YIMBY ZOMBYs and California’s Housing Crisis

In Lethal Weapon 2, whenever he is confronted with potential arrest for some villainous deed or other, South African diplomat Arjen Rudd, masterfully portrayed by Joss Ackland, whips out his credentials and shouts “Diplomatic Immunity!” Rudd’s supposedly unanswerable response brings to mind the refrain of corporatist Democrats, their right-wing Koch Bro Bros and the YIMBY ZOMBYs […]

Super Bowl Time: When the Rams Go Marching In

The great Stephen A. Smith called the Rams NFC Championship Game victory over the Saints “a heist.” Others – not the least Saints fans themselves – have called it a lot worse. More than a week later and less than a week before the Super Bowl, the controversy hasn’t died down. In fact, several lawsuits […]

Scott Wiener’s SB 50 is a WIMBY Bill

Zev Yaroslavsky, former LA County Supervisor and former LA City Councilmember, astutely noted that state senator Scott Wiener’s SB827, which would take away local zoning authority from cities and replace it with Sacramento-mandated levels of density in certain areas, was a “real estate bill, not a housing bill.” The exact same assessment should apply to […]

A Corporate Wealth Tax: Making the Oligarchs Pay

It may be en vogue among a certain group to express concern about the influence of Russian oligarchs within our political system, but perhaps we should all be a bit more concerned about the home-grown variety, the Silicon Valley and tech billionaires. Given their huge wealth, influence and control over information, we need to start having serious […]

Deconstructing the Opposition to the California Water Fix

Here we go again.  There’s nothing better than California water politics to prove the sagacity of French writer Alphonse Karr’s immortal quip: “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more it’s the same thing.”) Last week the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) Board voted for a second time to finance […]

Hetch Hetchy: An Historic Opportunity for the Administration

Just a few days ago Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove re-opened after a three-year restoration project to remove the asphalt parking lot and trails that have jeopardized the long-term health of its magnificent giant sequoias. The reopening of the Grove presents Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and the Administration with a rare opportunity to correct an […]

Stereotyping Beverly Hills

A day after Israel celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding, we can read that Syracuse University suspended an engineering fraternity for a “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic” video. On that same day, Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, remarked that “anti-Semitism is in full sight in Europe.” Last year right here in the US, the Anti-Defamation League saw the largest […]

Tech Oligarchs and the California Housing Crisis

Let them pay. Silicon Valley tech oligarchs are concerned about housing in California. Let them pay. Housing prices in the areas of their shiny new tech campuses are skyrocketing to unaffordability for many of the longer term residents and are raising the price of housing for their employees.  As the pro-developer LA Times had to admit, “The housing […]

The Protecting Communities and Local Rights Amendment – A Not-So-Modest Proposal

Communities throughout California are under siege from Sacramento. On a continual and ongoing basis, cities and counties are constantly playing defense, trying to battle a barrage of bad bills that Sacramento politicians would impose upon us, as if they know best how all of us throughout the state should live our lives.  In this world […]

A DACA solution demands a true bipartisan compromise which includes E-Verify

Now is the time for policy, not politics. Now is the time to get beyond the immigration word games like calling those “anti-immigrant” who in reality are simply opposed to illegal immigration, or calling those a “restrictionist” who don’t necessarily want to restrict immigration beyond the current level, but who really just want to control […]