LOS ANGELES

GUEST WORDS-We have it on the very best but very secret source that Trump has clandestine plans to return The Statue of Liberty to the French. Among his followers Trump has been heard to say the statue no longer reflects our pure white values.

NEW GEOGRAPHY-California may have gotten its global allure from the Gold Rush and the movies, but it’s planes, missiles and now drones and spaceships that have underpinned the state’s industrial emergence.

ALPERN AT LARGE--Every once in a while we recognize how we've constrained ourselves in our way of thinking.

BCK FILE--Entitlement, wealth, and privilege may be on the way out as a protection for committing any number of crimes and lapses of ethics. Or will things remain the same? 

GELFAND’S WORLD (PORDENONE, ITALY--Here at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, otherwise known as the Pordenone silent film festival, there has been a chance to consider both world politics and art. World politics is losing out, but art is hanging in there. 

PERSPECTIVE--And, in fact, Americans appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Social Security, public radio, unemployment insurance, public universities, Medicare, public libraries, the U.S. postal service, public roads, and high taxes on the wealthy.

CAPITAL & MAIN--California’s progressive activists won a major victory in mid-September when the state legislature passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom promised to sign, a bill creating unprecedented protections for renters facing skyrocketing rents and arbitrary evictions in a state where the increasing unaffordability of housing has reached crisis proportions.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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

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. 

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.

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.)  

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

ONE MAN’S OPINION-The Problem: People who have too much want more at the expense of people who do not have enough.

YOUR NC BUDGET VOICE--The Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates recommended that the Mayor present his Proposed Budget on February 1^st, 80 days earlier than the charter mandated date of April 20^th.