This week I lost my best friend and mentor. Ken Draper passed away at the age of 89.
LA WATCHDOG - Carmel Partners, a multibillion dollar San Francisco based private equity firm specializing in multifamily real estate, has proposed to develop a 28 story residential tower with 290 units at 1050 South La Cienega Boulevard, just south of Olympic Boulevard.
ACCORDING TO LIZ - Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were not able to tank the Inflation Reduction Act which the Senate passed last weekend, but they sure haven’t helped reduce inflation.
GUEST COMMENTARY - I wish to call your attention to what I believe to be the improper noticing of meetings by the City Tourism Commission, especially a detailed proposal to place advertising structures on public sidewalks and parkways.
THE EASTSIDER - Our politicians have been either demonizing or pretending to ‘help’ the homeless in LA for quite a while.
DROUGHT - California Gov. Gavin Newsom today unveiled a broad strategy for bolstering the state’s water supply that includes targets to recycle more water, expand reservoir storage and collect more data on the amounts farmers use.
ERIC PREVEN’S NOTEBOOK - I have delivered millions of words and at least one million too many, for sure, to CityWatch.
HOUSING CRISIS - As the median rent spikes to $2,000 across the country, housing justice activists double down on efforts to counter price-gouging landlords.
THE REPUBLICAN REPUBLIC - If this was just routine political corruption by a few rogue politicians, it would be a problem but not a crisis—however—this cynical embrace of strongman oligarchy has put America itself at risk.
PRICE OF EDUCATION - The White House says President Joe Biden will decide by the end of August whether to extend the pandemic-era pause on student loan repayment — and how much, if any, student debt to cancel.
THE VIEW FROM HERE - Similar to how we call all tissues, Kleenex, and all acetylsalicylic acid Aspirin, we tend to call all short-term rental agencies Airbnb.
LABOR VIEW - Vin Scully, the Hall of Fame broadcaster, was so adept at painting a picture when describing a baseball game that Los Angeles Dodgers fans sometimes remarked that they didn’t need to see the action on television to know exactly what had happened.
ALPERN AT-LARGE - There are a few of us lucky to have known, written for, and worked with the late, great Ken Draper, founder of CityWatch (CityWatchLA.com).
HEALTH WATCH - Hundreds waiting hours for a monkeypox vaccine only to be turned away.
CLIMATE WATCH - The climate emergency intensifies daily as the planet warms.
GUEST COMMENTARY - I find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and possibly planning to run again in 2024.
CLIMATE POLITICS - Assuming that the Democratic majority in the House passes the massive climate bill this week, the next round for federal climate action will come when Congress returns after its August recess, and it will center on something euphemistically called ‘permitting reform.’
ANIMAL WATCH - On July 26, WBTV News reported that a woman was savagely attacked by two Pit Bulls which came out of nowhere while she was walking in Rex Park in Atlanta, GA—
ACCORDING TO LIZ - “There were only two people working in patient registration… I saw a lady sitting across from me crying, and she was sitting in a puddle of her own blood. She miscarried in the waiting room.”
GUEST COMMENTARY - Harbor Division Capt. Brent McGuire of the Los Angeles Police Department made the truest observation I heard throughout the entire July 26 town hall meeting about the Peck Park shooting two days earlier where two people were murdered.
REPUBLICAN POLITICS - Last Tuesday, Republican primary voters in Arizona chose election deniers as their nominees for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.
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The War Criminal and the Carnival Barker
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- Written by Abby Zimet
SAY WHAT? - Improbably, things just keep getting weirder. Even as the FBI raids "my beautiful home Mar-A-Lago," we have the mind-bending spectacle of venal, mendacious, murderous warmonger Dick 'Dr. Doom' Cheney - who lied us into war using junk intelligence, championed torture from "rectal re-hydrating" to waterboarding, and "would do it again" - emerging from the dark side to claim the moral high ground in a campaign ad for his daughter that eviscerates Orange Guy as a liar, loser, coward and greatest threat to the republic ever, except maybe for himself. So: Darth Vader trashing Gollum, Lord Voldemort ripping Elmer Gantry, Hannibal Lector torching The Joker. Yeah, no cognitive dissonance here. "In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," says Dick at the start of a spot for Liz, who's trailing in her Wyoming primary against Harriet 'Big-Lie' Hageman for calling out Trump for the tin-pot, sociopathic buffoon he is. "He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters rejected him. He is a coward. A real man wouldn't lie...He lost his election and he lost big." Oof. Harsh.
