LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz’ website includes photos of the councilmember celebrating the Expo Line’s opening. The site touts Koretz’ time on the Expo Construction Authority Board: “Councilmember Koretz served first as an alternate board member and then as a full board member of this body until 2015. He served on this body through the completion of Phase 1 of this project and through most of the construction for Phase 2, much of which travels through Council District 5.” 

But what Paul Koretz has delivered is the worst section of the Expo Line.

Koretz’ section has a mile-long gap in the bike path. Koretz’ section has kids walking in the street because of a missing sidewalk between the Palms Station and Lycée Français High School. Koretz’ section has an at-grade crossing at Overland Avenue that is worsening gridlock and leading to crashes that prompted neighbors to create a “Stop the Wrecks on Overland” Facebook page.

Koretz takes no responsibility for Expo’s flaws – flaws that were clear when he was a member of the Expo Board. At last night’s Cheviot Hills Homeowners Association meeting, he said “we kind of knew this would be a disaster.” For that, Kortez blames his predecessor. “Unfortunately, my election was kind of being too late to the party. The previous councilmember really was there when all of the negotiations were happening. And … at least regarding the Expo, I don’t think he did enough to protect the community.”

But Councilmember Koretz shouldn’t get off the hook so easily: he could have resisted widening Overland and he could have pushed for grade separation. Indeed, before he took office, the city of Los Angeles Department of Transportation wrote to Expo opposing the misguided widening – which was designed to dodge Metro’s grade crossing policy that required grade separation based on the per-lane traffic count without widening. Councilmember Koretz could have tried to stop it. He didn’t.

Now, Councilmember Koretz is claiming credit ($300,000 of taxpayer money credit) for reducing wheel squeal noise as the train passes Cheviot Hills. At last night’s meeting, Koretz spoke on Expo line “problems” including “an unanticipated screech of the wheels” stating: “We’ve been trying to figure out different ways to address that.…. So, we’ve actually gotten the Expo Board to approve a $300,000 expenditure to bring a huge wheel-grinding machine.”

But the wheel screech/squeal was not “unanticipated.” Indeed, the staff report [PDF] on the wheel-grinding motion says, “The FEIR indicated that wheel squeal was possible in specific curves along the alignment based on the curvature of the rail alignment. …. Rail grinding has been identified as a method to correct these track gauge variations in order to mitigate the wheel squeal.”

Expo’s Council District 5 flaws will cost millions to fix. If Paul Koretz wants credit for the good, he must take responsibility for the bad.

(Jonathan Weiss practices law, lives in Cheviot Hills, and served as an appointed representative to the L.A. City Bicycle Advisory Committee between 2009 and 2016. He is also a boardmember of Streetsblog L.A.’s parent nonprofit, the California Streets Initiative.) Photo Credit (top): Jonathan Weiss; (bottom) LA.Streets.blog

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TRANSIT TALK-We can, without any hesitation, claim that Los Angeles County has "given its all" with respect to spending on its own transportation and infrastructure.  In addition to a host of water/sewage tax and bond proposals, LA County has over the years raised its sales tax FOUR times to pay for projects that should have been done decades ago. 

To its credit, Metro (or the MTA, if you wish to call it that) has worked with elected officials to focus on efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and operational soundness in its operations.  As much as many have raised a concern with Measure M (the most recent sales tax just passed) not going far enough, or being too expensive, it DID devote a lot of money towards ensuring operational costs. 

In other words, the risks of "build, build, build" without wondering how we were going to keep our roads and rails in good working order has been addressed--if not entirely, then at least a solid step forward.  And for those complaining about not having enough rail cars ... well, Metro and the manufacturers are going the fastest they can. 

And for those of you STILL reporting that no one will use these rail lines, perhaps you should ride the Expo Line to a Rams game or on a Sunday evening. 

But there are immediate and long-term gaps for us to fill in--in our cities, and in our counties, and in our state: 

1) Pass the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative! 

Isn't it only reasonable and pragmatic to consider Transportation Funding to be the equivalent of "income" and Planning/Development to be the equivalent of "spending"? 

Infrastructure, be it roads/rail, or electrical grid, or cell phone grid, or sewage pipes, etc. is the component on which we can all live in our city, county, and/or state.  Infrastructure is the critical lifeblood of our Economy, our Environment, and our Quality of Life.   

And Planning is the spending aspect of its Transportation counterpart. 

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, which we will vote on this spring, allows us to "live within our means" with respect to honoring legal Community Plans, prevents big developers from using their pet consultants to shimmy and lie their way through the Planning process, and focuses on what makes new housing both affordable and livable. 

Here's a hint, for all those who want Affordable Housing, Urban Infill, Smart Development, Mixed-Use Development, etc.:  unless they're luxury apartments/condos, a 2-3 story project creates homes, but a 5-20+ story project is just that...a "project" where people will live only if they've nowhere else cheaper to go to. 

2) Fix the Damned Sidewalks! 

Even with the passage of Measure M, we STILL don't have the funds to fix the City of LA's sidewalks in a timely fashion.  If anyone reading this is okey-dokey with a 20-30 year timeframe, then they must be as pleased as punch. 

But for the rest of us, a 5-7 year timeframe is more appropriate, and why developers, City budget planners and the rest of us all don't work together to expedite the resolution of this nightmare defies belief.   

Here's a hint, though, for all those who want to fix our sidewalks just like we did the 405 HOV Lanes and other major freeway projects:  our pension nightmare is eating up 20%--and going higher--of our City's budget.  Fix and confront that painful problem, and we can better assure that our sidewalks will be built and fixed in our lifetime. 

And don't elect anyone this spring to the City Council unless they promise to fix our sidewalks in a 5-7 year timeframe.  This problem is NOT resolved! 

3) Fill the gaps in our freeways! 

Like it or not, our freeways will be a critical part of our mobility for decades to come.  Part of Measure M includes widening the I-5 to the I-710 freeway, and a host of other freeway fixes from the ports to the borders of our county. 

And that's a good thing, as well as the need to enhance and improve our freeway intersections. 

But the big fixes are yet to come--and they involve getting out of the cult of "rail only". 

One big fix includes the establishment of a freeway along the La Cienega corridor from LAX to the 10 freeway--this would enhance north-south mobility and traffic in the Westside. 

The other big fix:  L.A. own Big Dig.  An upgrade of the east-west chokepoint of the I-10 between the I-110 and East Los Angeles.  Some of it might be underground, and some of it might be on the surface or elevated.   

But mark my words:  someday, somehow, and some time in the future, the freeway infrastructure of Downtown LA will need an upgrade from the 1950's...particularly because Downtown LA is no longer an economic sinkhole but an increasingly vibrant part of the economic powerhouse of LA City and County. 

4) Fill the gaps in our rail systems! 

Considering how much rail planning and building and spending we're doing, this may seem pretty strange to bring up.  But there ARE going to be glaring gaps in our rail systems, and we can either confront them now or face a lot of angry voters in the future. 

a) The Harbor Subdivision Rail Right of Way should be more than a cute bikeway.  It should be extended from the Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail Line from Inglewood to the Blue Line to the Eastside Gold Line and Union Station.  It will be the critical LAX-to-Downtown that will relieve both freeway pressure and rail congestion on the Blue, Crenshaw and Expo Lines, and will be one of the most heavily-ridden lines in LA County. 

b) Connect the Norwalk Metrolink station to MetroRail via an eastern extension of the Green Line. And consider having Orange and Riverside Counties help share the costs, because commuters from those counties will almost certainly benefit. 

c) Coordinate the Metrolink and Eastside Gold Line Extension projects.  What the heck is Metrolink and Metro Rail doing not ensuring easy and convenient access from one system to the other? 

d) Build the Anaheim to Las Vegas rail line.  This might be a fix that is done directly, or via the High Speed Rail Line and Desert XPress projects that connect at Victorville, but it's needed. 

e) Build the doggone South Bay Green Line Extension and connect it to the Blue Line--must commuters have to use the 405 South Bay curve for everything? 

f) Work with Orange County to create 2-3 commuter line alternatives to allow access from LA to/from Orange County--again...must we use the 405 freeway for everything? 

So here we are--we're spending, and we're building, and we're planning. 

And now that we've put our money where our collective mouth is, we have every right to demand that our Sacramento and Washington representatives come through for us.  Or they're gone, to be replaced with those who WILL come through for us. 

