Recently in Politics

Some residents of LA neighborhoods recently got a nasty surprise. FEMA, The Federal Emergency Management Agency, recently declared parts of LA to be flood zones. But, as correspondent Judy Muller reports, FEMA used 40 year-old maps as the basis for their decision. And the City of LA failed to intervene, even though FEMA gave them the chance. Now many residents are facing huge bills for insurance, and are blaming both federal and local governments for hanging them out to dry.

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For the past year, there's been a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants over a wide swath of South Central LA. Proponents say it's a way of improving the diet for the population, in an area with too few healthy food choices. Others think government has no business trying to legislate good eating habits. Correspondent Angie Crouch takes a hard look at food and politics in Los Angeles.

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Los Angeles now has more medical marijuana clinics than it can count. These pot clubs are already pseudo-legal at best, and some of them appear to be getting around a city ordinance designed to stop their proliferation.

Correspondent Judy Muller hits the streets to find some of these clinics and drills city council members on why they have had so much trouble enforcing a moratorium on new dispensaries.

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Over four million pot plants destroyed, this season alone. Squads of law enforcement officials spend each fall eradicating plants from thousands of illegal pot farms. The cops say most are operated by Mexican cartels. They figure it's easier to grow the weed here then it is to try and smuggle it across the border.

Finding the pot farms is the easy part - they can be fairly easily spotted from the air. But getting to them is where it gets tough. Many are in very rugged, remote areas.

Correspondent John Larson went on a search and destroy mission with a group of elite officers we call the Cannabis Cowboys.

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Photo: Brian Frank

This dispensary was denied a hardship exemption by the city council, yet continues to operate.

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Jovan Rodriguez had no insurance and no savings when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

He's one of the young people referred to by some as the Young Invincibles—those who fall in the 19-29 age bracket and make up the largest group of uninsured in the country—and he appears in our segment on the Young and Uninsured.

And he created a video documentary of his treatment, hoping to leave some kind of record in case it didn't go so well. This video is a condensed version of video taken during his last day of chemotherapy, and it's not for the queasy.

Links
• Visit Jovan's MySpace page

The LA City Attorney has submitted a new, tough draft ordinance designed to regulate LA's growing legion of medical marijuana clinics. Were it to pass as written, it would be among the state's toughest ordinances governing cannabis clubs.

KCET has obtained a copy of the draft ordinance. It proposes to ban over-the-counter sales of pot, only allowing clinics, organized as collectives, to recoup expenses from their members. And it contains this language, regarding who can actually obtain cannabis from a collective:

No collective may provide medical marijuana to any persons other than its members who participate in the collective cultivation of marijuana at or upon the property of the collective.

The draft regulations redefine the application process, establish a series of application and inspection fees, set limitations on the hours the clinics can operate, and bans any pot shop operating within 1000 feet of schools, churches, child care facilities, hospitals or other marijuana collectives.

Finally, the draft plan requires any marijuana clinic that doesn't comply with the new regulations to cease operations immediately. It provides an exception for the some 180 clinics that registered prior to September, 2007, when the City passed it's Interim Control Ordinance, placing a moratorium on new applications.

"We're going to ban sales," Councilman Dennis Zine told the LA Times. "The profit margin is what's gotten them going. They're not in there to help people, they're in there to make money."

The Times reports that some Council members want to take up the draft ordinance within the next week. Earlier this week, a Superior Court judge ruled that the Council violated the law when it extended the moratorium on new applications for a third time earlier this year.

A Superior Court judge has ruled the city's ban on medical marijuana dispensaries is invalid in a case that could make it difficult for the city to move against other pot clinics, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Dispensary Green Oasis sued the city last month, claiming the moratorium on new clinics was unconstitutionally vague. Today, Judge James C. Chalfant granted a preliminary injunction preventing the city from enforcing its own ordinance and said the council acted outside state law by extending the moratorium.

The injunction applies only to Green Oasis, but the outcome could be seen as favorable to other marijuana dispensaries across the city, which might try to follow suit.

RELATED STORY: Feds, Local Cops Do Marijuan Do-Si-Do

So you think it's impossible to outsource our streets? Take a look at these manhole covers. One from Mexico. Another from India, proudly displayed under the "City of Los Angeles."

If you spot any covers from other countries DO snap a photo and send it to us. We'll start a gallery and call it the "Small small world of manhole covers."

OK—everybody sing to the tune of "It's a Small World." Ready?

It's a world of pavement.
A world of tar.
It's a place where manholes come from afar.
So our jobs disappear
Cause we don't make them here.
It's a manhole after all.

Hey. I think I heard someone harmonizing.

Dan Glickman says he's stepping head of the MPAA. This is perhaps the most sought-after lobbyist's job in the country. Maybe the world. You get to hang out with celebrities, and socialize with the Washington elite.

Now seeking Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.

The successful candidate will:

• Have impeccable connections with members of Congress
• Have impeccable connections with Hollywood moguls
• Have the ability to extract billions in tax breaks for the entertainment industry
• Enjoy traveling on a private jet
• Help us forget how great Jack Valenti was
• Be able to survive on a salary of less than $1.5 million

No resumes or phone calls, please. We'll contact you.