To cheesy musak we think is meant to sound patriotic, Cheney adds, “Liz is fearless...There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office.” Now, the conundrum. God love anyone, even named Cheney, working to make sure Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office. 'Cause, hey, c'mon. This is the guy who, just in this week's disclosures, griped he wished his generals were more like Hitler's; had flunkies giving campaign data to Russian agents; evidently really did flush documents down his toilets; is still out here idiotically babbling; and when the FBI executed a search warrant Monday night, ranted hysterically on his low-rent Truth Social that "these are dark times for our Nation" because Mar-A-Lago is "under siege, raided and occupied" by the FBI in "a weaponization of the Justice System (by) radical left Democrats (that) could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries," also Russia Russia Russia scam, impeachment hoax, and her emails, also antique furniture. So absolutely, take him down by any means necessary and before it's too late, though it may already be.
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THE REPUBLICAN REPUBLIC - If this was just routine political corruption by a few rogue politicians, it would be a problem but not a crisis—however—this cynical embrace of strongman oligarchy has put America itself at risk.
HOUSING CRISIS - As the median rent spikes to $2,000 across the country, housing justice activists double down on efforts to counter price-gouging landlords.
RELIGION POLITICS - In the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections, some politicians continue to ride the wave of what’s known as “Christian nationalism” in ways that are increasingly vocal and direct.
GUEST COMMENTARY - The recent provocative and unnecessary visit to Taiwan by Democratic Congresswoman Pelosi may well be a turning point the US (and potentially, the world) will regret.
NUCLEAR DETERRENCE - 77 years ago, the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 and three days later, Nagasaki, resulted in immediate deaths of approximately 120,000 majority civilians and by year’s end over 210,000.
CLIMATE WATCH - Gas prices hit an all-time high in June, with the national average surpassing $5 per gallon.
CANNABIS WATCH - California is significantly overhauling its cannabis tax structure, including entirely eliminating a tax on growers, in an effort to boost a struggling legal industry begging for relief.
420 FILE - Working regular overnight shifts has distorted Samantha Kadera’s sleep schedule, so the emergency room doctor smokes cannabis a few times a week to relax before bed.
POT WATCH - Since legalization and the light shining on cannabis and its benefits, the cannabis industry has grown rapidly in a short space of time.
HEALTH WATCH - Hundreds waiting hours for a monkeypox vaccine only to be turned away.
HEALTH WATCH - The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”:
HEALTH EMERGENCY - In early May, Massachusetts General Hospital confirmed that it was treating a patient with monkeypox – the first case of the rare virus in the United States in 2022.
POLITICAL WATCH - It’s The Ronald Reagan Memorial Competition: which Republican can make the rich richer and the poor poorer the fastest?
GUEST COMMENTARY - Former President Donald Trump's criminal use of lies and mob violence to steal the 2020 election failed, but it's not the only recent coup attack on our democracy.
GUEST COMMENTARY - Regardless of anyone’s views on abortion, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson took away a reproductive right that a half-century of hard-fought judicial precedent had determined was constitutionally protected.
DC DISPATCH – (This interview was conducted in 2020 before the untimely death of my husband Anthony Schinella, aka Spooky.
You may be counting the hours and minutes until August 31, 2021, but a word of caution in what you wish for.
VOICES-In response to an October 29, 2020 CityWatch opinion piece about DxE, counsel of DxE informed us of the following: No grooming allegations have ever been made against DxE or anyone in its leadership, neither in the Berkeleyside article referenced in CityWatchLA’s piece nor anywhere else, apart from a single, not credible allegation by what is termed as a ‘high-profile accuser.’