We've got to control our planning and development, and we've got to raise our expectations of what our state and nation can do for us with our trusted taxpayer dollars/investments. 

To do no less makes no sense.  Certainly, no Common Sense.

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)

PUBLIC RIGHT TO KNOW-Accountability and transparency in government starts with streaming your public meetings in real time and having them posted online within 24 hours of the meeting’s end. 

In 2016 -- soon to be 2017 -- the Los Angeles Police Commission is still not live streaming or posting their meetings within 24 hours. Yet, by their comments, the commissioners themselves would have you believe that both accountability and transparency are their top priorities. But it can’t be when they can’t even manage to use any of their power or the millions of dollars raised from the public via taxes to do one very simple task. 

There is no reason at all why Angelenos should not be able to turn on LA Channel 35 and watch the police commission meetings or go online and watch them live from a computer or from their mobile phones. I would much rather see their meetings than another propaganda episode of “Inside the LAPD.” The fact you can call in and listen to the meetings via phone (when they bother to turn on the audio) seems to be a secret and isn’t even promoted to the public by the commission. At the end of the day, it shouldn’t take complaining publicly via social media for over 72 hours for them to be posted online. It just shouldn’t. 

We know that the City, Los Angeles Police Department and commission are not quite as technically challenged as they would have the public believe because, even though they haven’t uttered a word about it publicly, they commissioned and paid for a mobile app to allegedly aide them in their accountability and transparency efforts. It’s just that they’re keeping it a secret for now. 

Unlike the LAPD’s iWatch app, which was announced with much fanfare when asking the public to “say something if you saw something,” the Inspector General’s app is said to be the first of its kind in this country by allowing the public to file complaints or compliments about Los Angeles police officers that go directly to the police commission’s Office of the Inspector General. This might seem particularly useful in light of the LAPD’s repeated failure to find any evidence of “biased policing” or racial profiling among the thousands of allegations made against its officers. Yes, that part. 

The police commission has the money and the means but apparently not the will (or the needed push from Mayor Eric Garcetti) to open their meetings up to a wider audience of Angelenos who may be interested in what is happening with their police department but find it impossible to attend their Tuesday 9:30 a.m. meetings in downtown Los Angeles. 

If the Los Angeles Police Commission can’t manage to make their meetings reasonably accessible to everyone and in a timely manner, what faith should the public really have in their capabilities to do anything else as it relates to transparency or accountability with Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and the LAPD? 

The Los Angeles Police Commission talks a big game on transparency and accountability when it comes to the LAPD but fails miserably at its own. And that needs to change.

(Jasmyne A. Cannick lives in Los Angeles and is a frequent commentator on local and national politics, social and race issues. Cannick is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

A City Council and mayoral plan to address LA’s homeless emergency with fast-built homeless housing on 12 parcels of city land has turned into a farce, with developers this week proposing everything from “affordable” to luxury housing — but not much homeless housing.

In a report quietly released Wednesday by the LA City Administrative Officer — the same day that a federal study found LA leads the U.S. in chronically homeless — developers proposed only 500 units of housing, total. And only a modest portion of it is earmarked for the homeless. 

City leaders, faced with opposition from residential and business areas where the “homeless housing” was envisioned, have been quietly backing away from their own homeless housing concept for weeks.

City Hall had identified public land in West LA, Westchester, Lincoln Heights, Venice, South LA, Sylmar and San Pedro, often near schools, churches, parks and homes.

The Los Angeles Times reported in October that elected leaders and city officials “spent months developing plans for converting as many as 12 city-owned sites into housing for the city’s homeless residents.”

No longer, it seems.

Behind the scenes, city officials quietly turned their emergency homeless housing initiative into the vaguely worded “Affordable Housing Opportunities Sites” plan. The proposal released yesterday even suggests “market rate housing” — luxury housing — on some city land.

The famously slow-moving City Council might be able to house more homeless, and do it faster, by tapping the empty Parker Center police headquarters not far from their own offices at City Hall.

City Hall’s much watered-down new concept is set to be discussed at a hearing today. According to the  recommendations, two of the 12 city parcels — closed-down fire stations in San Pedro and Westchester — should be sold and the money placed in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

It was only weeks ago that the LA Times reported City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana was overseeing “the homeless housing initiative,” which was “aimed at building permanent supportive housing — the kind that includes substance abuse counseling or other services.”

But the widely awaited report suggests that elected officials are enthused about erecting homeless housing only at one locale — a city-owned traffic island in South Los Angeles adjacent to the 110 and 105 freeways.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, LA is home to nearly 13,000 chronically homeless — and 95 percent of them live outdoors in cars, tents and encampments.

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for 2PreserveLA.  Check it out. See if you don’t agree it will help end buying favors at City Hall.)

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IMMIGRATION ECONOMICS-During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously promised to deport all of America’s approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants. While Trump has since dialed back his rhetoric, the president-elect promised in a recent interview to immediately deport the two to three million immigrants with criminal records before he would “make a determination” about everyone else. Trump has also, of course, promised to dramatically improve the American economy. But can that latter promise can be made by still keeping the first? 

Probably not, according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which serves as a reminder that those two oaths might be at odds with each other. In the research, economists Ryan Edwards and Francesc Ortega break down the economic contributions of unauthorized workers across different industries, while also exploring how mass deportations would affect those industries and looking at the effects of legalization. Undocumented immigrants constitute 4.9 percent of the American workforce. Some industries rely more heavily on these workers. In agriculture, for example, illegal immigrants represent 18 percent of the workforce. In construction, they constitute 13 percent; 10 percent in leisure and hospitality. 

If all those workers were to disappear, gross domestic product (GDP) would go down by about 3 percent (that’s $5 trillion) over a 10-year period. “Once capital has adjusted, value-added in Agriculture, Construction and Leisure and hospitality would fall by 8–9%,” Edwards and Ortega write. “However, the largest losses in dollars would take place in Manufacturing, Wholesale and retail trade, Finance and Leisure and hospitality.” 

Donald Trump’s Immigration Policy Is Already Here.  And as for the opposite counterfactual, the one in which the country’s undocumented workforce was suddenly legalized? The authors find that legalization would increase private-sector GDP by about 0.5 percent, with larger gains (anywhere from 1.1 percent to 1.9 percent) in leisure and hospitality, construction, and agriculture. 

Edwards and Ortega’s conclusions are consistent with past research, which overwhelmingly concludes that immigration is good for the economy at large, and that legalizing undocumented workers is beneficial to both the economy and native workers. 

Of course, it’s likely immigration has also harmed some American employees, in particular low-skilled workers in direct competition with immigrants. While this has emerged as a bit of a hot-button issue in the economics field recently, the best research on the topic suggests that, at least in the short run, an influx of immigrants does reduce the wages of low-skilled (defined as those without a high school degree) native workers. Low-skill black men are particularly vulnerable to these effects. In other words, immigration is a lot like free trade: It’s good for most people, but not every single person. 

There are approximately 11 million unauthorized workers in the United States today, eight million of whom are in the U.S. labor force, making meaningful contributions to the country’s economy. This latest research is a timely reminder that mass deportation, in addition to being an expensive proposition, could be harmful to the economy.

(Dwyer Gunn is a journalist who is a contributing writer at Pacific Standard  … where this piece originated.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID, PART III-Corruptionism destroys the economy. Speaking on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, November 20, 2016, political analyst David Frum warned that the greatest present danger to the economy comes from corruptionism. Basically, no one cared. 

My response to Mr. Frum is, “Welcome to LA, citadel of corruptionism.” I am marking my calendar for eighteen months from now to see if Mr. Frum’s prediction comes true: that in early 2018, the media will be aghast at the rampant corruptionism flowing from the Trump Administration. While Mr. Frum may be absolutely accurate about the corruption soon to be unleashed in the nation’s capital, it is not clear that anyone will care. 

In Washington, the only thing which is truly bipartisan is corruption. Some of us remember when Senator Leahy complained about the war profiteering in Iraq. Vice President Cheney told him to “go f–k yourself.” Did anyone step forward to stop the vast corruptionism back then or did all of Washington fall in line behind Cheney? When speaking about it years later on the Dennis Miller radio show, Cheney remarked, “You'd be surprised how many people liked that,” then added, “It’s sort of the best thing I ever did.” 

Why is Corruptionism Bad for the Citizenry? 

