LOS ANGELES

SOUTH OF THE 10-During a week when American workers have hope with the coming United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and a phase one trade deal with China driven by President Trump, key leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are driving to restore the status quo of anemic wages and high unemployment to their communities back home by attempting to unseat Trump, the only president in recent history to move the economic needle for blacks in America.

ENERGY POLITICS-Powerful forces are quickly moving Pacific Gas & Electric towards a settlement on its hideously complex multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy case. Thankfully, Gov. Gavin Newsom has put at least a temporary hold on a final agreement.

PERSPECTIVE-As we all know, the largest US corporations and their chief executives were the main beneficiaries of Trump’s so-called tax reform in 2017.

PLANNING WATCH-A municipal version of the dog bites man story surfaced last week, with another METRO report that ridership on buses, subways, and light rail has declined yet again. 

AN ARTIFICIAL CRISIS-Something doesn’t make much sense to me that our major metropolitan areas, all with tens of thousands of homeless people on their streets, would simultaneously have four to five empty housing units sitting vacant per person for everyone sleeping outside.

LA SKID ROW POLITICS-Skid Row is commonly known as “The Homeless Capital of America,” so any court decisions directly affect the epicenter of homelessness in the United States. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--I guess we do live in interesting times. Of the three occasions in American history that a president has been impeached by the House of Representatives, this is the most meritorious – possibly the only truly meritorious case out of the three.

OTHER WORDS-A lawsuit is taking on the University of California system’s use of the SAT and ACT standardized tests in admissions. The suit claims the tests are “deeply biased and provide no meaningful information about a student’s ability to succeed.” 

ONE MAN’S OPINION-One of the greatest fears of our Founding Fathers was unbridled passion.

@THE GUSS REPORT-My family is emerging from a month-long haze because we recently let go of Morsel, a beautiful, intelligent and resilient special needs rescue dog who came from the high-kill Los Angeles Animal Services during Eric Garcetti’s disastrous and inhumane time as Mayor of LA – a leader who misled the public about what the words euthanasia and no kill really mean.

VIEW FROM HERE--According to most climate scientists, emissions would need to start falling next year by 7.6% annually and continue at that rate for a decade in order for the world to have any chance of hitting the widely accepted targets for stopping global warming. 

VOICES--Not many people noticed when, in early December, the California Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by a lower court in the case Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association [BCNA] vs. the City of Los Angeles. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Something terrible happened in New Jersey--a couple of Jew-hating losers killed a police officer and several Jews at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City. And, of course, their Jew-hatred extended well-beyond Jews (of whom they believe they are the "true" Jewish people). 

BCK FILE--When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia, it’s almost as if they had a crystal ball to foretell a president who would abuse the office in order to achieve, hold onto, and expand his powers.

NEW GEOGRAPHY--The fate of the 2020 election, whether for Congress or the White House, will be decided in the suburbs.

DEEGAN ON LA-Neither the homeless housing crisis and its related public health dangers, nor the political processes currently being employed to deal with these critical issues, are considered tenable by the LA County Supervisors. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--To the reader: This is a rather long submission, but sometimes you just have to fight through the details to explain things.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Abe Lincoln spoke in loftier terms than back-stabbing when he gave his House Divided Speech in 1858. Although the nation was headed toward a civil war, people still cared about the principles on which the nation was founded. Not so in 2019.

NEW GEOGRAPHY--We usually associate rebellions with the rise of the desperate. But increasingly we are seeing large protests in comparatively wealthy countries that are led not by working class sans-culottes or starving peasants, but what was once the stable middle class.

GUEST WORDS-I supported Trump in 2016. I will not be supporting him in 2020.

PERSPECTIVE-If we hope to improve public health, impeach Donald Trump. What is the evidence for such an assertion? There is a great deal, including but hardly limited to these examples: