Operators at 311 are accustomed to oddball calls

Just before Thanksgiving a few years back, Raquel Lopez fielded her umpteenth call of the day to find an irate man on the line.

Someone had littered his lawn with Butterball turkeys.

"This is not funny!" he shouted, demanding the shrink-wrapped birds' immediate removal.

It was another priceless moment for Lopez, who has been answering L.A.'s 311 information line for seven years.

"We're like a human Google," she said, laughing one recent morning as she sat, headset on, in a gray cubicle on the 10th floor of a building across Main Street from City Hall.

And she never can guess what she'll be asked next.

"One call to City Hall," the city's website proclaims, provides residents a "personal gateway to the services Los Angeles has to offer."

But what does that mean, really?

Some L.A. residents have singular ideas:

One caller told Lopez she wanted a wall where her kids played handball tested for STDs because she'd seen a transient urinate on it.

Another refused to accept that she'd have to hire a private service to get rid of bees in her backyard. "They're not my bees," she kept saying. "They're the city's bees."

Then there was the guy who called, very frightened, because he heard strange beeps in his house. Had someone planted something in his walls? Lopez suggested he check the batteries in his smoke alarms.

A man named Kelly had called for years just to talk — after the 911 operators cut him off. His wife, he complained, was sleeping with Dr. Bloomfield — and everything had gone to pot after the Northridge earthquake.

There is an irony in callers' certainty that the city can and should solve their every problem, given that the 311 service has woes of its own.

Budget cuts have shriveled the call center.

When it was launched with much fanfare in 2002, 311 operated all day, every day. Then the hours were chopped — first to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., then 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Staffing fell from 70 to 35.

Not that the phones stopped ringing. On weekdays, the center averages 2,000 to 3,000 calls; 700 to 900 come in on a typical Saturday or Sunday. Busy agents end up apologizing to callers who complain about having to wait on hold.

Big screens around the room display the number of calls that have been answered so far that day and how many agents — speaking English and Spanish — currently are on the phone. (If someone calls in another language, say Persian or Thai, an interpreter from a contract translation service can be patched in quickly.)

On rapid-fire days, the saving grace for the agents is the personalized recorded message that plays for a few seconds when they first pick up:

"Thank you for calling 311. This is Raquel. How may I assist you?"

Callers don't notice the voice isn't live, and "it lets you take a breather in between," Lopez said.

Many of the 311 calls, of course, are sensible, expected and easily resolved. People ask how to dispose of bulky items. They report dead animals, fallen tree limbs, graffiti or illegal dumping. Someone wants to set up a building inspection. A pothole has appeared. A streetlight is out.

Sophisticated programs let agents quickly find information. They can zoom in, for instance, on maps that show the location of each streetlight, then confirm that they've located the right one by checking to see that a photo matches the caller's description.

Some agents work radios, sending reports directly to crews out on the streets. When it makes sense to, that is.

Mario Aldaz, 34, who has worked at 311 since it opened, said an agent once took a call about an abandoned couch in an alley. The caller didn't ask for the couch to be removed. She wanted the city to remove graffiti on the couch.

As for those Butterballs, Lopez did in the end offer help. She contacted the Bureau of Sanitation — which, among other things, is responsible for collecting dead animals and spoiled meat.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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IHT Rendezvous: How to Save Egypt's Dying Chance at Democracy

NEW YORK — The return of protests, tanks and death to the streets of Cairo this week is harrowing. So is the power of the rampant conspiracy theories that cause both Muslim Brotherhood members and their secular opponents to sincerely believe that they are the defenders of Egypt’s revolution.

Criticisms of President Mohamed Morsi’s power grab and rushed constitutional process are legitimate. So are complaints that the country’s secular opposition is poorly organized, lacks majority support and refuses to compromise.

Barring a surprising change in direction, Egypt’s experiment with democracy seems to be headed toward failure. The country’s flawed constitution will likely be ratified in a referendum on Dec. 15. A frustrated and distrustful opposition will boycott subsequent Parliamentary elections. Mr. Morsi will lead a “soft authoritarian” government similar to that of former President Hosni Mubarak. Small opposition parties will exist, but the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance of the state, politics and society will never be in doubt.

U.S. officials — ever eager for stability in the Middle East — will turn a blind eye and establish a “working relationship” with Mr. Morsi.

“I think the impulse of most American administrations is to show up in an Arab country and say, ‘Take me to your leader,’ ” Nathan J. Brown, a George Washington University professor and leading expert on Egypt, told me in a bleak interview this week. “I don’t think we have many alternatives. The United States is not in the position to back a military coup or the opposition.”