For a candidate who ran on “It’s the Economy, Stupid” against a candidate who felt that the “Status Quo is OK,” corruptionism is a gigantic threat. Let there be no mistake: Trump’s “Make America Great Again” theme pandered to the racists and the bigots and the xenophobes, but his core promise was to fix the economy. He proclaimed there would be a 4% growth -- nay 6% growth -- rather than the 2% current growth rate. The reason to throw out all the illegal Mexicans wasn’t just because he thought that, with but a few exceptions, they were rapists and criminals, but that they were taking American jobs. Trump’s xenophobic attack on NAFTA was to make America great again by bringing jobs back to our shores. 

Corruption by definition is the diversion of resources away from the honest people in order to line the pockets of those who have the power to loot. The ways of corruptionism are as vast as human ingenuity itself, but one principle holds true: Corruption always steals billions of dollars from the productive segment of society in order to enrich the criminal element. 

If Mr. Frum is correct, over the next several months, President Trump will form a government in which businessmen, foreign and domestic, will know the “point men” in the Trump Administration who will dole out favors from the Administration. This modus operandus is not new to Washington as we have seen with the no bid contracts given to Halliburton during the era of Iraq War Profiteering.

Like Politics, Corruptionism is Local 

Just as all politics is said to be local, corruptionism is also local. Just as the Trump Administration has an affirmative duty to employ sound macro-economics to protect the nation’s economy from destructive forces, our local government has a similar duty. But the City of Los Angeles has failed miserably. 

There is a reason Family Millennials are fleeing Los Angeles and that Los Angeles has lost more employers than any other urban area. There is a reason that Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion in both the United States and Europe, despite spending billions of dollars on subways and light rail. There is a reason that the rest of Los Angeles’ infrastructure is crumbling and our water mains are constantly bursting. There is a reason that people are needlessly dying because we have a truncated paramedic force and why the Police Protective League has started assailing the mayor for under-funding the LAPD. 

Mediaeval Feudalism is Alive in Well in Los Angeles 

For over a decade, Los Angeles has been run like a 13^th Century feudal enclave where the Prince rules by divine right and all his vassals are allowed to be absolute lords and masters of their fiefdoms (council districts) -- provided they maintain their fealty to Prince Garcetti. 

Under the Garcetti System, each Lord is guaranteed absolute and unanimous support by all the other Lords for whatever deal he makes with a real estate developer. Without the guarantee of unanimous support, the councilmembers could not be making any deal they wished with any developer. 

Let’s look at Garcetti’s gift of $17.4 Million to his favorite developer, CIM Group, for its project at 5929 Sunset Boulevard. As this CW article pointed out, LA Weekly had termed CIM Group as Los Angeles’s richest slum lord, yet that did not stop millions of dollars from flowing to CIM Group without any opposition from the LA City Council. The 23-story tower was constructed in violation of a court order without any council opposition.   

Are we to believe that no other councilmember thought that there were better uses of city revenue than to give tens of millions of dollars to LA’s richest slum lord? It did not matter what any other councilman thought since they were all obligated to approve the project with all its corrupt strings because that is what the Lord of Fiefdom CD 13 wanted. 

When the Lady of Fiefdom CD 9, Jan Perry, wanted hundreds of millions of tax dollars for the downtown hotels, all the councilmembers approved. According to the LA Times, in May 2011, the projected cost to the City was $640 million. 

Play Ostrich and Sick Your Head in the Sand 

No one wants to hear how the feudal organization called the Los Angeles City Council throws the doors wide open to corruptionism. Apparently, no one in LA has ever heard of Lord Acton’s maxim that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” No one, least of all the District Attorney, wants to look at a system whereby all councilmembers have to support all projects in another fiefdom -- including the gifts totaling billions of public funds -- because the Lord or Lady of each fiefdom is the absolute ruler within his or her realm. 

With the LA Times’ expose of the bribery in connection with the Sea Breeze Project in fiefdom CD 15, however, the peasants may become unruly. They just might maybe able to begin to discern a connection between City Council’s unanimous voting and corruption. What would Los Angeles be like if a councilmember could not guarantee approval of each and every behind-the-scenes deal that he or she made with developers? 

The City is Above the Law 

With the Sea Breeze revelations and the advent of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative (which is aimed to stop Spot Zoning,) a major form of developer corruption at City Hall is being revealed. Thus the Prince and his vassals are in a panic. But, not to worry. The courts are riding to the rescue – ready to provide the glue that holds together the Los Angeles City council’s Vote Trading Agreement which requires each councilmember to approve every project in another’s fiefdom. 

This vote trading arrangement is why Councilmember Paul Krekorian can guarantee developers that they can trash Valley Village with impunity. Not a single councilmember had the courage to register even a protest vote against the wanton and unnecessary destruction of Marilyn Monroe’s Valley Village home.  

Since rational people know that a group of 15 human beings cannot unanimously agree on thousands of consecutive votes without the “I’ll Scratch Your Back if You Scratch My Back” vote trading agreement, Judge Fruin has initially ruled that the Los Angeles City Council’s voting procedures are above the law. According to Judge Fruin’s Tuesday, August 23, 2016 tentative decision in the SaveValleyVillage Case (#BS 160608), the courts, or at least his courtroom, will no longer question the City Council’s actions. Why? Because its behavior is “Non-Justiciable.” And, like the City has asserted, “In short, the judicial branch of government is not the overseer of the other two.” 

Since the probability that the 99.9% unanimous voting we see at LA City Council could only occur by pure chance is less than once-in-infinity, one can see the need for the courts to hold that City Council’s conduct is non-justiciable. After all, how else can all these prerogatives of the Lords and Ladies and the Prince Himself be protected from the serfs’ complaints? 

For Angelenos, the idea of perpetual and eternal unanimity seems to be the natural order of things, kind of like King James I of England and his Divine Right of Kings theory. Now, it seems that the courts are set to support this James I approach to government. Another politician who attempted this type of absolute rule was Richard Nixon when he declared during Watergate, “If the President does it, it is legal.” 

Almost 45 years after Watergate, we have a California judge echoing that same doctrine – the government’s behavior is non-justiciable.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles Attorney. He can be reached at [email protected]. Abrams’ Views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON CALIFORNIA-Positioned at the intersection of two dreams – the legalization of marijuana that came true, and the abolition of the death penalty, that did not -- Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom has a lot to help him if he wants to run for Governor in 2018. 

Dreams of getting stoned, but not killed, became only halfway true for Californians on Election Day, when statewide voters approved the voluntary inhalation of dope for pleasure seekers, but reaffirmed the mandatory lethal injection of drugs for certain criminals. You can have the freedom to fill your lungs with the marijuana smoke and enjoy the buzz, but still cannot escape having your veins filled with poison if you are sentenced to death. 

Newsom emphatically supported the legalization of marijuana (Prop 64) and advocated for the abolition of the death penalty (Prop 62). His roles are significant because he was the chair of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana; he maintained a continued stance against the death penalty (prop 62). This duality places him at the forefront of two huge social issues in the state: marijuana and the death penalty. 

Whoever sits in the governor’s chair the next time around will have to deal with the ramifications of legalizing marijuana and the creation of what may turn into a multi-billion dollar industry and a huge new state tax base.  The new governor will also have to face the decades-old struggle to eliminate the death penalty. 

Marijuana use and possession used to be a fast-track to jail. With the approval of Proposition 64, anyone over 21 years old can use and grow marijuana for personal use. But suddenly the posture of federal law enforcement and the beliefs of judges yet-to-be-appointed to federal courts may turn into challenges to the freedom of marijuana possession, cultivation and consumption, since it is still a federal offense. 

Being a blue state in a red universe could help blunt what may be a coming storm for our next wave of political leaders, which means someone like Newsom could have an advantage in the gubernatorial race with his positions on decriminalization of marijuana and abolishing the current mandatory death penalty. He’s clearly a leader on the left. 

Proposition 62, the death penalty proposition, if it had passed, would have repealed the death penalty and replaced it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole. It was defeated by an almost eight point margin, so this could be called a solid defeat, indicating that voters, at least for now, want the death penalty to stay. That’s bad news for the 750 people facing execution in California and their friends and families, especially since Prop 66 appears to be passing, which will mean speeding up the appeals process for those on death row with the objective of hastening decisions about executions. That measure is ahead by a slim margin -- currently 261,000 votes, with nearly four million vote-by-mail ballots still to be counted. The final certification by the Secretary of State on December 16 may be affected. 

So with weed, what was once bad became good, and with the choice of life imprisonment or death row, what was bad stayed bad. 

