Just in case anybody is just about to bring up the idea of building a football stadium on the land next to the Queen Mary and inviting a National Football team to make its home there – because, really, isn’t somebody always just about to bring that up? — here’s a pre-emptive buzzkill, courtesy of the sports [...]

There was no meeting of the Long Beach City Council on Tuesday night — never is on the last Tuesday of the month – but as if by habit local politicos threw their weight around, anyway.
Councilmembers Patrick O’Donnell and Val Lerch announced their endorsement of Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal in her campaign for the 54th District’s seat in the California [...]

Chanting slogans and carrying signs — most of them critical of Mayor Bob Foster – an assortment of public health organizations and community activists  marched for an hour outside Long Beach City Hall Tuesday afternoon, complaining that a new Port of Long Beach (POLB) policy unfairly places the burden of reducing air pollution on the low-incomes of independent truckers.
When they [...]

We’d heard the rumors that State Senator Alan Lowenthal was considering a run for Long Beach Mayor in 2010. In fact, we’d passed them along [click here and check out the sixth paragraph] – complete with our own political musical-chairs scenario that had Second District City Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal running for her father-in-law’s senatorial seat and current Mayor Bob Foster running for [...]

Patrick O’Donnell is running unopposed for re-election as the Fourth District’s representative to the Long Beach City Council — and in today’s Q & A with Press-Telegram columnist John Canalis, who lobs a few softballs that O’Donnell swats out of the park. Canalis doesn’t bother with follow-up questions. Still, the interview is better than nothing — [...]

Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook’s just-announced candidacy for Dana Rohrabacher’s 46th District seat in Congress could translate into some long-awaited movement for the Long Beach Breakwater.
“I was one of the original supporters of the effort to reconfigure the breakwater,” says Cook, who has distinguished herself as a practical environmentalist during two terms on the Huntington [...]

Suja Lowenthal is among three members of the Long Beach City Council — the others are Rae Gabelich and Patrick O’Donnell — who don’t have to campaign for re-election this year because no one filed to oppose them. Trying to hold these officials to some kind of public accounting, the Press-Telegram’s John Canalis submitted questions [...]

City Attorney Robert Shannon should not — repeat: NOT — have been included in the list of high-ranking Long Beach city officials who were accused of looking the other way for years while former Queen Mary chief Joe Prevratil refused to pay full rent on the ship. I mistakenly reported that in this week’s issue of The District, and [...]

People finally seem to have had it up to here with the Port of Long Beach, which has been excreting toxins into the local environment with ever-more-tragic consequences for decades. Lately, they are counterattacking from every direction that the pollution spews.
Today it’s from the air. Two environmental groups have written a 12-page letter [to read it, click here] to [...]

A Press-Telegram editorial reveals that the paper’s editorial board supports the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce effort to recall troubled and controversial school board member Michael Shane Ellis. No surprise there.
But with a simple, parenthetical sentence the P-T also acknowledges that a member of its editorial board, publisher Dave Kuta, is also a Chamber board [...]