LOS ANGELES

BE GREEN--Just two months after a 14-blaze firestorm ravaged Northern California, at least five fires are burning across more than 83,000 acres in Southern California, destroying dozens of structures and forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes.

PREVEN REPORT-Today the LA City Council moved forward with its confusing and dumb plan to allow for the opening on January 1, 2018 of legal recreational pot shops. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--While not giving anyone a "pass", it's safe to say that Metro still enjoys the reputation of a reformed agency that is trying to do its best by the taxpayers and commuters of LA County.  Compared to other public agencies, it's responsive and responsible and tries to do what it's told ... including the construction of infrastructure projects that should have been built decades ago.

WHY THE RESISTANCE GROWS--“It was so pitiful — city planners asked us for our 'feelings.' They rushed past open space so fast I was embarrassed,” observed Patricia Bell Hearst, chair emeritus of Hillside Federation. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-At the height of the previous anti-Russian cold war, roughhewn anti-Communists, like J. Edgar Hoover, wrote long forgotten tracts, like his masterpiece, Masters of Deceit. He told “real Americans” about telltale signs that slick-talking liberals sneaking into their circle of friends might really be clandestine Reds. Picking up his theme, in 1949 RKO Studios produced I Married a Communist, but it was such a dud that the studio renamed the film, The Woman on Pier 13.   A half-century later, acclaimed writer Phillip Roth wrote a sarcastic novel with the same name, “I Married a Communist.”  

RANTZ AND RAVEZ-Without Justice in our society – and particularly in the Criminal Judicial System -- there is a strong tendency by some members of society to resort to misguided vigilante justice or, as it states in Exodus 21:24, to demand an eye for eye, a tooth for tooth, a hand for hand, a foot for a foot. 

YES IN MY BACK YARDERS ON THE MOVE-Of the fifteen bills in the “housing package” signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on September 29, the one that got the most attention in the media was State Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 35—and for good reason: SB 35 goes a long way toward “putting teeth” in California’s Regional Housing Needs Allocations, the number of housing units that each city’s and county’s zoning must accommodate. Moreover, the bill’s provisions for “by-right” approval of certain multi-family, infill developments both circumvent the California Environmental Quality Act and eliminate negotiations with developers over community benefits.

BELL VIEW-This one goes way back. When I was about 8 years old, I got together with my friend up the street, Davy Dexheimer, to play Hot Wheels. We set up a track down Davy’s long driveway and raced our cars against each other. Davy had quite the collection, and one in particular caught my eye. So, when we were packing up our things at the end of the day, I pocketed one small car and headed home. 

EASTSIDER-Everyone knows about the plight of the folks living around Porter Ranch, and how well SoCalGas has treated them. Now it appears that all DWP customers will be receiving a “gift” from the Gas company that we really, really are not going to like! 

REMEMBER ENRON?--Los Angeles’ escalating housing costs are not due to impartial market forces, but rather, the product of judicially sanctioned corruptionism. Hillel Aron and Jason McGahan, in their November 29, 2017 article, What Happens When Wall Street Is Your Landlord?   describe the personal pain and suffering that is increasingly befalling Angelenos. 

DEEGAN ON LA-Iconic skyscrapers, a symbol of modernism, dominate New York’s Manhattan skyline and define its signature style. This came to be called the “International Style,” one that used a formal arrangement of glass and steel -- the newest building materials that came into use mid-century -- when Manhattan experienced a post-World War II building boom. Here in Los Angeles, though, the predominant architectural signature style is Spanish stucco with red tiled roofs. 

BCK FILE--As most of the country slept the US Senate passed a tax bill that included scribbled give-aways on the margins and will pack a punch to Californians, especially vis a vis the elimination of the state and local tax deductions and change to mortgage interest deductions. (Photo above: CA Congressmember Nancy Pelosi.) 

GUEST WORDS-We are living in a state of constant and overt racism under this administration. Still reeling from the decision to rescind DACA, upending the futures of over 800,000 Dreamers, it is our obligation as a society to look toward other ways to provide sanctuary for our undocumented brothers and sisters. There are two key areas we need to focus on — creating sanctuary workplaces, and passing sanctuary policies at the statewide and city level. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--After hundreds of thousands of Westsiders from the Santa Monica Mountains to Playa Del Rey were terrified by what appeared to be a toxic natural gas leak (is it OUR home, or the neighbor's home?!), the answer appears to be … a leaking barrel of Mercaptan odorant near the Rancho Park golf course. 

PREVEN REPORT--The LA City Ethics Commission audits the campaign finances of any candidate for city office who raises or spends more than $100,000 … why do the audits take so long? 

CORRUPTION WATCH-Los Angeles, the nation’s greatest city, is being poisoned by an amalgam of corrupt politicos, Wall Street, and a corrupt judiciary. 

ANIMAL WATCH-Steve Cooley, former three-term LA County District Attorney and co-author of just-released Blue Lives Matter: In the Line of Duty, is not commonly known as a former LAPD Reserve Officer.

A GUSS REPORT EXCLUSIVE--For the second consecutive time, notorious Los Angeles City Hall gadfly Wayne Spindler has defeated LA City Attorney Mike Feuer, as a federal judge ruled that Spindler did not threaten Herb Wesson, the LA City Council president, in an incident back on May 11, 2016. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Sometimes I overreact. At least that's what various relatives have told me over the years. But on Saturday, I found that a room full of people agreed with me in being exasperated with our government representatives. The occasion was the monthly meeting of the LA Neighborhood Council Coalition (LANCC). The context was a preliminary report from the LA Department of Transportation (LADOT) and the city's planning department about an expected update to something called the Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Ordinance. 

HOW GOLD IS THE GOLDEN STATE? --Twice each year, once in January and again in May, Gov. Jerry Brown warns Californians that the economic prosperity their state has enjoyed in recent years won’t last forever.

GELFAND’S WORLD--He sure knew how to deal with parking meters. The irritation of the parking control system here in Los Angeles is one issue that is worth talking about in a broader context. It provides a clear example of why obvious reforms are nearly impossible to execute if we leave them to the City Council and the mayor. However, there may be a way to fix things.