LOS ANGELES

VIEW FROM HERE--The unmanned drone narrative is wrong. Someone is always operating these highly sophisticated killing/surveillance machines.

NEW RESEARCH--Formal complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace have declined over the past 20 years. But according to new research, this good news comes with an asterisk.

ALPERN AT LARGE-With Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom now proclaiming the GOP is destined for the waste bin of history, it's a good question to ask what the future of the Democratic Party is -- particularly with troublemakers like Scott Wiener backed by people like Newsom himself. 

BCK FILE--This past week, Sarah Fabian, the senior attorney  for the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation, told a panel of Ninth Circuit judges that it was “safe and sanitary” to house immigrant children without soap or toothbrushes, forcing them to sleep on concrete floors under bright lights. Fabian’s arguments went viral. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--There is a Bird scooter that has been gracing the alley adjacent to where I live for 3 days going on 4 as of this writing. I ask the following question:

DEEGAN ON LA-Fighting the traffic, searching for parking, feeling the frustration of commuting to a job that is miles away from your home can be stressful. 

TENANTS RIGHTS-One June 12, Democratic lawmakers harnessed their majority powers to pass sweeping changes in rent laws in order to protect tenants in a state with some of the country’s most expensive housing markets. “This package of legislation will reverse decades of rampant landlord abuse and enact much-needed protections for hundreds of thousands of tenants.” 

GUEST WORDS--Aaron Campbell was young, black, unarmed, and suffered from mental illness, exacerbated by his brother’s death that day from kidney failure. He was distraught, of no danger to anyone, but police were called, and they shot him dead.

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Let’s hear no more of this foolishness that housing prices are high because the supply of housing is low. The concept of Supply and Demand, as used by the Garcettites of this world, is a fraud. Two things to bear in mind: 

CHILDHOOD CANCERS-A cancer diagnosis is upsetting at any age, but especially so when the patient is a child. 

RANTZ & RAVEZ-The battle to combat the increasing homeless population in Los Angeles and surrounding cities continues to draw the attention and anger of residents, media and politicians.

EDUCATION POLITICS--The weight of her backpack is what comes to mind when Andrea Morín thinks about crossing the United States–Mexico border between Tijuana and San Diego every weekday to attend San Diego State University.

YOU HAVE TO STAND FOR SOMETHING---Every time I drive from my home to the airport, I pass the ruins of a concentration camp. I live in the Twin Cities, in Minnesota, where the Minneapolis−Saint Paul International Airport sits next to Fort Snelling.

GENTRIFICATION AND THE REAL ESTATE STATE--Samuel Stein, who has no relationship of me, has written an amazing book Capital City:  Gentrification and the Real Estate State that explains why housing in U.S. cities is becoming too expensive for millions of people. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--For those Angelenos who are anguished, concerned, or otherwise sympathetic towards the plight of the Third World (think of Venezuela, South Sudan, or Bangladesh), we now have a wonderful opportunity to get over our collective liberal guilt and witness our own little slice of the Third World!  

EASTSIDER-Like the little boy putting his finger in the dike to hold back the ocean, it looks like CD 13 has come up with another project to spend HHH money with years till completion, bags of money involved, and little effect on homelessness. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Few Angelenos know that Los Angeles has a detailed General (Comprehensive) Plan, including the city’s on-and-off 50-year-old break up with comprehensive planning.

@THE GUSS REPORT-Once again, the LA Times doesn’t give its readers the whole story.

CLIMATE POLITICS--The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (“ESAS”) is the epicenter of a methane-rich zone that could turn the world upside down. 

OTHER WORDS-The satirical website McSweeney’s recently published a piece called “My Coming Out Story, Sponsored by Bank of America.”  

GUEST WORDS--There’s little that LA’s politicians are as good at as shoveling millions of tax dollars into projects with little or no value for the residents of this city (save for those employed as lobbyists). For example, this past August, the Los Angeles City Council pledged to fork over $600 million to build and run a streetcar on a four-mile loop in downtown Los Angeles -- a route already covered by the city’s DASH buses.