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Category: LA Weekly
Battle for Prosperity
By October’s second weekend, it was clear to everyone in town that an end to labor strife was somewhere in the unseeable distance.The MTA outage was in its fourth week. Daylong, rolling strikes closed King-Drew, the county‘s third busiest public hospital, and curtailed services at Harbor-UCLA, the number-two medical center. The increased confidence of county […]
The Bereaved
With coffee, cookies and a sorrow appropriate to the removal of a brain-dead relative‘s life support, the city attorney, five City Council members, Police Commission president, chief deputy mayor, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Bill Lann Lee and two unnamed others celebrated the signoff of the federal LAPD consent decree.”This is not a celebration,“ stressed Councilwoman […]
Where Money Didn’t Talk
All over America, in the months before this millennial election, campaign-spending records fell like grain under the harvester’s scythe. Some big spenders were big winners. The nation’s champ spender, of course, was Democrat Jon Corzine, who, according to the Associated Press, spent more than $60 million to become senator-elect of New Jersey. Well, it was […]
Upheaval Update
In all its ocean-linerly majesty, the Los Angeles Times veered a few degrees from its usual course last week better to scrutinize the ongoing crisis in Los Angeles’ ramshackle Department of Health Services. The story, which could have appeared at any time over the past year, spoke of endless waits in clinics, understaffed wards, crowded […]
Fame, etc.
It was one of those rare Monday mornings when people wanted news coverage all over City Hall. The mayor‘s folk and Councilman Mike Feuer hunted media fame in the precincts of the Third Floor press room. Controller Rick Tuttle had launched his own informal presentation on the 12th Floor: all for ink and soundbites on […]
Doing the Medici
Hating downtown Los Angeles isn‘t new. My old friend Father Malcolm Boyd — who served in Hollywood’s bureaucracy before his ordination — remembers people hating it nearly 50 years ago, at least in the screen community.Back then, you had to go downtown for your income-tax refund. As the story goes, one of the sexiest stars […]
King/Drew’s Renewal
I am rebuked in this issue [see Letters page] for my recent column on Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center by an old acquaintance, Director Mark Finucane of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS). Actually, Finucane, while defending his operations, takes issue with my accuracy on only one point, which I shall […]
Year-end Scorecard
Some historians insist that the odd thing about century changes is how few really cosmic events seem to happen in years ending in double-zeros — like 1700, 1800 or even 1900. In modern times, they say, such years are notably bereft of comets, plagues, invasions, revolutions. What with the Rampart disaster and the new city […]
Hang On
So I’m westbound on Pico at this red light somewhere past Robertson, and this dude in a vast new chromey SUV trundlebug pulls up. He blips his 300-hp engine, the street ahead is clear as far as I can see, and in an instant, nearly 40 years shred off my middle-aged frame: for the first […]