LOS ANGELES

EASTSIDER-I’m guessing that less than five percent of registered voters in California pay any attention to how our California legislature does business.

OTHER WORDS-Though lacking the size and prestige of The New York Times or The Washington Post, The Storm Lake Times is arguably just as important. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--This Saturday, as stated in my last piece, there will be a national conference in Mar Vista (home of the secondary highway-turned gridlock/business roadblock on Venice Blvd. Among other things, the politicization and ideological hijacking of transportation will be discussed. 

MY TURN-The Dallas jury in the Amber Guyger-Botham Jean murder trial was given -- as its only options -- the task of choosing between the remedies of guilty or innocent.

PLANNING WATCH--Real estate interests have sucked up so much of the oxygen at LA’s City Hall that patently false predictions about an impending LA’s population boom continuously pop up  – like methane bubbles at the LaBrea Tar Pits.(Photo above: Methane bubble at the LaBrea Tar Pits: A picture-perfect metaphor for the perpetual forecasts of a Los Angeles population boom.)  

MY TURN--The Greta/AOC generation is marching for our place on this planet.  

RANTZ & RAVEZ-My recent RantZ regarding Senator Bob Hertzberg eliminating California’s Posse Comitatus law -- the legal requirement compelling a person to assist a police officer during an arrest when ordered to do so by the officer -- drew a quick and defensive response from him.

VIEW FROM HERE-As reported by the Washington Post, a newly released Quinnipiac University poll shows that support for impeaching Trump and removing him from office has grown from 37 percent of registered voters to 47 percent in the latest survey.

PERSPECTIVE--Days after amplifying a right-wing pastor’s warning of a “Civil War-like fracture” if he is removed from office, President Donald Trump late Tuesday said the impeachment inquiry launched by House Democrats is a “coup,” heightening fears that Trump could refuse to allow a peaceful transition of power if he is ousted by Congress or defeated in 2020.

VOICES-Whether or not Donald Trump continues in office in the near future, he has already contributed to a language of immigration that’s both larger than him and that will outlast him.

JUST ASKIN’-Does Trump understand democracy? I’m really asking. His approach to politics is combative — kill-or-be-killed. If you hit him, he will hit you back harder, no matter what the rules of the game are. 

ONE MAN’S OPINION-The above headline sums up our current national ills. But it was not always so. While greed is not new, as a national ethos, greed has not been at the pinnacle of our moral hierarchy.