Thousands of people are still jailed because they got caught smoking pot years ago. Newsom has been outspoken in wanting to remedy this, saying, “What we cannot do is continue sweeping the problem under the rug by sending non-violent offenders to prison. Too many men and women are in jail because of drug addiction. We should focus on rebuilding families by keeping people out of the criminal justice system and instead getting them the help they need so they can return to a productive life. Drug policy in California and across the country has missed the mark. Now’s the time to rethink our approach and get it right.” 

The freedom to live the lifestyle we want, within legal limits, and to be free of execution for very serious crimes when alternatives like life imprisonment exist, are issues everyone should be concerned with in this “through the looking glass” political environment that now rules. Finding the right leaders is always important; being sure that our potential leaders are on the right side of the issues is critically important. 

The races for 2018 (Congressional, Governor and possibly Senator) have already begun for anyone that wants California to remain a golden state. Is Newsom the future? He’s someone that’s in the running.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CALWATCHDOG--If Donald Trump aims to significantly reduce the presence of undocumented and unlawful immigrants in California, he will face staunch opposition. From the municipal to statewide level, officials have come out strongly against the prospect of stronger enforcement and deportation.

“Secretary of State Alex Padilla criticized the choice of Kris Kobach [as one of Trump’s new immigration transition team members], who holds the same position in Kansas as Padilla, as counter to Trump’s call for unity,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Kobach advised the incoming president on immigration issues during the campaign, and helped draft the Arizona legislation that required immigration status checks during traffic stops.”

Excoriating Kobach for a “pattern of supporting racist, anti-immigrant policies including voter suppression and racial profiling laws,” Padilla warned in a written statement that Trump’s choice “sends a deeply troubling message that telegraphs an imminent assault on our collective voting rights and civil rights,” the paper added.

Trump’s push to intensify the deportation regimen pursued by President Obama has sent California activists into crisis mode, inspiring an ironic call among some for the undocumented to edge back into the metaphorical shadows to avoid exposing themselves to increased federal scrutiny. One such potential pitfall is the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, designed to help exempt young children from facing penalties older unlawful entrants have often faced.

Resistance strategies 

DACA “has allowed 750,000 young people who came to the U.S. illegally to continue working and studying in this country,” the San Jose Mercury News recalled. “Immigration activists from the Central Coast believe, because DACA was an executive action, it would be an easy immigration program for Trump to end.”

“In light of the demand, several community organizations held a news conference in Salinas Monday to urge calm among immigrant communities and to announce a series of forums in the next few days to answer questions, assuage concerns and urge people to be ready for what’s to come ­– whatever that is.”

Amid likely tectonic shifts in the policy landscape, California police have not necessarily lined up behind stiffer enforcement measures. Officials in so-called sanctuary cities have warned that a concerted federal push to purge their neighborhoods of undocumented residents would be met with resistance. “Democratic mayors of major U.S. cities that have long had cool relationships with federal immigration officials say they will do all they can to protect residents from deportation, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s vows to withhold potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer money if they do not cooperate,” the Associated Press reported.

Letter of the law

But some law enforcement agencies have staked out a cautious position based on the idea that their jurisdiction and responsibilities are simply limited. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck (photo at top), for instance, avowed that “I don’t intend on doing anything different,” as the Orange County Register noted. “We are not going to engage in law enforcement activities solely based on somebody’s immigration status. We are not going to work in conjunction with Homeland Security on deportation efforts. That is not our job, nor will I make it our job.”

In fact, Beck and chiefs like him have the law on their side. “Because states and cities can’t be required to enforce federal law — and there’s no U.S. requirement that police ask about a person’s immigration status — it’s likely that any Trump effort to crack down on sanctuary cities would focus on those that refuse to comply with ICE requests,” the AP added, citing Roy Beck, CEO of NumbersUSA.

On the political side, Senator-elect Kamala Harris made a point to establish herself as one of Trump’s most powerful opponents on immigration. For her first public appearance after the election, she chose an LA activist group’s headquarters. “Harris has followed the appearance up with a post on the website Medium saying she wanted ‘every immigrant family in this country  —  as well as the new Trump administration – to know exactly where I stood on immigration reform,’” according to McClatchy. “Harris has an online petition to support immigrants and suggested California would lead the resistance to Trump.”

(James Poulos blogs at CalWatchdog ... where this piece was first posted.)

-cw

EXPOSED--On March 17, when California High-Speed Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richard gave his word to the residents of Pacoima, Sylmar, San Fernando, Santa Clarita and surrounding areas that their communities were no longer in the path of the bullet train’s high speed approach into Burbank from Palmdale, there was an outpouring of relief and gratitude.  

“Thank you Lord for saving Sylmar, San Fernando, and Pacoima,” one woman said at a community meeting shown on NBC.  

“I’m happy my house is now safe, as is most of my community,” said another woman, quoted in the Daily News.  

A few weeks later, in a television interview with Conan Nolan, Chairman Richard re-pledged his agency’s commitment to the San Fernando Valley. Referring to some alternate routes under consideration, Nolan asks, “These new routes don’t bifurcate Sylmar, San Fernando the way the other ones did?”  

“Right,” Mr. Richard answers. “We’ve been able to bend away from that [original route] so that we’re not impacting those communities.” 

“Not impacting those communities?” It’s a big claim and with profound implications for groups organized by local residents to oppose the original route of the bullet train. With the battle won, why bother staying vigilant? 

The answer, unfortunately, is that the battle was not won. Far from it. And Chairman Richard’s promise that the High Speed Rail Authority won’t be impacting those communities was empty.  

The method by which the Rail Authority plans to achieve its “no impact” route -- twenty miles of deep tunnels bored across numerous fault lines at depths of up to 2000 ft and through varying types of rocks, including those below the suburbs of Pacoima -- is by no means a done deal in terms of geotechnical feasibility.  

The Authority’s own report states that ongoing testing is being done to assess potential construction constraints posed by in-situ groundwater pressures, the orientations of rock mass discontinuities and fracture density, hydraulic conductivity, and so on. 

Even if all the tunneling works out, the mitigation provided is of limited extent and by no means impact-eliminating. For example, while the tunnelized high-speed rail route reduces by 7000 the number of residences subject to Noise and Vibration disturbance, it still leaves 14,328 residences subject to that hazard. And while the tunnelized route causes fewer business and residential displacements -- 406 displacements as compared to 653 -- that’s not exactly zero impact. 

What’s more, Sun Valley derives no benefit at all from the tunnelized approach touted by Chairman Richard. The train has surfaced by the time it reaches that community. 

All this is bad enough but Pacoima and Sylmar have no one to stand up for them in this fight. Since Felipe Fuentes' departure on September 11-- to go work for a Sacramento based lobbyist firm called Apex -- the residents of Council District 7 have been stripped of their legal right to representation on the council.  

Why is Council President Wesson blocking the appointment of a replacement council member for District 7? And why won't Mayor Garcetti stop him?  

Los Angeles deserves an answer.

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and teacher who lives in Los Angeles.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW ON THANKSGIVING--Who among us doesn’t remember learning about Thanksgiving in elementary school? In November of 1621, Governor William Bradford organized a feast to celebrate the first successful corn harvest. He extended an invitation to Wampanoag Chief Massasoit and others to join the three-day feast. The menu didn’t include cranberry sauce, Aunt Mary’s Jello mold and stuffing. Maybe not even a 25-lb. turkey. Also, the Pilgrims and their guests weren’t rushing off for Black Friday. 

The Pilgrims probably didn’t even refer to the feast as “Thanksgiving,” but, like many cultures that have celebrated harvest feasts, it’s likely they were thankful just to have survived the challenges before them. 

For most of us, the 2016 Presidential election cycle, its outcome and the anxiety of the unknown that lays ahead have magnified the stresses of daily life such as negotiating endless rush hours and SigAlerts and trying to find street parking while translating parking restrictions. As a yogi, I try to practice daily gratitude.

Focusing on what we do have can go a long way to shift our view when feeling overwhelmed by political posts on Facebook and Twitter or watching the pundits battle it out on CNN. 

As we google Thanksgiving recipes and line up at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, let’s remember to express gratitude for what we have, whether it’s the Hamilton soundtrack, Runyon Canyon’s reopening or that first glimpse of the Pacific we see as we drive through the awe-inspiring canyons.

