VOICES

SUPER RICH - Spin a globe, then stop it with any finger. Some fantastically rich individual will most likely be living—or yachting—somewhere close to wherever your finger lands.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Microsoft is not “micro” nor is it “soft.” It is a monopoly profiting off of, and unyielding in its disregard of the needs of the common people. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - Last month, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2097, which prohibits cities from imposing parking minimums on either commercial or residential buildings built “close to transit,” which essentially means there needs to be a bus within a half-mile radius that runs four times an hour during peak traffic times.

CORPORATE LANDLORD - While millions of renters struggle to make ends meet, corporate landlord Stephen Schwarzman, whose company spent mountains of cash to successfully kill rent control ballot measures in California, has bought another multi-million-dollar mansion, according to a news report.

GUEST COMMENTARY - When I came to LA 40 years ago---LA was an energetic, happening place--full of life--vibrant--entrepreneurial--with limitless possibilities---and there was a sense of joy throughout the city--- 

GUEST COMMENTARY - We're all in this thing together.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Everyone acknowledges that there is a huge homelessness problem in California.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - One of the first things a newly-elected President Joe Biden did was to kill the Keystone pipeline,

GUEST COMMENTARY - The decision to “suspend” Councilmember Ridley-Thomas last October 2021, continues to cast a growing cloud over the governance of the nation’s second largest city and the leadership of its fifteen-member City Council.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Predator, scammer, religious bigot, liar, bully, briber, developer are a few of the faces which Rick Caruso has revealed to Angelenos, and none of them are good. 

MY THOUGHTS - I ALWAYS LOVED THAT OPENING LINE FROM JOAN RIVERS. It sounded like we were asked to have coffee together.

EDUCATION - Who would have imagined that after the past two tumultuous years, when so much was written and said about how the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had convinced American parents that public schools were “failing” institutions, that as the 2022-2023 school year begins, “Americans’ ratings of their community’s public schools reached a new high dating back 48 years.”

POLICY - Years before his 1987 best-seller, The Bonfire of the Vanities chronicled New York society and politics, novelist Tom Wolfe chronicled another venue of political theatre and vanities bonfire: the anti-poverty programs funded under the federal government’s War on Poverty.

GUEST COMMENTARY - The Keith Raniere case is another example of our justice agencies acting against the best interest of common sense, common decency and “we the people”.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Abandoned high-rises and homeless encampments on the streets of downtown are not selling Los Angeles as the best Olympic venue for 2028 Olympics. 

GUEST COMMENTARY - It is long past time to repeal the Second Amendment.  Why?

HOUSING WATCH - Across the United States, grassroots movements continue to rise up to end statewide rent control bans.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Good intentions do not always lead to Hell. 

SUPREME IN JUSTICE -  Adults in the United States say they lack trust in the federal government's judicial branch and nearly three-fifths disapprove of the way the U.S. Supreme Court is doing its job, 

AN ALMOST MISFIRE - It was an intelligence failure of a scope to vastly exceed all others, when one nuclear superpower perceived the other moving to a nuclear first strike and prepared for war, while the other missed all the signals and believed it was business as usual.

NUCLEAR DISASTER - What does surrender look like in the world of geopolitics?