LOS ANGELES

JUST ASKIN’-Once a year, volunteers from LA’s neighborhood council system get together and orchestrate an NC "Congress." 

CAL MATTERS-In the main, issues that dominate any session of the California Legislature reflect what the public and news media consider at the time to be the most burning. That’s why, for instance, the state’s acute housing shortage will receive much attention during the final month of this year’s session. 

EASTSIDER-Coming out of the free speech/anti-war movement of Berkeley in the 60’s, I hoped that we, as a society, had already tested the boundaries of free speech and found common ground. The deal was that you could say virtually anything you want with your mouth. Notwithstanding the fact that government and most people really don’t like free speech at all. 

BELL VIEW-What is a troll? I’ve been accused of being one myself – although I never thought I fit the profile. In fact, it took me forever to admit trolls even existed. “Don’t feed the trolls,” I am often cautioned when I engage with people who disagree with me. I didn’t believe trolls were real because I was brought up in a tradition of vigorous debate. My grandfather was a lawyer and dinners at his table often erupted into shouting matches. I loved it. I couldn’t understand why anyone would have wanted dinner to be anything other than a raucous debate over the most difficult issues of the time. 

GETTING THE FACTS-Recently there was a story on local NPR affiliate KPCC about how the homeless population, which disproportionately suffers from untreated mental illness, has exploded in recent years. This story was presented without ever mentioning that, during the 1960s and 1970s, the State of California consciously emptied out most of the state mental institutions of patients who knew their own names and what day of the week it was, irrespective of whether they were profoundly mentally ill and in dire need of treatment. 

KPCC SPECIAL REPORT--Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — a longtime critic of big money in local politics — has set a surprising city record requesting large contributions, using a little-known and largely unregulated process called “behested payments,” KPCC has found.

GUEST WORDS—In 1950 my parents and grandmother were able to afford to buy a duplex for us to live in for $11,000 a mile north of the LaBrea tar pits here in Los Angeles. For two years I have watched the destruction of house after house in my neighborhood to build ugly McMansions selling for $4 million, and my block is a noisy construction pit to make developers rich.

NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICS-There is a war going on in Long Beach, a war fought in the most unlikely of places: the dog park. It can be seen in the nervous sizing up of new dogs when they enter the metal gates, as their owners unlatch harnesses from bellies. It is a war often fought only with stickers, flyers and sharpened glares as pets are corralled into opposing corners of a dust-covered park. But on occasion, these hostilities bubble up into angry words that boil in the unrelenting sunlight: “Fix your dog!” 

TRANSPORTATION & INFRASTRUCTURE--In my last CityWatch article, I reminded everyone that the need to create transportation/infrastructure for mobility, water, electricity, sewage, etc. is greater than ever … but our political polarization is getting in the way. 

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED-What has regrettably become the sole motivation behind using technology to communicate with customers, is not what it should be – providing better service -- but rather to increase profit by reducing costs, which further degrades service. Corporations have as their sole raison d'etre the yearly increasing of profit (growth), no matter what the effect on their ability to fairly and morally supply goods and services to the customer. 

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--Yesterday, I joined the ‘Alt Right is Not Alright’ March in Venice -- and knew I’d write an article about my experience. What I could not foretell was that the column I’d write would end up being quite different from what I had intended. 

ANIMAL WATCH-Two LA Animal Services' Commissioners appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti propose that potential adopters should not be informed of the breed -- or apparent breed -- of dogs they consider taking home from Los Angeles city shelters. 

PC POLITICS--Without going through another weedy analysis of James Damore’s firing from Google – Holman Jenkins, George Leef and Nick Gillespie have done a fine job of that – let’s just say the Silicon Valley engineer was canned for stating what most scientists and sensible people have known ever since Adam and Eve frolicked in Eden – that there are biological differences between men and women and also for suggesting that the tech giant has become an “ideological echo chamber.” So the politically correct, party line zealots at Google decided, 1984-like, to shove the thought-criminal out the door.

LOS ANGELES--Though the beating of Rodney King that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots occurred in the Northwest Valley, the epicenter of the civil unrest that followed was South Central, a region southwest of downtown LA. In the 25 years since, South Central has proven to be a popular backdrop for movies that look at the implications of the riots: Straight Outta Compton and Menace II Society are both set in a tense post-Rodney King South Central, while documentaries including Rize and Burn Motherf*cker, Burn! focus, to some degree, on civil unrest in the area's neighborhoods. (Photo above: Gook star, writer, and director Justin Chon.)

DEEGAN ON LA-Move over Magic. Step aside CT3. Bono, go to the back of the room. All you one-name celebrities -- meet your match and more: P-22, LA's iconic Puma (also known as a Mountain Lion or Cougar), a popular “extreme survivor” who lives in the Griffith Park hills. He’s even been honored with his own official day by a Mayoral and City Council Decree -- October 22 is P-22 Day in LA. 

NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICS--Or is it malling? It’s both. And it’s bad. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--The 2020 presidential campaign has started and the stakes couldn't be higher. How do we know that we are officially in campaign season already? One clue is that Los Angeles will be without its mayor for the next two weeks. Eric Garcetti is leaving home to campaign in New Hampshire. Ostensibly, he will be campaigning for someone else, a person who is running to be the mayor of Manchester, a town that is 2568 miles from here and has a population of 110,000 people. I guess we're supposed to believe that the choice of who gets elected mayor of Manchester is a question of major importance to the people of Los Angeles. To dust off the phrase made popular by Jim Bouton, Yeah, Sure. 

JUST ASKIN’--Earlier this year the City entered into an Exclusive Franchise Trash Agreement, commonly called a Monopoly. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-Trump and Nazis and Kaepernick, oh my! As deeply flawed and forever tarnished as Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson and many of their contemporaries were on the subject of slavery (Adams didn’t own slaves and was opposed to slavery, but worked to slow Abolition) they were brilliant on the five freedoms afforded us by the 1st Amendment, which are freedom of religion, speech, press, peaceful assembly and to petition the government without fear of punishment. 

GETTING THERE FROM HERE--For those of us who remember the movie "The Running Man" with Dustin Hoffman, the question of "Is it safe?" still has meaning.  Now it's time to ask that question about water, power, transportation, etc.  There are those who want division, who are outraged, or are both ... but for the issues that USUALLY unite us (transportation/infrastructure), is it safe to raise those issues again. 

MY TURN-It’s the question many of us are asking these days: what exactly is fake news? Is it news you disagree with? Or is it advertising that looks like news but isn’t -- as is the case with an “advertorial” in which an advertiser who wants to hype a new product pays for it to be written about as if it were a news story. (These types of articles should be identified as such and the Internet tries to make that distinction by calling them "sponsored.")