LOS ANGELES

ALPERN AT LARGE--Let's face it: we just loooooove writing for new measures to tax ourselves, but we suck at demanding that the taxes get spent in a measurable and cost-effective manner. I mean REALLY now ... are we that blind and childish as to presume throwing money at a problem necessarily fixes it? 

NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICS--In a June 4, 2019 letter to the Los Angeles City Attorney, Benjamin Reznik, attorney for the owners of Tom Bergin’s, demanded that Council District 4 representative David Ryu be “disqualified” from the Historic Cultural Monument (HCM) proceedings for Bergin’s. Reznik accuses Ryu of being “personally embroiled in the matter.”

@THE GUSS REPORT-There was plenty of schadenfreude last week as LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s and the LA Times’ beloved Measure EE not only failed to get the needed 67% of votes to pass, it didn’t even get a 50%+ 1 vote majority. 

VIEW FROM HERE--The last time I checked the sovereign nation of Mexico was not an enemy of the United States. Mexico is the 5th largest Christian nation and one of the epicenters of Catholicism in the world.

DEEGAN ON LA-Los Angeles, eagerly looking forward to a summer of Olympic glory in 2028, has won the Gold Medal for failure when it comes to the competition of helping the homeless beat the streets and win housing. 

GUEST COMMENTARY--The streets in parts of Los Angeles now look like (or worse) than some of the streets I have seen in some of the poorest countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean that I have traveled through.  

EQUAL RIGHTS--From the very start of our nation, the most popular forum for debating and shaping our democratic rights was not stately legislative halls, but rowdy beer halls.

ANIMAL ALERT-If you have a dog or cat, I want to alert you to the danger of foxtail plants. We are having an infestation of foxtails this year.   

EDUCATION POLITICS-Carolyn Torres was one of 10 new replacement instructors when she began teaching 10th grade at Alliance Cindy and Bill Simon Technology Academy High School, a charter school in South Los Angeles — a replacement figure, she claims, which represented a 33 percent turnover in one year at Alliance.

ONE MAN’S OPINION -It seems that it takes something like the plague pressing at our doors before we we’ll ever wake up to what’s happening to us.

RANTZ & RAVEZ-The failure of any government in the final analysis must be measured by the well-being of its citizens. Nothing can be more important to a state then its public health, the state’s paramount concern should be the health of its people.” -- Franklin D.  Roosevelt in a 1932 report to the New York State Health Commission. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Contrary to any accusations or presumptions about mean-spirited joy over the fallen aspirations of another person or group of people (also called "schadenfreude"), neither myself nor most of us who saw the results of Sunday's and Tuesday's elections get any joy over seeing those who lost suffer. 

CAL MATTERS-When Georgia and other red states enacted very tight restrictions on abortions, their political leaders obviously hoped to push the issue back into the U.S. Supreme Court and into the hands of the court’s newly strengthened conservative majority. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-CityWatch has recently published several articles explaining how and why Los Angeles Times’ reporting on the state’s housing crisis is so consistently wrong.

URBAN PERSPECTIVE--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to be of two minds on impeachment.

EASTSIDER -Call it “non-primary” home ownership, vacation rentals, ADU rentals, second home rentals, or whatever. The total commercialization of the Airbnb, short-term rental Ordinance is on the table. Right here in Los Angeles. 

AT LENGTH-The other day it rained around noontime, an unseasonal downpour that lingered briefly, then blew on out to the Arizona desert and beyond. By early evening, as I stepped out of my back door, I looked up at the clear sky and I asked myself, “Did it actually rain today, or did I just imagine it?” 

ONE MAN’S OPINION-Case in point - the May 28, 2019 LA Times article by two of my favorite Times reporters (which is a very short list) Emily Alpert Reyes and David Zahniser, “Should L.A. Curb Charitable Fundraising by Politicians? Council Members Aren’t So Sure,” touches on bribery at LA City Council but closes its eyes to the Hufflaumpus Giganticus. 

FIRST PERSON-The problem with passing Proposition EE to again bailout the long-troubled Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is that it does nothing to address the endemic dysfunction and corruption that over decades has enabled LAUSD administration and "agreed corporate vendors" to put bureaucratic interests and profit above what should be the LAUSD's primary function: educating students with enough teachers who are fairly compensated. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--As stated in my last CityWatch article, free food from all candidates, and/or as an outreach tool, makes for good ethical voting. Having one group of candidates attach their names and faces to the free food might be legal, but it's certainly not ethical.

BACKTALK-This article focuses on the language of SB 330 itself to show why Dick Platkin’s article on SB 330 as published here in CityWatch was correct, and the response by Senator Skinner’s office as published here in CityWatch is misleading and not an accurate rendition of the text of the bill by the bill’s sponsor and her office.