Mr. Brown is correct. Yes, the United States has some economic leverage in Cairo, but in general America remains radioactive in post-Mubarak Egypt. After 40 years of the U.S. backing Egyptian strongmen who made peace with Israel, Washington is hugely mistrusted.

A September 2012 Gallup Poll found that 82 percent of Egyptians opposed the country’s government accepting any economic aid from the United States. By comparison, 42 percent of Egyptians surveyed — roughly half that number — opposed the country’s peace treaty with Israel.

For those who think more “American leadership” is the answer: a U.S.-backed military coup — which it is doubtful the U.S. could engineer — would radicalize Islamists across the region and be an enormous gift to al Qaeda. Similarly, if Washington openly backs the country’s secular opposition, those opponents will be viewed as American stooges and lose popular support.

“A much more effective strategy for the United States is to call for a dialogue between Morsi’s government and the opposition behind closed doors,” said Dalia Mogahed, the American scholar who conducted the Gallup survey. “The U.S. coming out publicly on the side of the opposition will be used against them.”

The only small cause for hope is that Egypt’s struggles are not unprecedented. Other countries have undergone agonizing and turbulent transitions as well. Thomas Carothers, an expert on transitions to democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that what is occurring today in Egypt is typical when a long-disenfranchised group gains power. Distrustful and insular after years of struggles, it is often reluctant to share power and still views itself as deeply vulnerable.

Mr. Carothers said Egypt’s struggle mirrors the difficult transition still under way in Bolivia. Seven years after Evo Morales was elected that country’s first president of indigenous descent, a tense “fundamental rebalancing of political power” is still playing out in Bolivia. The country’s traditional elite and the indigenous movement still struggle to trust each other and share power. Bigoted arguments that democracy does not work in the Arab world do not apply in Egypt.

“There is nothing particularly Arab about what is happening,” Mr. Carothers said. “It’s not an Islamist issue per se.”

There is another international comparison that should give the Brotherhood pause, according to Mr. Carothers. South Africa’s African National Congress gained a monopoly on power after the country’s first post-apartheid elections in 1994. With no viable opposition, the ANC grew increasingly corrupt as opportunistic figures flocked to the only patronage show in town.

“The party just became a self-sustaining machine,” Mr. Carothers said. “People start joining your party out of sheer opportunism.”

That may not matter to the Brotherhood. Its fear of being forced from power it has finally attained may lead it to become the kind of governing party its members once loathed.

The stark picture painted by Shady Humid, the director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, in this excellent piece in Foreign Policy this week, may prove to be true. There may be no common vision in Egypt, as Humid argues; there may be no consensus on what the Egyptian nation should be.

If there is a common ground, the surest way to reach it is for there to be more democracy in Egypt, not less. Yes, the flawed draft constitution is likely to be ratified on Dec. 15. But the opposition should not boycott the vote or subsequent legislative elections.

In a best-case scenario, the “no” vote could reach as high as 30 percent, according to Mr. Brown, the George Washington University professor. The opposition could then run in subsequent legislative elections. It would not win a majority, but perhaps it would win enough seats to be a viable opposition to the Brotherhood. Two groups that loathe each other would be forced to sit in Parliament together.

Time and a desire to win elections might make them compromise and save Egypt’s fading chances at democracy.

---

David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, former reporter for The New York Times and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East” will be published in March 2013.

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The Olsen Twins Design $55,000 Backpack

Stylewatch
Style News Now

12/06/2012 at 06:00 PM ET

Courtesy Just One Eye; Inset: Sipa

We’re positive we weren’t the only ones whose jaws dropped when we read that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen‘s fashion line, The Row, is selling $55,000 backpacks.

But this isn’t exactly the Jansport you carried your Trapper Keepers in during elementary school. The extravagant accessory is designed in collaboration with renowned artist Damien Hirst and it’s been dubbed “wearable art.” The backpack is limited edition — as in, there are only 12 of these babies. Each bag features black patent, Nile crocodile leather and is adorned with various designs (like pills or gold circles) courtesy Hirst.

Initially the price of the backpack was originally kept hush-hush and The Row declined to release that info. But when we called Just One Eye (the site selling the creations), they shared with PEOPLE.com the five-figure price tag.

But before you go thinking that absolutely no one is going to drop $55,000 on a backpack, consider this: The Olsens released a similar a purse for $39,000 earlier this year — and it sold out. Tell us: If you had all the money in the world, would you buy this backpack? If not, how much would you pay for it?

–Jennifer Cress

PHOTOS: SHOP STAR STYLE — FOR LESS!

