There is a simple rule in politics: Things are not always what they appear to be. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re looking at international politics, domestic politics or even local politics. There is always a back story and it’s often at variance with the public story.
Let’s take the Ukraine, the most current of international stories. No one is quite sure what Putin is doing or, even more so, why. Is he trying to relive old glories? Is he trying to say that Russia is still a major player in the game? Is he flipping the bird to us, China or the former Soviet Bloc states? His outspoken rationale sure sounds like the Third Reich in the 1930s, marching into other states to protect so-called oppressed German minorities.
Whatever his reasons, Russian nationalists are crowing again, American nationalists are crowing again and the U.S. Army is breaking out the Champagne because all of those cutbacks in the Army budget are history. Putin just rewrote our defense budget and national budget, and all of those budget hawks who were for cut, cut, cut are going to be falling over them- selves to add dollars to the military budget.
Putin has reignited the Cold War, for now on a minor scale, but if he sends regular troops into the Ukraine, it could easily escalate rapidly.
The negotiations appear to be breaking down in the Mideast, frankly, to no one’s surprise, except perhaps Secretary Kerry. Publicly, the Palestinians all want a separate state, and the negotiations are breaking down over that issue, among others. But if the Palestinians ever did get a separate state, how long would it be before Hamas took it over? That’s what happened when Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza. Within months, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was out, and Hamas won the electorate and ultimately pushed the PA out altogether. It was then clear to the Israelis that there was never going to be any land for peace swap, and equally clear to the PA that they couldn’t beat Hamas, who had both Iranian and Syrian support.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that the result would be one iota different on the West Bank, so it’s clear to me that the PA needs the Israeli army to keep them in power and Hamas out, which makes for an interesting negotiation posture. The PA would lose by winning and win by losing, which makes Kerry’s job very difficult.
Locally, the LA County Local Coastal Plan, which sets the rules for development in the Santa Monica Mountains, sailed through the Coastal Commission unanimously, which means the deal had been negotiated and finalized long the final vote at Coastal. It was Zev Yaroslavsky’s mag- num opus and something he very much wanted to finish before he was termed out at the end of the year. I understand they managed to work it out with the horse people in the hills who were not exactly ecstatic about the deal, but appeared to be willing to live with it.
What the Coastal Commission wanted, and got, was no new agriculture in the mountains, which has long had agriculture. It confirmed to me what I always suspected: the Coastal Commissioners and staff were all a bunch of city boy and girl environmentalists who pay passing lip service to agriculture, but really believe things grow in supermarkets, wrapped in plastic cocoons and not in yucky soil.
Our Board of Supervisors race for Zev’s old third district, LA Westside and west Valley seat, is shaping up to be a real brawl, unlike the old Molina seat race, which is apparently going to go by acclamation to former state Senator and Secretary of Labor in the Obama cabinet, Hilda Solis. Our third district race is currently a five-entry race, including our former council member and mayor Pamela Conley Ulich, but the reality is that this is purely a two-horse race.
Two Westside liberals, former State Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Santa Monica Mayor Bobby Shriver, are going to go head-to-head. The reason I say this is only a two-person race is the hard reality is it takes at least $2 million, perhaps more, to run for Supervisor in a coun- ty as large as LA, and only Kuehl and Shriver can raise that kind of money. The irony is that the two Westside liberals are probably going to split the Westside vote. Ultimately, it’s going to be the somewhat more conservative Valley voters who are going to make the call. And unless someone gets more than 50% in the primary the race, it will probably be decided in November.