The recent ejection of Inspector General Katherine Mader by the minions of LAPD Chief Bernard Parks was perhaps the department’s most retrograde move since the beating of Rodney King. I say this even though I never thought Mader showed extraordinary aptitude in the job she acquired two and a half years ago. But all she […]
Month: July 2018
Playa Vista Revisionism
Important admissions are best tenderedRecommended videosPowered by AnyClip NOW PLAYINGJustin Timberlake Shows Love To WifeNot All Children Have Been Reunited With Their FamiliesJames Gunn Fired Over Ancient Tweets?James Gunn Fired Over Old TweetsThe EU Reportedly Simplified Their Talk With Cue Cards For Donald TrumpWhat Happens With Julian Assange Rests On One Very Important Deal PointMichael Cohen […]
All Juiced Up and No Place To Go
Last August, the overcrowded City Hall East garage lost a row of parking spaces. Each of those spaces now has an “Electrical Vehicle Only” sign and a battery charger the size of a wall furnace. Since the row’s revamping, I’ve seen exactly one electric car parked there.As it happens, this is Year 1998, the year […]
Jersey West
Another tale of terror from the front page of the Daily News: Guess what? Those rascals downtown at City Hall have launched a sneak attack — by low-income apartments — upon the sorely-tried San Fernando Valley. Appropriately, the article appeared on Pearl Harbor Day.”Much of the growth is targeted for middle-income areas, which would dramatically […]
Shaw’s Ghost
He’s not on the membership lists, and, possibly because he’s dead, he’s been a no-show at meetings. Yet by now it is fairly obvious that the shade of former Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw is one of the determining forces on both of the current Los Angeles charter-reform commissions.Shaw’s been particularly influential when it comes […]
Barrio Logic
It was Mike Davis who came up with the concept of Fortress Los Angeles, in his book City of Quartz: a Southern California city-state where, as the population diversifies, exclusion replaces inclusion.Davis’ grim reverie flew in the face of Mayor Tom Bradley’s multicultural dream and pilloried Los Angeles as a city uniquely hostile to newcomers. […]
McKinley Assassinated
The McKinley Building doesn’t jut over the horizon. It’s not the city’s tallest, oldest or most significant architectural landmark, but it once was a building that assured you — after you walked into its soothing, European-style courtyard — that the world was a better place than it had seemed a moment before.And now we’ve lost […]
The Statewide Dick
Here’s a question for you: How could Richard Riordan neglect Los Angeles even more than he already does? The answer: become governor.For that matter, could anything do more to revive the Northern California secession movement? Or at least leave the state – and, with it, our city – teetering on that brink? But by last […]
Riordan’s Back
Dick Riordan did the right thing by California last week – counter to the urgings of rich business friends and certain ranking egos at the Los Angeles Times, he declined to run for governor.You could follow his reasoning. Competing against Jane Harman and Al Checchi, Republican Riordan wouldn’t get campaign money from Democrats. Running against […]
AIDS Panic at the County
By the arcane calculus of county politics, Peter Kerndt’s National Institutes of Health grant caused a lot more than $1.5 million-per-annum’s worth of trouble. That’s why, though it promised to facilitate research to cure the world’s most widespread deadly disease, the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday officially voted the project it supported out of […]