I am grateful for the chance to connect with grassroots groups throughout our city. This past weekend, I celebrated with activists committed to protecting the Santa Monica Mountains. The room was filled with people of all ages who volunteer their time and efforts to ensure that current and future generations can enjoy our magnificent terrain, that wildlife will be protected, and that the land will be secured against the threat of development or vineyards that compromise the environment.

This past year, I’ve met so many Angelenos who work together to maintain neighborhood integrity throughout the city, mentoring each other through their battles. Whether we’ve moved here from somewhere else or are native Angelenos, most of us love our city for its possibilities; we love living in a community that embraces people from all over the planet.

I’ve had conversations with friends and colleagues in the weeks since the election. We’ve agreed that we must move forward in unity to protect everything from the environment to equal rights for everyone and not just a few. 

We can only conjecture what life will be like post-Inauguration but let’s remember that change doesn’t only come from the Capitol in Washington D.C. We can create change at the neighborhood, city and state levels. Focus on the issues that fire your passion, whether it’s saving your neighborhood from spot-zoning and mega-projects, helping with the housing crisis and homelessness, keeping our beaches clean, or fighting discrimination against any group that is marginalized by policy or by threats of violence, whether physical or verbal. 

Take some time to reflect not only on the need for gratitude but also on what we can do. As Julien Smith wrote in The Flinch, “You can change the world again, instead of protecting yourself from it.” 

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.)

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's hard writing about Donald Trump because, along with most of you, I find the whole thing depressing. If you are a liberal, Trump represents the dashing of hopes, but even if you are a conservative, there has to be nagging doubt. There has to be the fear that he isn't anything like he has presented himself so far. (Photo above: Bond villain General Orlov from the 007 movie Octopussy.) 

I mean, what's to keep him from reversing himself entirely from the persona he presented on the campaign trail? He certainly has changed positions often, sometimes from one day to the next. You can't even count on his loyalty to those who supported him, since the man has shown no evidence of loyalty to wives, business suppliers, or even his own lawyers. The only thing we can probably count on is that Trump will be loyal to his own economic class, even if that results in ruinous policies such as cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The one thing we can hope for is that the U.S. Senate will act as something of a brake on Trump's less thoughtful, more dangerous proposals. What this comes down to, in practice, is that we need the Senate to continue allowing the filibuster. This will allow the current Democrats to slow down the rush to destruction. In politics, sometimes slowing things down for a while is all it takes to stop them completely.

It's sobering to realize that women's liberties and ethnic harmony are dependent on there being two or three Republican senators who, to consider them in a more honest use of the term conservative, will understand that allegiance to the American ideal requires that they uphold the senate's most misused and least defensible practice. After all, in earlier eras the filibuster was used by southern Democrats to uphold segregation and Jim Crow practices. But the filibuster is fairly old and somewhat celebrated, so it is possible that a few Republicans -- particularly the ones who distanced themselves from Trump -- will defend the existence of the filibuster as a time honored American tradition.

I think it's going to take a while for the people who voted for Trump to realize that he is likely to be a weakling. But that may be the case, because Trump doesn't seem to have the broad base of knowledge or the intellectual strength to carry a serious argument on his own. His numerous lapses and gaffes during the campaign are strong testimony to this disturbing fact. Of course it's possible to be rigid and authoritarian, something that outsiders will see as strength, but that doesn't translate to votes in the legislature. 

Here in California, we had the episode where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called the state legislators girlie men. It might have worked well in a cheap movie, but it got him nowhere with the legislature. In retrospect, it got him a lot of grief. Imagine trying a stunt like that with John McCain in the hope of gaining his vote. School yard bullying is counterproductive at this level of national politics.

The guy who appears to be furthest from reality in the new government is the newly reselected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan. He wants to get rid of Medicare. We will hear the expression Phase it out, but the meaning is the same. Politically, this provides a direct invitation to people aged 65 or older to think back on how much they enjoyed dealing with insurance companies before they became eligible for that magical Medicare card. I foresee a parade of gramps and grannies, equally divided among Republicans and Democrats, marching hand in hand in opposition.

Ryan is starting Trump's first term about the way that George W. Bush started his second term. You remember how W supported adding a little private sector investment to Social Security? It's not even that terrible an idea when compared to abolishing Medicare. At least with the Social Security gambit, there would have been some chance to develop private capital over a lifetime of investing. Abolishing Medicare just adds the fear of enormous medical expenses to one's life. It's the fear and uncertainty that were felt by the pre-65 cohort during their earning years. I would like to think that Paul Ryan and any Republican who supports him in phasing out Medicare will feel the pain.

One point in regard to the media. It is a truism in screen and television writing that you need a villain to make a drama. Our language has even adopted the term "Bond villain" for somebody who is dramatically, over-the-top-evil. It's not surprising that the pundit class have reflexively glommed onto the latest Bond villain, Steve Bannon. We've even had an anti-Bannon parade here in LA. The guy is deserving of his infamy, but there are worse folks to worry about. Mike Pence is near the top of that list, because Pence really believes what he says. It will be interesting to see how late night television comedians deal with all these Bondian extremists.

There is a growing sense that Donald Trump is a bit overwhelmed with the job he has to do. Some observers claim that he wasn't aware until now that he has to pick a whole new staff for the top of the executive branch of the U.S. government. We can speculate that he simply didn't think about such things before, because he has never been in a position where one would be required to do so. 

This is a problem, but the bigger problem that the rest of us will have to face is that Trump and his closest advisers have been considering hiring staffers and cabinet members who represent adherence to the reactionary Republican ideology rather than looking for people of competence. Let's hope we're wrong on this last point. Discussions about the future of the EPA and who will be placed in charge are not encouraging.

One last point, about which I spoke in my first column about Donald Trump. Trump has presented his claims in the form of superlatives without details. Our military will be so big and so powerful that nobody will dare to challenge us, and our medical care will be great and a lot cheaper. 

Just the other day, Trump repeated that remark about fixing the American healthcare system. It was part of an interview in which he talked about repealing and replacing Obamacare, but it didn't come across as very believable. In fact, it didn't seem like Trump was taking it very seriously, because he added the additional ad hoc promise that the transition from Obamacare to its replacement would be seamless. What we haven't seen is a detailed plan, which is evidence enough that there isn't one.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. You can reach him at [email protected]) 

-cw

NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTER DEBATE-There's a war going on in the Miracle Mile of Los Angeles between residents. They are divided over what is the best and most effective way to stop unrestricted out-of-scale growth that up until now has had little or no concern for maintaining the intrinsic character and charm of the Miracle Mile neighborhood. 

While there is general agreement among all Miracle Mile residents that some form of residential development restriction must be put into place immediately, that's where any consensus among competing Miracle Mile residents seems to end. 

One faction, organized around those who have been active in the Miracle Mile Residential Association (MMRA) and its President James O'Sullivan and MMRA member Ken Hixon, seems to have made up its mind that a Historical Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) is the only solution capable of controlling development and protecting the historical character of Miracle Mile residences... even though this is clearly not the case. 

What goes unmentioned among these HPOZ supporters is that an HPOZ might be good for those Miracle Mile residents living in rent-stabilized apartments, but that it is over-kill for single family R1 residents who would see their costs for even the most modest maintenance and remodeling (consistent with the restrictions put in place by an HPOZ) double or even triple, when these R1 residences have to conform to even the most modest protracted requirements of the proposed HPOZ. 

In effect, it is as if the R1 residents, through the imposition of a costly HPOZ, are going to be subsidizing the continuance of rent stabilized multi-unit dwellings within the borders of the proposed HPOZ. 

While there are clearly less draconian measures than an HPOZ, like an R1 Variation Zone that has 16 different neighborhood model designs possible to protect the character of different types of neighborhoods without becoming an impossible and prohibitively expensive burden on Miracle Mile residents, the MMRA leadership has up until now been against even considering them. 

If you wonder why, it's because it is thought that none of the sixteen R1 Variations possible for implementation in the Miracle Mile do anything to protect residents in multi-unit smaller rent-stablized apartments that are in abundance in the Miracle Mile. 

Therefore, because of the adversarial interests between Miracle Mile residents living in single family R1 houses and those living in mostly small multi-occupant rent-stabilized buildings, it appears that O'Sullivan, Ken Hixon, and others heading the MMRA leadership, have not been forthcoming with all the necessary facts that would allow all Miracle Mile residents to make informed decisions about what would be best for everyone in the neighborhood. 

