LOS ANGELES

EASTSIDER-Today’s tale involves a stakeholder named Richard Hopp.

GUEST WORDS--Around midnight on March 3, 1991, four Los Angeles police officers stopped Rodney King, a 25-year-old black man, for speeding or driving drunk or a minor traffic violation or maybe just for being black, and savagely kicked, tasered, and beat him with batons over 56 times.

PLANNING WATCH-The Los Angeles Times has changed ownership several times in recent decades, but its support for speculative real estate bubbles has never wavered. 

RANTZ & RAVEZ-In February 2021, Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, made a huge mistake by directing his NBA team to stop singing the National Anthem at the start of basketball games.  

MY TURN--How we think about events determines what actions we take. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Pardon my getting a wee bit cynical here, but I suspect that there are a couple of reasons for the recall attempt, and they aren't that he went out to dinner one night without a face mask.

@THE GUSS REPORT-LA City Council President Nury Martinez just did what she does best: send the nation's highest-salaried local lawmakers to another unscheduled, paid recess despite multiple ongoing deadly crises. 

ABUSE CLAIMS-Two female tenants of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Madison Hotel on Skid Row are suing the billion-dollar nonprofit for failing to stop sexual harassment and discrimination at the single-occupancy residential building. 

GUEST WORDS--If housing is a human right,

CALIFORNIA CONNECTION--Over the past decade, California has made real progress in reforming its criminal justice system and reducing its prison population, but the state’s era of mass incarceration is far from over.

MY TURN--Neither ignorance nor lies should be the basis of public discussion.

THE DOCTOR IS IN--Lots of tough questions remain as we enter the vaccination phase, with political and irrational nonsense blocking the way to our collective peace of mind, and with both "pandemic fatigue" and human nature that will test both our patience and understanding of our fellow Americans: 

A LOCAL STATE ELECTION-Los Angeles County’s Central Democratic Party Committee has focused lately on single-payer healthcare. This is a good thing.

PUBLIC HEALTH-According to the American Lung Association, the Los Angeles – Long Beach area has the worst air quality in the Nation.

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's a striking pair of photos. Here is Nikolai Yezhov standing next to Joseph Stalin as they view a Moscow canal. [photo 1]

MINIMUM WAGE-Opponents of raising the minimum wage have seized on a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office that estimated that increasing it to $15 an hour by 2025 would cause 1.4 million Americans to lose their jobs.

PLANNING WATCH-Political pundits have found a path to job security.

TALKING TRANSIT-I began riding buses in 1992 to reduce my share of pollution-producing driving

EASTSIDER-First, we have another Superior Court Judge requiring the City to do something about sheltering LA’s homeless.

LESSONS FROM CLIMATE CHANGE-As Texas battles a severe snowstorm and mass power outages this winter, Tim Boyd, the now-former Republican mayor of Colorado City, revealed his party’s plan for the deadly extreme temperatures linked to climate change.

THE DOCTOR IS IN--Sometimes I wonder if this nation really does want to get on with our lives and past this pandemic...or at least whether its political leadership wishes to resolve and move on from this dreadful interruption in all of our lives.