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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L.A. literary stalwart selected as city's first poet laureate

Before sitting down for tea in Echo Park, the poet reaches for her iPhone.

"I have to turn this thing off," she explains, silencing the ringer. "It's getting too noisy these days."

As a publisher, educator and author of seven books of poems, Eloise Klein Healy is a stalwart of the Los Angeles literary scene. Her phone has been buzzing more than usual in recent weeks as she prepares to take on a new title. On Friday, Healy will be named L.A.'s first poet laureate.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided earlier this year that his city, like others, should have a namesake poet. The mayor, who chose Healy from a pool of three finalists recommended by a selection panel, said he was moved by the grace of her writing and by her "belief in the power of poetry, and her commitment to sharing this power far and wide."

Healy spent her formative years in Iowa and still maintains an air of Midwestern modesty. She says she doubts the quality of her poems won her the laureate honor.

She guesses it had more to do with her long involvement in the arts community, especially the feminist art movement of the 1970s, and her subject matter: Los Angeles looms large in her work.

She writes lovingly of helicopters and bougainvillea, of strip malls and Santa Anas. Car thefts and stabbings are part of the backdrop. Freeways wind freely through her verse.

In a poem called "Los Angeles," Healy describes the city as an older sister who was less pretty and less charming than her younger sibling. "There was something about your proportions / that was indelicate — your more abundant waist," she tells the city.

But in the final verse, a person enters and loves Los Angeles anyway:

Nobody expected it

and you never told about

the lover who met you

loose and large

in the late afternoon

and loved you all night,

completely out of proportion.

Healy says she writes about Los Angeles to understand "the influence of place on people."

It's a technique she employs often. Once, while working on a book of poems about Sappho, the classical lyric poet, Healy traveled to the poet's birthplace on the island of Lesbos in Greece. "I wanted to walk on a beach where she could have walked," Healy said. "I wanted to look at that horizon."

Healy is 69, but she seems much younger. She is trim, with olive skin and snow-white hair. For years, she lived down the street from the small Sunset Boulevard cafe where she sipped tea one morning this week. She chronicled her time in the neighborhood in a book called "Artemis in Echo Park."

Since 1988, she has lived in Sherman Oaks with her partner, Colleen Rooney.

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Congo Peace Talks Set to Open in Uganda

KAMPALA, Uganda — Congolese rebels and government officials prepared on Thursday for direct peace talks in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, their first face-to-face encounter since the rebels relinquished Goma, one of Congo’s principal cities, after capturing it last month.

“Since May, we asked Kabila to come to the table,” said Amani Kabasha, a spokesman for the March 23 rebels, or M23, at the rebel-held border post of Rumangabo. Mr. Kabasha said his delegation was awaiting vehicles sent by the Ugandan government to carry them to Kampala. “He didn’t agree, he used force, arms, fighting. But now, because he was defeated, he agrees,” Mr. Kabasha said, referring to President Joseph Kabila.

An uneasy rhythm of commerce and calm returned to Goma this week as Congolese government soldiers again patrolled the streets and the port and airport reopened, allowing a fresh influx of people and cargo, as well as much-needed humanitarian aid for more than 100,000 people displaced by the recent fighting.

“It’s as good as it has been for the last two and a half weeks,” Tariq Riebl, a humanitarian coordinator for Oxfam in Goma, said Thursday. But the situation remained “very dynamic, very fluid,” he said.

In the strategic area of Masisi, to the northwest of Goma, fighting has continued to flare between government troops and numerous militias. Masisi has long been a hotbed of militia groups and ethnic tensions, and humanitarian relief workers said they were increasingly worried about the situation.

Furthermore, neither side has said it has any real faith in the upcoming talks, which delegates said would likely begin Friday, or possibly late Thursday.

“It’s not a negotiation,” said a Congolese government spokesman, Lambert Mende. “We will receive a grievance from M23 and help the president compare with what was decided in 2009,” when the peace agreement for which the rebels are named was signed on March 23.

“We are not very optimistic, because we know that M23 is a very small part of the problem; we need the problem to be solved regionally, and internationally,” Mr. Mende said.

The governments of Uganda and Rwanda have denied accusations by a United Nations panel of covertly supporting the M23 rebels, including in the rebels’ capture of Goma. Both countries have been accused of supporting other Congolese rebels groups in the past.

Many of the rebels’ demands, which the government has dismissed, would benefit Rwanda and Uganda, which are two main transit points for commercial exports from eastern Congo.

