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Fri, Mar

The More You Stir it, the More It Stinks: New Planning Legislation from Sacramento

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-“The more you stir it, the more it stinks” usually refers to Rover, but it is time to give this crude expression a battlefield promotion. It should also apply to proposed planning legislation from Sacramento, in particular Senator Scott Wiener’s much-discussed SB 827. This bill, also known as “Planning and Zoning: Transit Rich Housing,” uses proximity to bus and subway lines as a pretext to massively up-zone hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions -- of properties throughout California, including Los Angeles. 

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Quick Read: Devin Nunes and the Memo … and More

GRIPES, GRUMBLES, GRUDGES--The Thursday rundown: Devin Nunes has made a name for himself by carrying water for the right wing, even when he has to resort to logic that is, to put it mildly, illogic. His latest exploit as chair of the House Intelligence Committee is the release of a memo that purports to expose FBI wrongdoing. The best response comes from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo.  who writes in The GOP and Big Lie Politics, 

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LA is Taking On the Fair Workweek Fight ---It Could Change Your Life

LABOR WATCH--While online shopping has fundamentally changed retail and several major brands have shut down shops, America is not experiencing a so-called retail apocalypse. Brick and mortar stores still employ almost 16 million retail workers nationwide, and according to Forbes, “90% of consumer spending is still happening in the real world.” In fact, the 2017 holiday season saw the “strongest growth in holiday retail sales since the end of the Great Recession.”

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It’s Time for Los Angeles to Redefine Homeless

When all of my belongings were in storage and I was living out of the second-bedroom of my best friend’s apartment while her son was off at college –unless you knew my situation you had no idea that I was homeless–but I was. That’s why I can tell you now that the 2018 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count is going to be woefully inaccurate and the full magnitude of the crisis underreported if we continue to put the focus only on the homeless that we can see.

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I am a Teacher. I am Not and Never Have Been Racist!

FIRST PERSON --On February 12, 2018 at 9 a.m. in the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) before Judge Eileen M. Cohn, at 320 West Fourth St, Suite 630, Los Angeles, CA 90013, the California Attorney General, on behalf of California Teacher Credentialing (CTC), will attempt to culminate LAUSD's more than 10-year war on me using fabricated charges and by moving to definitively take away my teaching credential claiming I am a racist. What follows will be my Opening Statement. 

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Attention LA Electeds: We Warned You – Another High-Speed Train Wreck

PERSPECTIVE--We've been talking with many of you for over three years now about the fact that high speed trains do NOT belong in our residential communities or sensitive environmental areas. Before anyone gets numb from these constant occurrences or gets bamboozled by CHSRA that it can mitigate this old technology to somehow prevent such occurrences from happening in your Districts, it is time NOW to stop this lunacy called high speed trains from Palmdale to Burbank. 

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Would Getting Rid of Costa Hawkins Provide More Affordable Housing?

DEEGAN ON LA-Now that it’s been killed in committee, the attempt to repeal the Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act, a state law that prohibits rent control in new housing constructed after 1995, moves the controversial subject from the hands and minds of state legislators to the voices and votes of the public through a prospective ballot initiative in November. 

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Trump Closes the Deal

BELL VIEW-Driving home listening to Trump’s State of the Union speech on the radio, I began to understand – for the first time, really – what his supporters see in him beyond the obvious affirmation and elevation of the filthiest parts of their bitter souls. He sounds like a truth-teller – a bull in a china shop gleefully smashing all the tropes of our moribund political system.

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