In fact, they seem to have actually manipulated the HPOZ process by alleging "facts" to support a proposed HPOZ that are verifiably untrue. 

One such distortion can be seen in this video that claims "80% of the 1351 structures in the proposed Miracle Mile HPOZ are denominated "contributors" to the proposed HPOZ zone and only 20% are not." 

And yet, when you look at the map and identify the specific residences at 5:06 minutes into this YouTube link you can see that they have included in this 80% figure "altered contributor" (yellow) residences that already have radical deviations from their uniquely historical initial architecture – supposedly a substantial prerequisite for an HPOZ. Why is that? 

In fact, the vast majority of the supposed "contributor" (green) structures that they are basing their claim for HPOZ status on are actually significantly "altered contributor" (yellow) denominated properties. 

Furthermore, when you aggregate those structures denominated "altered contributor"(yellow) and those denominated "non-contributor"(black), the claim of commonality for an HPOZ goes completely out the window. The "contributor" structures are, in fact, in the absolute minority. 

Now here's a radical notion: Even at this late date when the HPOZ train seems to have already left the station, might it not still be possible for all residents of the Miracle Mile to come together in harmony as a community and propose a compromise alternative plan to reconcile the reasonable needs of both sides? Isn't it still possible to come up with a plan that addresses all of their concerns, while incorporating all residents’ common concerns for maintaining the quality and scale of this charming community? 

Even historic preservationist Ken Bernstein of the Office of Historic Resources, Department of City Planning, seem to agree in what he has said -- if not in what he has done -- that an HPOZ is not appropriate in certain circumstances that seem to closely approximate the Miracle Mile reality: 

"An HPOZ is also not the right tool for every neighborhood. Sometimes, neighborhoods become interested in achieving HPOZ status largely to stop out-of-scale new development. An HPOZ should not be seen as an "anti-mansionization" tool: other zoning tools may better shape the scale and character of new construction. An HPOZ is best utilized when a neighborhood has a cohesive historic character and community members have reached a consensus that they wish to preserve those historic architectural features." 

Maybe you could give City Councilman David Ryu and Ken Bernstein a call to express your concerns and the fact that you are a voter. 

City Councilman David Ryu

Los Angeles City Hall
200 N. Spring Street, Room 425
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: (213) 473-7004

[email protected] 

Ken Bernstein

Office of Historic Resources, Department of City Planning

200 N. Spring Street, Room 559,

Los Angeles, CA 90012Phone (213) 978-1200 Fax (213) 978-0017

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

POST ELECTION HIGH-Last Wednesday the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based drug-reform nonprofit, held a media conference call meant to celebrate a successful election night. Voters in eight states had legalized cannabis for recreational purposes; in several more states ballot measures cleared the way for marijuana’s medical use. 

In California, where Proposition 64 passed with 56 percent of the electorate, voters had not only legalized marijuana but, in the words of the organization’s California State Director, Lynne Lyman, “eliminated nearly every marijuana violation on the books.” 

As of midnight election night, everything from transporting to selling pot had been decriminalized, reducing not just future convictions but triggering retroactive sentencing reform. 

“Over a million Californians will have the opportunity to have their record cleared reduced and expunged,” Lyman said. “We won this. And we won it in a big way.” 

An undercurrent of worry, however, ran through the celebratory mood, owing to the ascension of Donald Trump in the presidential race and the Republican lock on both houses of Congress and soon, the U.S. Supreme Court. As recently as August, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency affirmed marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, prohibited for all purposes, including medical need and most research. And no one knows for sure whether the self-described “law and order candidate” who becomes president in January will tolerate state-by-state legalization. 

“I’m very worried about this,” said the DPA’s executive director, Ethan Nadelmann, noting that only a 2013 Justice Department memo stands between federal law enforcement and state marijuana markets. That document “really helped to provide a qualified light for states to proceed with implementation in the states that legalized,” Nadelmann continued. “I don’t think we’re going to have the same green light with the new administration.” 

Even in states where marijuana has been legal several years running, the marijuana economy still occupies a shadowy place in the law enforcement landscape. Thanks to Treasury Department guidance issued in 2014, banks can legally handle money for businesses that truck in cannabis, but only if they collect intelligence on those businesses and file reports on their activities. (Many banks still don’t trust the law, and a credit union for marijuana sellers has been blocked by the Federal Reserve.) The National Labor Relations Board will intervene in labor disputes and protect organizing efforts within the marijuana industry, but only because an advice memorandum in 2013 declared such involvement was appropriate. 

And while the Justice Department, in that 2013 “Cole Memo,” officially agreed to stand down in the face of robust state regulations that keep cannabis out of the hands of minors and prohibit stoned driving, like all the other advice and guidance from the federal government, such tolerance is by no means binding. If future Justice Department officials want to enforce federal law, they can start raiding cannabis shops on January 21, 2017. 

Whether or not they will however, remains a subject of tortured speculation among legal experts, advocates and academics. “Donald Trump has been totally unpredictable on this issue,” Nadelmann said during the conference call. “There was a moment years ago when he said he wanted to legalize all drugs, but he was also heard using drug-war rhetoric in the debates with Hillary Clinton.” 

Trump has also served up various word salads during his raucous campaign, statements that could be interpreted almost infinitely. “In Colorado,” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly last February, “the book isn’t written on it yet, but there is a lot of difficulty in terms of illness and what’s going on with the brain and the mind and what it’s doing. So, you know, it’s coming out probably over the next year or so. It’s going to come out.” 

It’s also possible that Trump won’t be the one making the decisions. “What’s more important than what Trump says is who the new U.S. Attorney General is, and whether that person will abide by Obama enforcement priorities,” says Hilary Bricken, a cannabis law specialist at Harris Moure in Seattle. Trump’s initial short list did not augur well: New Jersey Governor Christie has promised strict enforcement of federal laws on marijuana; Rudy Giuliani oversaw a tenfold increase in marijuana arrests during his tenure as mayor of New York. 

Another pick, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican, opined at a Senate hearing last April that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”  

Now Christie seems to be out of the running, and Giuliani prefers a position as the nation’s chief diplomat. But if they’re indicators of where Trump’s headed on justice, “we could definitely see a rollback,” Bricken says. “If the Trump administration decides to revive the drug war, we could see increased enforcement in the states that have liberalization. We could start to see more raids and indictments from the DOJ.” 

When that happens, industry momentum will likely stall out. “People will not take the risk. That could stymie all of our democratic experiments.” 

Upending those experiments, however, would no doubt prove to be a recklessly unpopular move. “You now have more than half the states in the country that have some kind of marijuana legalization,” says Sam Kamin, a criminal justice professor at the University of Denver. “That’s a pretty big cadre of states where people have decided that marijuana is not something that should be treated as a criminal matter.” 

There’s also the question of states’ rights, presumably a fundamental conservative tenet. “I’ve written that I don’t believe the federal government can enjoin the states from doing what they’re doing,” Kamin says. “It’s the basic principle of federalism. They can’t make them keep those laws on the books.” 

Nor can the federal government force state law enforcement to go after people for exclusively federal crimes. “The Printz case says that with regard to gun laws,” Kamin says. In Printz v. U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court determined that states were not required to perform background checks on gun buyers on behalf of the federal government. “The federal government can enforce its own laws, but can’t force the states to enforce on its behalf.” 

Where a new administration could cause trouble, however, is in the realm of regulation. “It could take the form of a lawsuit in federal court arguing that state regulatory rules are pre-empted by federal drug laws.” People worried about that happening after Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012, but it didn’t, Kamin says, “because it’s hard to see how that would serve federal goals.” If a substance is going to be freely available, it’s better to have it taxed and regulated. 

Bricken says she and other lawyers with clients in the marijuana business are paying close attention to the trend in federal law, but they aren’t slowing down in anticipation of a new administration. “If the federal government goes around arresting attorneys, then we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. But for us, it’s business as usual until we get some dramatic turnaround.” And even in that event, she says, “I wouldn’t be afraid to take up the fight.”

(Judith Lewis Mernit writes for CapitalandMain.com … where this piece was first posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS-The results of this election have made me think a lot about the Aeneid – an allegory of self-righteousness, subterfuge, vengeance, and loss. The story of Aeneas provides one of the more iconic metaphors of all time -- the Trojan horse. The Greeks, in their imperious haze, allow a gifted wooden horse to sit inside their fortress gates. During the night, Trojans hasten from within its lumber walls and decimate the city. The moral of the story: flashy can be fatal. Our desire to be right and relevant coupled with our false sense of impenetrability can blind us to the deadly dangers lurking within the horse, across the street or on the ballot.

