LOS ANGELES

DOUBLESPEAK-From Los Angeles Department of City Planning Director Vince Bertoni: “As public servants who inform land use, we face a pivotal moment in time where we reflect on the social, political and economic injustices that have challenged our Black, Indigenous and communities of color for generations.” 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Thanks to everyone who stuck with it, starting on that awful day after the 2016 election.

LEANING RIGHT--Without hesitation, I think that--at the time they were promoted--raising the sales tax for transportation made sense.

VIEW FROM HERE--Whether we know it or not we are all plagued by a sentence in Barry Goldwater’s statement in his 1994 acceptance speech. Goldwater said:

@THE GUSS REPORT-The Los Angeles City Council missed the memo about how affiliating with grifters draws scrutiny, especially since one of its own, Mitch Englander, is a convicted felon headed to federal prison;

420 FILE--It wasn’t surprising to receive another notice about the Los Angeles Department of Cannabis Regulation (LA DCR) canceling its next Cannabis Regulation Commission meeting, on the heels of the teleconference mess on October 8.

VIEW FROM HERE-After several high-stakes congressional interrogations, unflattering portrayals on film, and personnel shake-ups within his company, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not possess the same idealism he started with.

AT LENGTH-It’s not even a prediction that Donald Trump will lose California on Nov. 3. Even though the California GOP is fooling around with phony ballot drop boxes. 

RANTZ & RAVEZ--Are you tired of watching and listening to the constant bombardment of political TV and Radio commercials urging you to vote Yes on this and No on that for the November 3, 2020 National Election?

EASTSIDER-While everyone is focused on the November election, DONE seems to be actively conspiring to deliberately violate the CA Public Records Act, even as they unilaterally change NC Bylaws.

DECISION 2020 — Racial tension amid the backdrop of a pandemic that has affected disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown people could significantly impact the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

VIEW FROM HERE--The de-evolution of integrity and honor in the American Republic continues uninterrupted during the hearings on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--You might say that the following is a bit of venting on my part.

PLANNING WATCH-Three former city officials have offered a proposal to stop rampant City Hall corruption in Los Angeles.

HOUSING POLITICS-“Today,” tweeted California Yimby staffer Louis Mirante on September 28, 2020, “the Gov signed 3 Ca YIMBY-sponsored bills. That’s more than any other housing organization successfully sponsored this year.” 

LEANING RIGHT--If you want to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, then vote for your guy.

OTHER WORDS-Although the United States hails itself as a bastion of representative democracy, voting regulations suppress the vote even in a normal year — and even more so during the pandemic. 

FUNDAMENTALIST DANGER-Imagine that there was a woman who had agreed to submit to her husband, who in turn had submitted to the head of a sect, who had in fact matched them, both part of a sect where there was no dividing line between personal and private life, because everything — everything — was done as a crusade for God, and if you weren’t one of the pure, you were going straight to hell. 

GUEST WORDS-“The intellectuals cast a veil over the dictatorial character of bourgeois democracy not least by presenting democracy as the absolute opposite of fascism, not as just another natural phase of it where the bourgeois dictatorship is revealed in a more open form.”

– Bertolt Brecht 

DECISION 2020--1990, I moved to LA to attend the American Film Institute; only 1 of 6 in the producing program’s second year and the sole Woman of Color producer.

SCOTUS POLITICS-Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in on the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on October 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C.