“We want more than decentralization, we want federalism,” said Mr. Kabasha, although the specific demands had not yet been finalized. “The eastern parts of Congo’s interests are in eastern Africa. Decentralization means that the leader is near the population.”

In recent days there have been reports of lootings and rape, summary executions and recruitment of children, the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs has said. In Goma, there have also been reports of targeted killings.

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Brooke Burke-Charvet on Cancer Scare: I'm Not Afraid Anymore

TV Watch

Dancing With the Stars

By Tim Nudd

12/06/2012 at 08:40 AM EST

When you're a mom who gets a cancer scare, you're not the only one at home who suddenly needs comfort and support.

In the midst of her thyroid diagnosis Brooke Burke-Charvet – a mother of four – has learned just how vulnerable children can be at such a time, and how differently each one can respond to that kind of stress and anxiety.

"I've really realized that everything I'm going through, my family is going through too," the Dancing with the Stars host, 41, writes in a new blog post.

Burke-Charvet decided initially not to reveal the diagnosis to daughters Neriah, 12, Sierra, 10, and Rain, 5, and son Shaya, 4. "I didn't want them to worry," she writes. "I know that my younger ones still don't have a great concept of time and I didn't want them to be anxious, worried and asking 1,000 questions."

Soon, the kids overheard things, and she and her husband David Charvet told them what was going on. Each child reacted differently, says Burke-Charvet – with emotions ranging from anger to fear to surprise, hope, protectiveness and worry.

The Children React

Shaya's reaction was the most heartbreaking. "He laid in bed last night with David, kinda sad and said, 'I don't want Mommy to die,' " Burke writes. "We both held him and told him that I wasn't going to leave him ever. I know that my surgery is not that serious, but kids get scared, hear 'hospital' and go to the darkest place. Poor little guy."

As she comforted each child in a different way, Burke-Charvet also cared for her husband as he was caring for her.

"He's been so strong and such a rock," she writes. "He's trying not to show any of his fears and concerns so that he can be strong for me. But we've had our moments and I think it's so, so important that you care for everyone in a family that's dealing with a medical crisis the same way you emotionally care for the patient themselves."

As the surgery approaches, she has packed her bag, sorted things out at the house and stocked the fridge with leftovers for the family. Now, she just wants the surgery to be over.

"I'm not afraid anymore," she says. "I think I've been dealing with it so much the past couple months that now I'm ready to just get it done and put this behind me. My only need is being ok for my husband and my children so they don't have to go through any pain and making this as easy as possible for them."

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Republican Kevin James makes an outsider run for L.A. mayor

A fundraiser put on by heavyweights in Los Angeles' liberal-leaning environmental community should have been a tough crowd for Kevin James.

But James, affable, polite and the only Republican candidate in a Los Angeles mayor's race dominated by City Hall Democrats, had no trouble chatting up guests as he made his way around the crowded event for the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters.

Richard Mueller, an executive with a multinational manufacturer, and Dave Alba, his business partner, seemed happy to corner him. The men spent several minutes outlining a massive freight automation project they are hoping to bring to San Pedro — a tough sell in labor-friendly L.A. They were at the party hoping to line up support for the project.

James listened intently, asked questions and took cards from both men before moving on. Afterward, Mueller declared himself impressed. James' candidacy gives the business community hope that private-sector interests will be given real attention in the mayoral race, he said.

"In this city, you have to work both sides — business and labor," Mueller said. "He'd be a win-win."

James, 49, an Oklahoma native with a sharp legal mind, has emerged as the dark horse in a field made up of career politicians. Although the lawyer and talk-show host has never spent a day in the rough and tumble of public office, he says he'll curtail what he characterizes as the cronyism and scandal that dogs City Hall, cut red tape for businesses, foster jobs and demand reductions in public worker pensions to bring stability to the city's chronically underfunded budget.

And he can do that, James insists, because he's the only outsider of the major candidates who will appear on the March primary ballot. The others are Controller Wendy Greuel, previously a city councilwoman, and council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry.

If elected, James would make history as the first gay mayor of Los Angeles. He's never tried to hide his homosexuality, he says, but he also does not make an issue of it. He's now a well-regarded litigator in private practice, a former radio talk show host and a longtime activist with AIDS Project Los Angeles who served for a time as its chairman.

In debates and at events, James displays a commanding grasp of city issues. And he seems to be everywhere, shaking hands wherever there might be potential supporters. The GOP establishment has taken note.

Former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has endorsed James, and a "super PAC" made up of well-connected GOP donors recently formed to independently support his campaign without having to comply with the city's contribution limits. Those moves, political analysts say, have given his run a new legitimacy.