The current situation in the U.S. is heartbreaking and overwhelming. An unstable and insecure man ran to be President. On Tuesday, he won. Now, wanting to win and wanting to be President are two very different things. He either ran believing all he espoused or he said whatever to win. Regardless, there is now a mandate of hate and cleansing blowing in the wind like a starched confederate flag, and this country must shoulder the responsibility for raising it. 

If the President-Elect believes what he espoused on the campaign trail, then we have a Eugenicist waiting in the wings. If he doesn’t, then he will continue to find affirmation via tweets and ”yuge” adulation-intended events while relinquishing the less flashy, but incisive tasks and responsibilities to the very smart and strategic white supremacists, climate deniers and xenophobes that have now been freed from the sidelines and are jockeying for positions in his inner circle and cabinet.

It took only hours for them to pour from his coattails. The recent position announcements of Stephen Bannon and Reince Preibus, the further elevation of Mike Pence, and rumors of Rudy Guiliani, Harold Hamm (Energy Secretary), Byron Ebell (EPA), Newt Gingrich (State Department), and Michael Flynn (National Security Advisor or Defense Secretary), Jan Brewer (Interior Secretary) and Forrest Lucas (Interior Secretary) should scare the bejesus out of us all. And yet, for some, it doesn’t. His campaign resonated, not in spite of what he said, but because of what he said. This election was a backlash on “othering.” Ultimately, this election was about reminding the world who remains first on the list.

So where do we go from here? 

Progressive Pipelines 

Seeds are planted to bear fruit. It takes time, care, focus and planning, but if tended to correctly, a bounty will produce. That bounty will serve many purposes. Our bounty, as progressives, should be school and community college boards, city councils, tax boards, county supervisors, judges, and district attorneys. Races for mayor, governor and state representatives are flashy, but diligently working at the local level can produce the kinds of progressive pipelines that we need. 

For example, District Attorneys and judicial seats may be the least prominent of state and county government, but they can deliver the most passionate and tangible results for institutional change. Together, they are a deadly combination. 48% of state supreme courts are conservative (strong or leaning). They have been responsible for decisions relating to increased voter suppression, increased executions, and decreased education funding. Conservative groups have been working overtime to keep and turn state supreme, appellate and superior courts as red as possible. Yet, if you take a poll, most folks don’t vote that far down on the ballot, don’t know who the judicial candidates are and do not seem to care. 

A recent study revealed that 95% of all elected prosecutors are white and 83% are men. Prosecutorial discretion has a direct impact on how other systems (criminal justice, and education, especially) work, and hard-liners in the DA’s offices have left many communities under siege. Inmate monitoring, police prosecution and accountability and mandatory minimum sentencing are examples of the one-two punches delivered by these two groups. So, start examining the pipelines of these candidates, and the histories of those currently in office. 

Strategic Obstruction 

It’s time to become obstructionists. It sounds aggressive, but this is survival. Conservatives have been good at mapping out lines of attack, and in investing time and money into figuring out where and how to use law and policy to plug liberal holes. The Heartland Institute, ALEC and the Cato Institute are just a few of the many conservative, neoconservative and libertarian think tanks working to ‘right-set’ the trajectory of our country. 

Progressives are good at funding on-the-ground grassroots efforts, but it takes more than just registering voters to change the tides. It takes those efforts in concert with strategic geo-mapping, constitutional law review and good old-fashioned math (counting your votes and your states) to win. It’s time to call in the product placement gurus, the neuroscientists, the policy researchers and the lawyers and shut the door until some viable strategies are born. Say “No” until you have enough votes and law to say “Yes.” At this stage of the game, lives depend on it. 

Education Still Matters 

Education is the great equalizer and it has been slowly dismantled over the past decades. Discontent with unions, changes in tax distribution, and state deficits have denigrated our public education system to something almost unrecognizable. Just look at the election results. Those without a college degree backed the President-Elect 52% - 44%. This is widest gap since 1980. Two-thirds (67%) of non-college educated whites backed the President-Elect. When we defund civics classes in the schools, we do more harm than we think. 

Civic participation happens because of educated engagement and a connection to the outcome. Public education has always been ground zero for civic engagement. I support the arts because I took music in the 5^th grade. It’s really as simple as that. It’s time to rethink Proposition 13, streamline the passage from K-12 into the community colleges and address the lack of compatibility between current student curriculum and the trending job markets. We need to get real about the inter-complexities of globalization (automation vs. union jobs), our inherent consumer tendencies (will we pay higher prices?) and how and who we educate. 

After listening to President Obama’s latest press conference, I was infuriated and depressed all over again. Listening to all of the progress that has happened, his unwavering intelligence on the issues, and his cues to Democrats to gear up for 2018 gave me some fire. It also reminded me that the system is bigger, smarter, and more complex than one person. Pernicious self-preservation is the foundation of its design. Obama suffered from being too smart and thoughtful (and black). The President-Elect will suffer from being an outsider and unfocused. Pawns they both are in a weird way – Obama was red meat for the conservative right, and the President-Elect was their Trojan horse. 

And now, the fights for equity, equality and existence are on the line more than ever before.

(Sydney Kamlager is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TRANSIT TALK--After years of calculating and planning and outreach, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, Westside LA Councilmember Mike Bonin and former Santa Monica Denny Zane reached high with the advocacy of Measure M. And after decades of being told it would "never happen", the Westside/Valley rail line--the Holy Grail of Transit--can become a reality.

Of course, it's remembered by so many how the Expo Line--arguably the seminal effort that made LA County's elected leaders recognize that all of LA County wanted rail alternatives to car commuting and mobility, and not just the San Gabriel Valley with their Gold Line--would "never happen".

So why is the Westside/Valley rail line (call it the Valley/Westside rail line if you live in the San Fernando Valley) the "Holy Grail" of Transit?

Three reasons:  the geographic distance from other connecting rail lines, the cost and the previous lack of political support and cohesion for this project.

1) With Measure M, we can fast-track the Wilshire Subway to reach the 405 freeway and the West Los Angeles VA a decade or more earlier, and upgrade the Orange Line to a rail line, so that the connection between the two east-west lines will occur in a more planned, comprehensive fashion.

The location of this far-west line is what also vexes the Southeast LA County Cities and the South Bay Cities with their own rail lines--they're far away from the central core of Downtown LA, but their regional traffic requires the presence of rail alternatives.

Of interest, though, is that a huge portion of those voting for the measure were from the Westside and Valley. 

One can only hope that the north-south Westside-Valley Subway will be planned and constructed in coordination with the Wilshire/Purple Line Subway.  And for those keeping score on other transit projects, ditto for a Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail Line northern extension that will be a subway between the Expo and Purple Lines. 

2) The cost is prohibitive, but that was true for the Wilshire Subway.  After virtually 100 years of talking about it, the subway under Wilshire Blvd. is being built, with political and financial support that is now universal. 

Demands to both Sacramento and Washington for matching funds will almost certainly be ramped up, and a dogfight between Republican Congressional budget hawks and President-Elect Trump will occur over how to pay for $1 trillion in national infrastructure projects. 

For now, it should be remembered that $1 billion in Measure R's plan (the forerunner of Measure M) was dedicated for a Westside/Valley transit project, and it's not hard to conclude that paying for buses and Rapid Bus stations will occur between the Orange Line Busway and the Expo Line, with stops on Sunset and the Getty Center. 

Perhaps a Busway will be built, but that may be too expensive and inflexible--would that reside in the middle of the 405 freeway, and take over the carpool lanes?  Perhaps...but the stations need to be at the destinations residing off the freeway, so that a Rapid Bus line with many new buses (paid for by Measures R and M) might be what we see in the immediate future. 

At this time, however, the concerns of $5-7 billion for a north-south Westside/Valley Subway appear to have gone the direction of the Wilshire Subway: "Yes, it's expensive.  And?" 

3) The political will of a given region overrides all obstacles, or places a given rail project at the back of the line. 

There was never a counterpart to the "Friends4Expo Transit" for a north-south Valley/Westside (Westside/Valley?) transit project.  Of course, there was also no equivalent or counterpart to an Exposition Rail Line Right of Way.  And there was certainly no cohesion between San Fernando Valley and Westside political leaders, or even political cohesion within the Valley. 

