LOS ANGELES

EDUCATION POLITICS--In the never-ending saga of LAUSD absurdity, last week, my wife and I received a robo- call from Superintendent Michelle King informing us that a music teacher who was not a District employee may have contaminated recorders with semen and given them to students. Any parent concerned that their child might have been affected was instructed to call their office. 

NEW GEOGRAPHY--America’s seemingly unceasing culture wars are not good for business, particularly for a region like Southern California. As we see Hollywood movie stars, professional athletes and the mainstream media types line up along uniform ideological lines, a substantial portion of the American ticket and TV watching population are turning them off, sometimes taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the bottom line.

When white women are violated, America responds and the response is immediate.

GELFAND’S WORLD--We've now completed the first weekend of the San Pedro International Film Festival, aka Spiff.  The fun part of a film festival, certainly this one, is the chance to see a lot of short films -- both documentaries and fictions -- by young and unknown artists. The abundance of decent quality short films raises an interesting question: In the absence of a movie theater circuit that shows these films, how does a mass audience experience them? It turns out that there are a couple of answers to this question, neither of them being entirely satisfying. There are a lot of well-made stories that deserve to be seen on the big screen by a live audience. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-How soon Los Angeles City Councilmember David Ryu forgets about a rash of burglaries and mail thefts that he and the LAPD ignored this year, all caught on video, in the Sherman Oaks area he represents. 

THE EPPERHART EXPRESS-The cover of Life magazine on August 12, 1966 featured a bullet hole in a store window caused by Charles Whitman, whom they dubbed, “The Texas Sniper.” The 25-year-old Whitman was an All-American boy who was an Eagle Scout and Marine Corps veteran. On August 1, 51 years ago, he carried a footlocker containing a shotgun, three rifles and two pistols up to the 29th floor observation deck of the University of Texas administration building in Austin and started shooting. 

EASTSIDER-Back in June, I wrote an article in CityWatch about the PLUM Committee’s hearings on Airbnb called, “Airbnb and the PLUM Committee - Houston We Have a Problem.”

ALIENATING THE LEFT AND RIGHT-Our nation’s ruling tech oligarchs may be geniuses in making money through software, but they are showing themselves to be not so adept in the less quantifiable world of politics. Once the toast of the political world, the ever more economically dominant tech elite now face growing political opposition, both domestically and around the world. 

EDUCATION POLITICS--When Bernie Sanders, and then Hillary Clinton, made debt-free higher education a byword of the 2016 presidential race, University of California graduates like retired Los Angeles anesthesiologist Steve Auer unexpectedly found themselves the poster children for a time when free college tuition was the norm in California, rather than the radical proposition it seems today. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-By state law every city in California must have a timely, internally consistent, regularly updated, and annually monitored General Plan. This plan must address the entire land area of a city and must include all infrastructure and services categories. It is far more comprehensive than zoning waivers for privately owned parcels, which pretty much sums up planning in Los Angeles.

ALPERN AT LARGE--In my last CityWatch article, I expressed concerns of why our city or school district wants "input" when the political leadership and bureaucracy have NO interest in actually listening or taking that "input" seriously. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-Someday, I expect medical science will vindicate my belief that “thinking can physically hurt.” I arrived at this conclusion a few decades ago after I had an auto accident in which a gigantic moving van tried to plow down my little Buick on the Harbor Freeway. 

CALMATTERS--There’s sometimes a fine line between good governance and trolling.

HOW MANY MORE MUST DIE-Our thoughts and prayers go out to the nearly 600 victims and their families of the largest mass shooting in U.S. history last Sunday night in Las Vegas. The mass carnage made that city into what can only be described as a war zone. But our response needs to include more than prayers and moments of silence. We need to act to prevent more mass shootings, which are now occurring at an average of more than one per day. 

BELL VIEW-I have a few friends from my old neighborhood who qualify as legitimate “gun nuts.” Am I afraid these guys are going to snap and start picking people off from the roof of the Motel 6? No. But I remember being about 15-years-old at a friend of mine’s house for one of those parents-are-out-for-the-night parties. We were drinking beer, shooting pool in the basement, and – eventually – we wandered up into my friend’s parents’ bedroom and took out his dad’s 30-ought-6 hunting rifle. 

BUILDING CLEAN-With California doubling and tripling down on climate change as a reality in 2017, a new bill awaiting Governor Jerry Brown’s signature could use the state’s massive purchasing power as the world’s sixth largest economy to address greenhouse gas emissions far beyond its borders.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into legislation a bill that would move the 2020 presidential primary to March 3, the change likely to become law. The most populous state with the most delegates at stake has held early June primaries from 1946 to 1994.

CALIFORNIA--On Friday, the Governor signed a package of housing bills intended to help address the soaring costs of housing in many metro areas in California. Follow-up coverage of that package has (rightly) indicated that those bills are a drop in the bucket in terms of addressing California’s housing crisis.

CORRUPTION WATCH-Why Is Los Angeles designing a Traffic System for 1895 New York City? Hardly anyone in Los Angeles is paying any attention Mayor Garcetti’s Mobility Plan 2035, and as a result, Angelenos do not realize that he is planning a transportation infrastructure appropriate for 1895 Manhattan. 

DEEGAN ON LA-Several times daily you feel the splash of hot water and inhale the scent of soap as you routinely wash your hands after any number of tasks. The homeless do not have this experience, but they should, for all the usual reasons, and now with more urgency than ever since the County Department of Public Health has announced an outbreak of Hepatitis A, a potentially serious liver disease nurtured and transmitted by poor hygiene. The homeless are especially vulnerable because they do not have a ready supply of hot water and soap, something most of us take for granted but which is an unreachable luxury for them.

THE PREVEN REPORT--By now it's common knowledge in Los Angeles that Harvard-Westlake, an elite private middle and high school, is trying to erect a 750-car parking structure in the hillside residential neighborhood abutting its campus in Coldwater Canyon.