Joel Wachs‘ announcement that he’d retire from the Los Angeles City Council in October did more than tell us that we‘re losing the city’s senior career politician. It also proclaimed the end of city elected office as a lifetime option.This, of course, was the voters‘ choice nine years ago — way back when, on a […]
Month: July 2018
Dear Losers
It’s one thing to refuse to fight dirty, and it’s another to just stand there and let a bully beat you up. This is a difference that Antonio Villaraigosa, unfortunately, never figured out in the last days of his losing campaign. With his unrelenting TV hit ads, some of them perfectly fair and many of […]
Skunk at the Picnic
Now that Los Angeles has selected its first German-American mayor of the millennium and the postmortem reports are all in, can we perhaps finally move beyond this recent election to something else? You’d think so, but not so fast there. It’s tempting, for instance, to speculate about what awaits us in the inside stickball game […]
Living With AIDS
AIDS was big in the news this week: 3,000 experts, politicians and patients were gathered at the United Nations to discuss new treatments and progress toward a cure. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan declared that $10 billion a year is needed to fight the plague that afflicts 36 million people and has killed 22 million. […]
Jim Hahn’s L.A.
Big questions left standing after the somewhat anal city inaugural ceremonies last week: What‘s Jim Hahn going to be like in office? What will his new administration look like? The insider consensus is that Hahn’s first official speech was long on generalities, short on assuring specifics.”Everything right now is in free fall,“ said one council […]
City of Status Quo
So here we go again, another week in the Hahn administration, and one would forbear: Cut young Jim some slack. The guy‘s only been here half a month. Give him a chance to get the feel of things before we get judgmental. Remember how long it took Dick Riordan to start rolling?But just last week, […]
Million-Dollar Understanding
Unfortunately, between a valve job on my beater and the usual payments to credit-card usurers, I just haven’t got a spare quarter-million dollars this month. Which is too bad.Because if I did, I could have my name engraved on a memorial metal thingy that would stand in front of City Hall forever, or at least […]
Green City
Just as Mayor Jim Hahn’s new administration was beginning to feel like the latest thing in regional torpor, last week saw a series of outright triumphs on the city‘s Green Front. Triumphs that promise a new era of livability to inner-city Angelenos and the rest of us besides.I’m not sure how much, if any, of […]
Times Cancels City Hall Party
With no detectable fanfare, the Los Angeles Times has spiked a special advertising section tied to a costly downtown Labor Day–weekend extravaganza called “The Celebration at City Hall.”Times corporate declined to explain the about-face, but there’s no doubt that the organization wants to avoid any comparisons with the 1999 Staples Center embarrassment, when the Times […]
A Case of Water Carrying
Traditionally, every citizen is subject to the call of public service. When you were young, you used to get a draft notice. In the fullness of retirement, you could be summoned downtown to jury duty. Along with taxation, such obligations are said to be the costs of civilization. Generally speaking, the only individuals exempted are […]