LOS ANGELES

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA-How will Californians ever recover from this year of apocalypse and conflict, of pandemic and fire, when landscapes and lives were broken, seemingly forever? Where can we find a miracle? 

NEW GEOGRAPHY-They paved paradise...And put up a parking lot...With a pink hotel, a boutique...And a swinging hot spot...Don't it always seem to go...That you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone -- Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi,” 1970 

CLIMATE POLITICS-As of September 29, Brazil’s Bolsonaro government has fired the civilian-run National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which has monitored the Amazon rainforest for the past three decades.

VIEW FROM HERE-Yahrzeit is Yiddish for the anniversary of someone’s death.  For political purposes, truth is dead, but exactly when and how did it die? 

GELFAND’S WORLD--With all due respect to the learned statisticians and pollsters, the simple question of who finished the debate ahead on points – who educated the voters more on issues of federal reserve policy or steel tariffs -- isn’t very important.

PLANNING WATCH-Robert Reich is a distinguished UC Berkeley professor of public policy, a former Secretary of Labor, and a frequent ed-op writer.

THE CITY-It can honestly be stated that the Los Angeles Police Department is top-heavy with Command staff and that many of them are not qualified to hold those positions. 

420 FILE--I have a vested interest for the Los ANGELES Department Cannabis Regulation ( LA DCR) ‘social equity’ licensing process to work and ACTUALLY licensing cannabis operators for retail storefronts. 

TONY CASTRO’S AMERICA-I stopped watching the Presidential debate Tuesday night after the first few minutes when it became apparent that Donald Trump had maintained enough self-control to not pull out his White House machete,

EASTSIDER-Seems to me that much of the back and forth over Amy Coney Barrett‘s nomination to become a U.S. Supreme Court Judge is misplaced. Let’s see what the Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell process tells us about the players and the Court. 

REVENGER-IN-CHIEF-During its planning process for Point Reyes National Seashore, the National Park Service received overwhelming public input opposing commercial ranching on and supporting the recovery of the rare tule elk. (photo above)

RANTZ & RAVEZ-Many of the elected officials at Los Angeles City Hall and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have lost sight of their responsibility to the voters who have elected them to office.

LEANING RIGHT-We live in a pandemic world that is vastly, ever-more-complicated (beyond words, really) by competing perspectives of the right approach to getting through this health/economic crisis, and anyone who tries to address it either "has to say the right things" or ignores the obvious, two-faced reality of it all:

OTHER WORDS--Today I looked at a graph of income inequality over time in America. This was not new information to me, and yet it was still shocking.

CLIMATE POLITICS-Global warming is ravaging forests throughout the world. 

THE VIEW FROM HERE-“Sure, I'm willing to do that...Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I'll tell you what...somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left." President Trump Sept 29, 2020 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Lily Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”

GUEST COMMENTARY-There has been a lot of ink about José Huizar’s precipitous fall from being the all-powerful chair of the Los Angeles City Council Planning and Land Use Management Committee (PLUM) to being indicted on Federal racketeering charges. 

SPECIAL REPORT--Mob-like intimidation tactics deployed against our community leaders, using Black and Brown people's retirement dollars to cut backroom deals that harm Black and Brown communities, and bringing in corrupt Black developers and telling bold-faced lies in an attempt to divide the community:

@THE GUSS REPORT-Politicians should learn to embrace their mistakes and say hey, I’m human and made a mistake, can we let this one go?

ELECTION POLITICS-I moved to Koreatown more than twenty years ago. The organization I worked for opened its office here.