SO EX-CHIEF BERNARD PARKS IS thinking of running for the City Council instead of suing it. Although he doesn’t appear to live there at the moment, Parks certainly has a better-than-even chance next year of winning the 8th District seat that Mark Ridley-Thomas will vacate this December when he wins election to the state Assembly. […]
Month: July 2018
Reporter’s Notebook
The families of the defendants are elated as the LAPD quartet go free. My boss at the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, Lowell Forte, who was once a small-town prosecutor, makes a lawyer joke about the legal strategy of Sergeant Stacey Koon, the senior LAPD officer at the beating scene. Koon tried to distance himself from the men […]
Senseless Steve
Someone shut down a newspaper last week. His name was Steve Cooley, and he’s the district attorney most voters — including me — chose two years ago because we thought he was the best man in the race.Now it looks like we were wrong.In shutting the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, Cooley violated one of the cardinal principles […]
The Old Ball Game
Summer is nearly upon us, and, in what has become almost a biennial rite, so is L.A.’s professional football season. What, you say we have no pro football team in L.A.?Exactly, folks; the game is about getting a team.Because seemingly every two or three years a bunch of guys with a bunch of bucks gets […]
Power From the People
There are no checks and balances in our county government. If you don’t believe me, just look at the closed-meeting-law dispute of the past few weeks. There‘s a simple reason for this lack of oversight. The Los Angeles County supervisors own the franchise. They ordain the spending. They direct the money. They cut the checks: […]
Urban Fission
What makes a city fly apart? It’s not yet clear: Urbanologists don‘t have many precedents. Just as it pioneered so many other lifestyle innovations — swimming-pool-centered apartment complexes, muscle-toned surf bunnies, Kung Pao pizza, free alternative weeklies and an NFL-free major metro area — Los Angeles is now contemplating the self-inflicted mode of urban disintegration […]
The Lakers Lesson
So when was the last time you saw Los Angeles happy?I mean, happy like it was happy Friday morning, when the big guys, Shaq and his titanic pals, trundled down Figueroa Street, not in sumptuous convertibles like a bunch of mere astronauts, but atop double-decker sightseeing buses.And the crowd went wild but in a nice […]
Health-System Meltdown
CAN HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR AS IT NOW exists be saved in Los Angeles County?The answer looks like “no.” Even the Department of Health Services’ (DHS) usual strong supporters — Supervisor Gloria Molina, for instance — seem resigned to an “inevitable” downsizing that will make for longer lines at fewer facilities. Or as the […]
Sickness and Subways
One thing was made perfectly clear from the Shock Corridor reductions of Los Angeles County health care last week: providing health care for this region’s needy is not a problem that can be handled, ultimately, on either the state or local level.The Board of Supervisors last week tentatively voted to knock $57 million and 5,000 […]
A Platter of Prejudice
Way back in the ’60s, those with entry-level salaries, including me, had our own Great Good Place in New York‘s Chinatown. Lin’s Garden offered the best Big Apple Cantonese — fried-duck won ton soup and beef-with-black-bean-sauce kind of stuff — I‘ve ever had. All for upward of 85 cents per magnanimous portion. The stuff was […]