It's official. The Justice Department issued a memo this morning advising federal prosecutors not to go after medical marijuana dispensaries that are operating in accordance with the legal guidelines of their respective states.

You can read the memo here.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

So the announcement indicates federal authorities will not turn a blind eye to shady entrepreneurs trying to get a free ride on the marijuana bandwagon. Nor does it appear have any bearing on LA County District Attorney Steve Cooley's pledge last week to crack down on illegal pot clinics. It simply suggests the feds may be trading places with local authorities. LA County law enforcement agencies have tended to be tolerant of dispensaries. Now it appears they may be leading the crackdowns, while the feds back off.

The LA County District Attorney, Steve Cooley says virtually every marijuana clinic in the county is breaking the law, and he's vowed to prosecute them.

Cooley told reporters that it's his opinion that under California law, it is legal to cultivate marijuana, but not to sell it over-the-counter or distribute it.

Voters passed an initiative in 1996 that allowed patients to grow small amounts of marijuana for medicinal use. In 2004, the State Legislature passed the 2004 Medical Marijuana Program Act, which allowed patients to "collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes." It also allowed a "primary caregiver" to provide marijuana for a patient.

Most of the pot clinics (or their lawyers anyway) organized under the idea that they were primary caregivers. But last year, the state Supreme Court ruled that a primary caregiver must be actively involved in providing care for an individual, beyond simply selling or supplying them with marijuana.

So the strategy changed. Now the marijuana clinics claimed to be collectives, made up of patients requiring marijuana.

Cooley believes most of these "collectives" are simply for-profit-businesses, and not collectives at all. He says that in the main, the clinics do not enlist the members of the collective in cultivation, and that the law does not sanction over-the-counter sales of marijuana.

The state Attorney General, Jerry Brown, issued guidelines after the 2004 law was passed. They specify that the collectives must operate as non-profits, but do allow them to collect fees from members to recoup expenses.

Should the DA's legal strategy prevail in the courts, his office will face a daunting task prosecuting all the operators of pot clinics in LA County. There are no reliable numbers on how many pot shops are operating in the county, but some estimates say more than 800 marijuana dispensaries are open in the city of LA alone.

For years, the Los Angeles beachside community of Venice has been a magnet for the so-called "vehicular homeless." These are people who park in residential and commercial neighborhoods and live long term in their recreational vehicles, vans and cars. The motor-homeless say they have no place else to go and only want to be left alone. But many Venice residents contend the vehicle dwellers are turning their community into skidrow by the sea.

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Forget Nevada. With its Indian casinos, card clubs, state lottery and racetracks, gambling is a high-stakes, multi-billion dollar industry in California. Story editor, Saul Gonzalez talks with gambling industry expert I. Nelson Rose about the business of betting in the Golden State.

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Madison Middle School is a public school in North Hollywood, serving a mostly low-income, immigrant community: Latinos, Asians, Armenians. But Terre Fallon, a language arts teacher, was determined that her school’s students get a chance to go to Washington for the Inauguration.

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Did you participate in today's historical earthquake preparedness drill? If not there's still time (hopefully!) to get prepared for the next quake.

The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Program "educates people about disaster preparedness for hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations." You can find out about CERT training in the Los Angeles area by visiting the CERT-LA website. Those of you farther afield can check with www.californiavolunteers.org for information on disaster preparedness training.

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Think a new day is dawning? To paraphrase the President Elect-slash-One, change begins with you! Here are some suggestions to help make Barack Obama's job easier by getting involved in the SoCal area.

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Video Your Vote, Part 2 continues from here.

Leading up to this week's vote, KCET, PBS and Youtube joined together in an unprecedented exercise in citizen journalism and democracy called Video Your Vote. Thousands of voters recorded their their experiences, thoughts and impressions and uploaded them to Youtube, creating a kaleidoscopic survey of what has turned out to be an historic election. SoCal Connected and KCET New Media staff, as well as KCET Local bloggers Ophelia Chong, Jeremy Rosenberg and Kevin Ferguson, all got into the act as well, documenting their own election days and those of their neighbors.

Take a look at the images and listen to the stories below. It's also not too late to share you own story, either in the comments below or at Video Your Vote.

Individual voters tell share their stories.

It seems there was more to election day than voting..

Southern California was spared major election irregularities, but some voters did have concerns.

What you wanted and hoped for starting November 5th.

To the victors go the funny hats and shouting.

Leading up to this week's vote, KCET, PBS and Youtube joined together in an unprecedented exercise in citizen journalism and democracy called Video Your Vote. Thousands of voters recorded their their experiences, thoughts and impressions and uploaded them to Youtube, creating a kaleidoscopic survey of what has turned out to be an historic election. SoCal Connected and KCET New Media staff, as well as KCET Local bloggers Ophelia Chong, Jeremy Rosenberg and Kevin Ferguson, all got into the act as well, documenting their own election days and those of their neighbors.

Take a look at the images and listen to the stories below. It's also not too late to share you own story, either in the comments below or at Video Your Vote.

A look at polling places and poll workers.

Leading up to the vote, Southern Californians shared their thoughts on Proposition 8.

Individual voters tell share their stories.