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions, of course, but we need not continue down that road.  We can be smart as well as kind, and we can be focused on results as well as on good ideas that don't always turn out.  

We're doing this wrong, folks.  Some of it right, as with the veterans and the VA Medical Center ... but a lot of it is just wrong.  And looking at the proliferation of the homeless after we passed Measures H and HHH, even a child can figure that out.

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud father and husband to two cherished children and a wonderful wife. He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He was co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chaired the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) 

-cw

SPECIAL TO CITYWATCH--Gloria Allred is an institution.  She didn't invent, but she did perfect, the art of lawyering in the court of public opinion.  She knew how and when to hold a press conference.  Allred knew the right cases to pick—sympathetic victims against usually famous and powerful men—Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, and Rush Limbaugh, to name a few. (Graphic above l-r: Gloria Allred, Harvey Weinstein, Lisa Bloom) 

GUEST WORDS--California’s wine country fires delivered a vivid demonstration of the critical importance of governments being able to assemble armies of public safety workers when needed. Citizens expect their governments to provide public safety — but they also expect parks, animal shelters, transportation, road, sidewalk and tree maintenance, housing for the homeless, libraries and much more. 

VOICES-Hotel​ ​industry​ ​groups​ ​are​ ​misrepresenting​ ​the Airbnb​ ​community​ ​to​ ​protect​ ​profits. As ​a ​56 ​year-​old ​Production ​Designer ​who ​has ​called ​East ​Los ​Angeles ​home ​for ​the past ​13 ​years, ​I ​have ​increasingly ​experienced ​ageism ​and ​fewer ​job ​opportunities ​and have ​turned ​to ​home-sharing ​to ​help ​pay ​my ​bills. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-Now that the Dodgers have finally returned to the World Series for the first time since 1988, the next question for those of us who are confident of a 2017 championship is whether the boys in blue will clinch it here in Los Angeles. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY-The home-buying struggles of Americans, particularly millennials, have been well documented. Yet a recent study by Hunt.com found that the often-proposed “solution” of renting is not much of a panacea. Rents as a percentage of income, according to Zillow, are now at a historic high of 29.1%, compared with the 25.8% rate that prevailed from 1985 to 2000. 

BCK FILE--The weekend after the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story broke in the New York Times, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted to encourage women to use social media to share their sexual assault stories, using the hashtag #MeToo to show the magnitude of this issue.

ANIMAL WATCH-Marijuana, the shredded leaves, flower buds and stems of the Cannabis sativa plant, has now been legalized for medical use by humans in 29 states, plus D.C. It is said to relieve pain and inflammation and manage side effects of cancer. Some animal experts, including the late Los Angeles veterinarian Dr. Doug Kramer, who lost his own battle with cancer in 2014 at age 36, believe that dogs and cats suffering from chronic pain, inflammation or other end-of-life issues should also be allowed the opportunity for the benefits of “pot therapy.” Others disagree and say, "pot isn't for pets." 

DEEGAN ON CALIFORNIA-Kevin de Leon (D-SD24) fascinates with his fast track rise to the top of state government, and his announcement a few days ago that he will challenge Senator Dianne Feinstein who just announced she would seek re-election to the U.S. Senate. Some may see the state Senate president pro tempore as a thundercloud about to burst over the head of Feinstein. There may be lightning bolts from the hard left adding to this brewing political storm. But, who’s he running against? Is he challenging the wrong opponent? 

CORRUPTION WATCH-The most compelling words in Ronan Farrow’s article about the predator Harvey Weinstein in the October 23, 2017 issue of The New Yorker magazine are its first three: Abuses of Power. The salacious aspect of the story may initially attract public attention, but the essence of the it revolves around power – the abuse of power. And that is where the focus should remain. A predatory abuse of power permeates our entire society – a society that has made a lying pussy-grabber its Predator-in-Chief. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--If preserving those things that merit protection is the core conservative idea, then surely that idea ought also to apply to preservation of the natural environment -- in a word, environmentalism as a conservative concept. Yet the current generation of American conservatives has rejected the idea of environmentalism. 

Just look at Donald Trump's appointees to major departments. If ever the word deplorable fits, it's here. What's curious is that the American conservative rejection of environmentalism is based on a line of reasoning that is illogical -- it is essentially an erroneous confession that some sort of radical left wing ideology is ultimately necessary for environmental preservation to succeed. In this, modern American conservatives are wrong -- if only they could see it. 

The best example of a critical environmental danger is of course global warming. The scientific arguments are well established, the observational data are compelling, and this year's hurricane season was the icing on the cake. 

Yet when asked to comment, members of the American conservative establishment evade and avoid with the de rigueur answer that it isn't the appropriate time to talk about the subject. 

Conservatives have used various excuses that probably don't ring true even to themselves -- global warming doesn't exist, or it isn't caused by human CO2 emissions, or it isn't susceptible to anything we humans can do. But when you read their comments to each other, they take a rather different tack. 

Their core argument is less based on atmospheric science and more based on socioeconomics. 

In a word, they manage to terrify each other with the claim that environmental activists are using global warming to take over the world economy through taking over its governments in some sort of international cabal. Basically, the claim of global warming is treated as some sort of hard-left socialist plot. They don't always use this terminology, but the common thread is apparent. If they give in to the notion of global warming, it follows (they think) that Americans will lose their sovereignty to world government. 