"In the past couple of months he's gone from being an afterthought to a long shot to a plausible outsider candidate," said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist and professor at USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

Friends call him hard-working and passionate about what he thinks should be done to return L.A. to economic vibrancy. Todd Eagan, an attorney who's worked with James for years at Lavely and Singer, an entertainment law firm, said James was the firm's go-to guy when facing a tough legal issue.

"Kevin is the person who can cut through to the main issues and solve the problem," Eagan said. "He has a tremendous grasp of the details of any situation."

Another longtime friend, Steve Reymer, said James has a big heart for animals, adopting a rescue Dachshund, Lisa Marie.

Raised in Norman, Okla., James received an accounting degree from the University of Oklahoma and later moved to Houston to earn a law degree. In college, he registered as a Republican. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1988, he interned at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, one of the city's premiere law firms. He also worked for three years as an assistant federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office, handling criminal cases involving drugs, money-laundering and insurance fraud before returning to private practice.

James said that as he became involved in AIDS Project Los Angeles — serving six years on its volunteer board and still serving as an honorary ambassador — he switched his party registration to Democratic because he thought the GOP was too slow to respond to the AIDS health crisis. In later years, as he began to focus more on economic rather than social issues, he said, he again switched his voter registration to decline-to-state.

Craig E. Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles, called him an "effective and well-spoken" board member during his tenure. In board meetings, even when voicing a dissenting point of view, he was always calm and reasonable, Thompson said.

AIDS Project Los Angeles often used James as its official spokesman during those years because he was personable and articulate, Thompson said.

James began filling in as a host on KABC-AM talk radio (790) in 2003 and moved to Oklahoma City the following year to host a morning drive-time show.

In early 2005, he returned to his Laurel Canyon home and registered a third time, back to Republican. The move was prompted by his growing concerns about the economy and his feeling that if he delved more deeply into politics, the GOP would benefit from having more openly gay members in its ranks.

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India Ink: India's Parliament Opens Door to Foreign Retail Investors

After two days of sometimes ear-splitting debate, India’s Lok Sabha, or lower house, of Parliament voted down a measure prohibiting large foreign retailers like Wal-Mart from entering the country. Of the 543 members in the house, 218 voted in favor of a proposition banning these companies from the country, and 253 against.

Rival leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, walked out before the debate and their parties’ abstentions helped defeat the measure.

The issue will now travel to the upper house of Parliament.

Allowing foreign multi-brand retailers into India has been a matter of debate for years, and was fast-tracked this year by a government under fire from allegations of corruption and paralysis. Here’s recent India Ink coverage on the issue:

The United Progressive Alliance government announced in September that they would allow big department stores who carry multiple brands, like Wal-Mart Stores, into the country but “laid out some very specific conditions,” Heather Timmons reported.

In an interview with India Ink in the same month, Anand Sharma, the minister of commerce and industry, said that despite the conditions some companies had “already expressed interest, from Tesco to Carrefore to Wal-Mart and Marks and Spencer.”

Explaining the benefits for rural producers he said:

“It will benefit the rural economy with the farmers, who will get a better price for what they produce. What perishes to a large extent will reach the market or the kitchens.”

The announcement was met with skepticism from industry and analysts, Vikas Bajaj reported, but there was hope that “If they follow through, it could prompt a new economic boom in India, where once-brisk growth has slowed markedly in recent years. But it is a big if.”

In a later article he focused on the way foreign direct investment in retail “often divides Indians as much by age as by their livelihoods.”

“Those younger than 25, a group that includes about half the country’s 1.2 billion people, appear quite open and eager to try foreign brands and shopping experiences, researchers say,” Mr. Bajaj wrote.

The Prime Minister, in a rare address to the nation, tried to assuage small retailers’s fears in late September, by saying that they “had nothing to fear from the impending arrival of giant Western retailers like Wal-Mart or Carrefour because there was a place for everyone, large or small, in a growing economy.”

The government may be overly optimistic about the benefits of allowing foreign direct investment into the retail sector, judging by Wal-Mart’s experience in other countries.

And even if that is not true, “any long-term impacts of Wal-Mart’s Mexico business have been overshadowed this year by the company’s involvement in a bribery scandal there,” and was “sure to find similar demands for bribes in India – especially now that ample evidence exists that the company has paid them elsewhere,” Heather Timmons wrote in an article titled, “Can Wal-Mart Build a Nation?”

In November, Wal-Mart said that an internal “investigation into violations of a federal anti-bribery law had extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil, some of the retailer’s most important international markets,” Stephanie Clifford and David Barstow wrote in the New York Times.

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