HE COULD HAVE BEEN A CONTENDER-Faced with charges the he lied about living in his San Fernando Valley Council District, Richard Alarcon defended himself with the same tactics that had become the hallmark of his wasted political career: he denied, deflected, deceived and dissembled. The judge and jury would have none of it. Alarcon was […]

You got to love Antonio; he would have it no other way. The bane of his life back when he was first running for mayor in 2005, even well after he got elected, was the LA Times and others incessantly calling him “the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in modern times.” He often brought […]

Sunshine peeks through the clouds, the cynics with all their money and power vanish to their private enclaves, double-dipping Dennis Zine roars off on his Harley to his posh desert hideaway never to be seen again — the costliest, most tediously painful, anti-climactic city election is finally over. Happy days are here again in this wonderland called L.A. […]

It’s in the hands of all of us to stop the political machine from doing more harm to the city and the quality of our lives — we can force them to the table to negotiate real solutions by voting down the Measure A sales tax hike and getting Kevin James or Jan Perry into […]

When they talk about the entitlement class, put at the top of the list the unions, lawyers, lobbyists, businesses, real estate and billboard companies that contributed $620,200 to bamboozle the uninformed and gullible into voting for Proposition A, the sales tax hike on March 5. They are the shame of the city, greed merchants who […]

Ask just about anyone who has hung around the state capitol a while — reporters, lobbyists, staffers — and they will tell you that 98% of our legislators forget who they are and why they are there within two years of being elected. The external pressure to do the bidding of special interests that supply […]

It was a moment of truth. History was being made right before our eyes when the public face of the Los Angeles civic establishment was dressed down by a pipsqueak like City Council President Herb Wesson. Richard Riordan, the popular former mayor who 40 years ago had helped bring down the city’s arch-conservative oligarchy and […]

Crossposted on RonKayeLA Of all the fallen idols and soiled reputations of yesterday’s heroes, none stands out these days quite like Penn State’s Joe Paterno, stripped of his achievement as the winningest college football coach in history and relegated to a hall of shame. Given what so often is passing for leadership these days, they […]

Crossposted on Ron Kaye LA About 2:30 a.m. last Friday, a car with six women aboard slammed into a tree at Florence and Halldale avenues in South LA, throwing five women from the vehicle and trapping a sixth, according to a City News Service report, which quoted Sgt. Norma Vargas as saying: “We don’t yet […]

Crossposted RonKayeLA Events in recent days — from the eviction of Occupy L.A. protesters from the grounds of Los Angeles City Hall to the open-records lawsuit inspired by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino’s defiance of his party’s leadership — have exposed a level of political hypocrisy that ought to make everyone uneasy. Hypocrisy is rampant at all […]