VOICES

OP-ED - It was the honor of my life to serve the people of Los Angeles and the State of California over a 20-year public service career.

GUEST COMMENTARY - There was no leader in the twentieth century who did more to end the Cold War, the over-militarization of his country, and the reliance on nuclear weaponry than Mikhail S. Gorbachev. 

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Two factors precede most civil wars: (1) The breaking of established cultural norms based on shared values, and (2) division along ethnic, religious or race lines. 

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Labor sounds awfully intense in this Trumpian era of self-indulgence. Do people really want to celebrate work? 

DRUG OVERDOSES - In February 2021, 16-year-old, straight-A student Sammy Berman Chapman asked his dad for a cheeseburger. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - The last few decades have seen the emergence of two rival economies:

STUDENT LOANS - President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness plan is like a dirty band-aid on a festering wound.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - On Sunday, August 27, 2022, 60 Minutes ran a story about terrorist attacks on the power grid. 

ACCORDING TO LIZ - In the fable about the three little pigs, the big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house made of straw and the house made of wood, but when his hot air made no impact on the solidly built brick house of the third pig, he tried to sneak down the chimney and ended up in the soup pot.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Social Security advocates on Wednesday applauded Democrats including U.S. President Joe Biden for their defense of the popular program as Republicans recycle false claims that the nation will soon be unable to pay for the program's benefits,

GUN VIOLENCE - Among the many ironies and hypocrisies leading up to the 2022 midterms, one deserving special mention is Trump's and the GOP's unremitting claim that America has become more violent and dangerous under Biden and the Democrats.

GUEST COMMENTARY - During the summer of 1967, I wrote my second novel in an apartment in the Echo Park Lake section of Los Angeles.

RantZ and RaveZ - I recently ran into an old friend Jay who gave up his job, moved out Los Angeles and is doing great in Palm Desert, Calif where has started a new business and a very exciting new life. 

POLITICAL HIGH STAKES - To write about the strange and unstable present moment, or to engage in political prognostication, is to court not just despair but a certain disorientation, rooted in the duplicitous – not to say schizoid – behavior of the Democratic Party.

STUDENT DEBT - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Saturday that Congress could reverse the 2017 GOP tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the rich and large corporations, to finance the cancellation of all remaining student loan debt after President Joe Biden announced his more limited plan to wipe out $10,000 for most borrowers.

HOUSING CRISIS - Housing is an industry, but it is also where people live, raise families, and stake their future.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - While the Alt Right is dangerous due to its propensity for violence, the Wokers pose the more lethal threat to the nation. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN - Faux-economics gurus, faux-taxpayer experts, and faux-students rights spokesmen and "thought leaders" are weighing in on how wonderful (or dangerous) President Biden's student loan forgiveness program is. 

ACCORDING TO LIZ - “A country that was founded on the principles of free speech, free press, and the freedom of religion — all rights tied inexorably to words — is fast becoming an illiterate nation.”  – from the website of David Baldacci’s WishYouWellFoundation.org

GUEST COMMENTARY - As in Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex, we are witnessing a generational drama in which inheritors kill their proverbial father to marry their mother, in this case Mother Earth.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Right wing Israeli politicians such as former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even centrist politicians like caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid have fulminated against any US renewal of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).