LOS ANGELES

CAL MATTERS--As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up a second day being grilled by Congressabout whether the company adequately protects the personal data of its 2 billion users, news brokein California that Facebook will stop spending money to oppose a privacy measure aiming for the state’s November ballot.

MY TURN--The nearly one dozen tenants facing eviction after a woman running a transitional housing scam in a dilapidated, ramshackle house in South L.A. took their money and failed to pay rent to the landlord, announced with their attorney Nana Gyamfi that they’d been given relocation assistance through the City of Los Angeles.

ALPERN AT LARGE--I wish I could, and I think many of us wish we also could, be thrilled at the environmentally-smart but still untested (and very expensive) CoolSeal coating of our streets that is planned to reduce the heating effects caused by asphalt absorption of the sun's rays, and which creates a well-known "urban heat island effect".

GUEST COMMENTARY--The LA City Council’s approval of a homeless housing law that ends environmental review, eliminates height/density restrictions in many areas, and ends public hearings, will fail to stem the growing homeless crisis.  

CAL MATTERS-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra moved today to intervene in a Texas lawsuit aimed at undoing Obamacare. Becerra and 15 other attorneys general joined forces to file their motion to prevent “immediate and irreparable harm,” as Becerra put it, to California and other states.

EASTSIDER-For too much of my life, I’ve been involved with government -- working as an employee of public agencies, representing public employees before administrative bodies, and even running two administrative agencies themselves. That’s why I can’t simply let EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s behavior get a pass. 

VOICES--In January of 2018, at a community meeting organized by the Coalition to Defend Westlake (CDW), city planner Craig Weber advocated for the North Westlake Design District (NWDD), stating “It’s important to the city to create an environment that is conducive to walking and does not take a step backward and reorient toward the automobile.”

ALPERN AT LARGE--Word of the day: GASLIGHTING.  This happens increasingly in the United States, and throughout the world, but especially here in California.  Gaslighting, as per Wikipedia, is a form of manipulation that sows seeds of doubt in an individual or members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their memory, perception, and sanity. 

BCK FILE--As a Southern California pulmonologist and doctor of internal medicine, Dr. Asif Mahmood (photo above, right)has been at the frontline of healthcare in Southern California for 18 years.. The physician says the issue of healthcare has never been more important and he has specific ideas about what’s needed to turn the state around. 

CALL TO ACTION-On January 4, 2018, Senator Bob Wieckowski introduced SB 831, a bill that would have amended the just-last-year enacted "Granny Flats" sections of state law to require, rather than simply permit, cities, states and other municipalities to provide by ordinance for the creation of "junior accessory dwelling units", or so-called ADUs. 

PERSPECTIVE--According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) states that: "In 2016 in the Buffalo region, which includes Syracuse, there were 1,103 administrative arrests by ICE.  Of those, 160 were non-criminals. For 2017, there were 396 non-criminal arrests by ICE out of 1,494 total." Four months into 2018, it appears that those numbers are going to skyrocket. 

AT LENGTH-Six months ago, the Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka, agreed with my suggestion to hold a public meeting updating the harbor community on the various waterfront plans and projects. I even offered to help him plan it. The date was postponed at least six times and was finally held March 20 at the Warner Grand Theater, the site of the last presentation on the Ports O’Call development. 

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Why does a place as big and beautiful as Orange County so often behave in ways that are both small and ugly? 

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.