In a way, it's possible to imagine a little of what they are thinking. A lot of modern environmentalism (going back to bills signed by Richard Nixon) involves the use of a command economy. Coal fired power plants have been limited in terms of their ability to pollute the air with sulfur dioxide. One way to do this is to pass laws that set absolute limits on the mass of sulfur dioxide that is emitted. Another way is to put absolute limits on the amount of sulfur that coal can contain. Now expand this approach to thousands of other issues ranging from water quality to agricultural pesticides and you have the modern critique of environmental protection. 

Each such rule involves the creation of a new bureaucracy (mainly in the federal government), new taxes (call them fees), and new schedules of fines and penalties. The new bureaucracy will demand specific devices be installed in power plants in order to monitor the amount of pollutants that are emitted and will demand shelves full of reports. 

 And then there is conservative fear over the preservation of natural wonders. In order to preserve some of the more delicate aspects of our western deserts, it is necessary to limit the amount of cattle grazing. In order to preserve scenery in national parks, it is necessary to prohibit mining. 

All of these attempts at preservation are viewed by some people as impositions. Of course it is mainly those who have a financial stake in grazing cattle on fragile habitat or opening new oil fields in Alaska. 

Over the years, the right wing has built a collection of arguments that don't exactly defend the desecration of the natural environment, but do manage an end-run by calling environmentalists names. Any attempt to limit the use of national lands is treated as left wing socialism or worse. George H.W. Bush famously referred to environmental activists as "the spotted owl crowd." 

It's when the subject gets around to global warming that the argument gets really paranoid. The right wing understands deep down that fixing global warming will require a substantial effort, and that this effort requires the commitment of most of the world's countries. Somehow we have to figure out how to reduce net emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. Equally to the point, we don't have forever. I suspect that a lot of industrialists (Exxon for example) understand the basics. On the other hand, they don't want to commit corporate suicide by going out of the oil or coal business, at least until they have substituted some other income stream. 

The cynical, dishonest side of the conservative wing have made use of the anti-government phobia of a lot of Americans. They have tried to sell the argument that global warming is just a ploy to allow the lefties to take over the country and ultimately the world. It's a bit ironic, but the right wing noise machine has been raising the specter of a dictatorship that would arise if we as a people (and as a world) were to take global warming seriously. 

In a way, they are confessing that they lack the ability to imagine any other way to do things on an international level than imposing a socialist dictatorship. They seem to be missing the point that western nations managed to join military alliances without giving up their national sovereignty. And at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union (were there ever two more different governments?) managed to find mutual benefit in reducing our numbers of nuclear warheads. 

Yet American conservatives are caught up in the paranoid notion that even to admit the existence of global warming is to consign the world to some sort of malign world government, most likely taken out of the pages of nineteenth century Marxism. 

What's absurd about this argument is that we don't necessarily have to agree on any particular economic approach to global warming. We merely have to agree that it exists and that humans burning fossil fuels are the prime cause. In short, Americans should agree that there is a real problem that has been identified by careful (and robust) science, and that this problem exists independently of our various economies and governments. 

That, you would think, is a simple enough requirement. Americans don't have to join the revolutionary socialist brotherhood or the moderate wing of the Republican Party. They just have to understand that global warming is real and is hugely dangerous to our children and grandchildren. 

Once we gain that level of understanding, it is then possible to carry on a rational discussion of what we are to do about it. Conservatives like to talk about market based solutions. I say go for it. Let's hear what you can come up with. 

But let's be real about the danger and let's consider possible remedies with a critical eye. Your grandchildren's lives and health may depend on it. What could be more conservative than doing something about the problem? 

The eight hundred pound gorilla (or is it the elephant? -- I never can keep these metaphors straight) is our growing human population. We humans have taken over the majority of the planet's surface in order to develop our own life style, in spite of the fact that we are responsible for an ongoing extinction event that rivals previous extinctions. We should think about controlling our numbers in order to preserve the world that humans developed in. And what could be more conservative than that? 

Conservative Environmentalists 

Let's recognize that there are conservatives who are also environmentalists. They have written numerous books including Peter Huber's Hard Green.  One recent essay by Paul Foote was published in The Guardian.  I'd like to close by quoting a short excerpt from Foote's essay: 

"Whilst recognizing the need for political and policy leadership, policy-making must reject statist penalties and punishments which will not bring about the changes we need and will only put people off. We must go with the grain of human nature. 

"Preserving our natural heritage, the beauty of the landscape, the farmed environment; promoting social justice by beautifying urban spaces and greening energy supply; enhancing public health, national security, economic competitiveness – these are all challenges that require action both in the UK and the US. 

"But until they can be put into the natural language of conservatives, progress on these issues will suffer. And if the Tea Party were willing to think about the environment from a true conservative perspective, who knows, it just might suit them." 

Foote has included conservative terms such as statist in his remarks, but the overall idea that conservatives can and should become environmentalists has merit.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])  

-cw

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--The deaths and damage of this year’s Wine Country wildfires are a historic disaster. They are also the product of an epic California success.

@THE GUSS REPORT-What is the coolest Dodger thing you own? Long before Pawn Stars and Antiques Roadshow made hit television viewing of gems people find, buy or inherit, I stumbled upon a Dodger treasure while shopping one day in the 1970s on an outing with my mom and grandmother.