And San Fernando Valley leaders are paying the price for not showing courage and vision when they let a rail right of way become a second-rate Orange Line Busway which could have been a first-rate light rail line like what occurred with the Exposition Light Rail Line. 

What to do, what to do?  The conversion of the Orange Line Busway to a light rail, or doing the big dig with a Valley/Westside rail tunnel?  Which should come first?  Can they both be worked on together? 

Similarly, the South Bay Cities, which did not vote in as high numbers for Measure M, are paying the price for not advocating for a South Bay Green Line Extension earlier (they've got their own roadblocks, and hence that region will have to suffer until the right leaders can expedite that project and confront those among them who are blocking it. 

And ditto for the Southeast LA County Cities (Gateway Cities) who still have major freeway projects and a lower priority for any rail projects.   

The regions without the political will suffer the most, but with Latinos and Millennials overwhelmingly voting for Measure M, it's likely the chorus for more rail projects will grow ever louder. 

On a final note, there is yet ANOTHER "holy grail" that has been ignored, and will remain ignored until LAX is connected to Metro's countywide transit system: a direct LAX to Downtown rail line.  

There almost certainly WILL be more individuals noting how Metro spent money and effort to create a cute Bikeway along the Harbor Subdivision rail right of way between Inglewood and the Blue Line and Southeast Downtown LA and Union Station. 

But that, too, is an issue of geography, cost, and (especially!) political will.   

Because the dilemma of HOW, and not IF, we're going to get to these "holy grails" is one we can now enjoy with the passage of Measure M. 

Which is a dilemma that transportation experts have sought for years to confront.  And that is one dilemma that will bring cheers and smiles (and jobs!) for decades to come. 

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Kids say the Darndest Things is long gone from television, but based on the rib-tickling comments from the planning and environmental consultants who Caruso Affiliated hired to support its high-rise luxury apartment project at 333 S. LaCienega, a revival in now warranted. Instead of kids, though, I suggest Art Linkletter’s and Bill Cosby’s successor can interview the various officials, architects, lawyers, planning expediters, outreach specialists, environmental specialists, and hoodwinked neighbors on the payroll to sing the praises of one unplanned mega-project after another. 

Based on their performance in promoting Caruso Affiliated’s 333 S. LaCienega project at the City Planning Commission, I think the new show might even deny Julia Louis Dreyfuss her ninth Emmy. We also may need to move quickly because if the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative passes in March 2017, developers will no longer be able to select their own environmental consultants, and all their reality-defying performances will be lost forever. 

To scope out the revival of Kids Say the Darndest Things, let us examine how these Santa’s little helpers deflected an obvious criticism: a 240 foot high-rise apartment tower constructed on a lot with a 45 feet height limit and facing one of the most congested intersections in Los Angeles does not meets the General Plan’s policy that new high density residential must match the character and scale of surrounding residences. 

Then let us move on to their equally droll defense against the public comment that some of this planet’s wealthiest tenants are not going to travel around Los Angeles on METRO busses or hoof a half-mile to the future Purple Line station at LaCienega and Wilshire for forays to LACMA, the Wiltern, Little Tokyo, or Universal Studios. 

The consultants replied that any claims of a clash in scale and character were purely conjecture, and they then asserted the opposite, that the proposed structure is visually consistent with nearby residences because they spotted some mid-rise buildings in the vicinity. Then Little Sir Echo from the Department of City Planning repeated these consultant claims to an obliging City Planning Commission (CPC). While that is obviously sufficient for a CPC whose members are insiders handpicked by the Developer-in-Chief, Eric Garcetti, it is not likely to pass muster with less enlightened outsiders. 

To begin, the Wilshire Community Plan, which governs 333 S. LaCienega Boulevard, presents two clear policies: 

Policies

1-1.1

Protect existing stable single family and low density residential neightborhoods from encroachment by higher density residential uses and other uses that are incompatible as to scale and character, or would otherwise diminish quality of life.

1-3.1

Promote architectural compatibility and landscaping for new Multiple Family residential development to protect the character and scale of existing residential neighborhoods.

New high-density residential buildings should be consistent with the character and scale of nearby low-density and single family residential areas. 

At this location the highest surrounding buildings, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and the Beverly Center Shopping Center, are about 8 stories tall, while 240 feet translates into approximately 19-21 stories. As a result, the 333 S. LaCienega tower is at least twice the height of the tallest surrounding buildings. Furthermore, most buildings on LaCienega Boulevard, to the north, between Beverly Boulevard and West Hollywood, conform to the corridor’s 45-foot height limit, as prescribed by the General Plan and its C2-1VL zone. To the south, nearly all buildings between this site and Wilshire Boulevard also conform to the General Plan designation and to existing zoning. 

Improving the visual character of the area? 

In hopes that the pilot will become a comedy hit, the consultants also claimed that the proposed project would improve the visual character of the immediate area, even though a 240-foot tall building would tower everything else in this part of Los Angeles. To find other buildings this tall, one needs to drive west to Century City, south to some parts of Wilshire Boulevard, or north to West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. But, the planning and zoning in these three areas permits such high rise structures, and these legal buildings are not two (2) to eight (8) times taller than everything else. While the project’s renderings are designed to shrink the building’s height, it can still be observed in the following. Despite architectural trickery and traffic-free streets at one of LA’s and Beverly Hill’s most congested corners, the high-rise still towers over the Beverly Center, which is one block to the north and Cedars Sinai, which is to its immediate northwest. 

Auto-centric high-rise structures, like this, are transit adjacent, not transit oriented. 

In response to public comments that it is highly farfetched to re-package a luxury high-rise tower as a transit-oriented development whose super-wealthy tenants will ride METRO busses, the consultant’s rejoinder was so ingenious that Larry David must be cribbing the lines. Any claims about high rents and low transit use are purely speculative. But, this complaint about the proposed project was not speculative. It is based on data that the high-rollers shelling out $12,000 to $40,000 per month for rent will NOT take METRO busses or the future subway. 

The information comes straight from the project’s developer, Rick Caruso, as corroborated by the Los Angeles Times. At several meetings with the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, Mr. Caruso stated that his project will be a unique luxury apartment building, and about half of its tenants would be occasional visitors from other countries. It would offer the up-scale amenities of a five star hotel, including a concierge service that shops for tenants and provides on-call chauffeur-driven luxury cars for all their mobility needs. 

Apparently, the meeting did not last long enough for the developer to mention that there were nearby METRO bus stops and his future tenants would quickly grow tired of their chauffeur-driven luxury cars. At that point, they would switch to METRO busses, and beginning in 2023, stroll a half-mile to LaCienega and Wilshire to venture forth on the Purple Line Subway. 

At these meetings Mr. Caruso also emphasized that his tenants expected lavish amenities, including semi-private elevators that allowed them to avoid other tenants. This was, in fact, his primary reason for not building a shorter building with more luxury units on each expanded floor. 

While it not possible to know the exact rent structure of the proposed project, according to the real estate site, Curbed LA, it is intended to match the luxury Caruso building one block to the south, at 8500 Burton Way, where the penthouse rents for $40,000 per month. 

Furthermore, according to the March 9, 2015, Los Angeles Times, the typical rent there is $12,000 per month, which is at least four times the average rent in Los Angeles, and comparable to the highest rents in New York City. This press report also quotes the developer directly: 

"It's very eclectic," he said of the tenant mix, "sort of the rich and famous of all categories….About half of them have a primary home outside Los Angeles, in many cases overseas, he said, "It's a second home to many." 

A key factor in the building's appeal is hotel-like service, Caruso said. There is a driver and car to help tenants run errands or get to the airport. A concierge will secure concert tickets or see to it that tenants' grocery lists are fulfilled and the food is stocked in their pantries. 

"We shop everywhere," Caruso said. "If you want a salad from the Polo Lounge, we'll bring you a salad from the Polo Lounge. People want to be pampered." 

While the environmental and planning consultants might contend that these rich and famous tenants will take METRO busses and the future Purple Line subway, their sole evidence is proximity to several bus stops. But, a transit adjacent apartment building is hardly the same as a transit-oriented one. In the latter, the tenant mix is transit-oriented, and programs to generate transit ridership are front and center, not an after-thought slipped into an Environmental Impact Report. 

Had the consultant team looked further, though, they could have easily obtained a demographic profile of METRO passengers derived from on-board surveys. Eighty percent of the bus passengers are Latino, Black, and American Indian. Their average income is $16,377 per year, which means they are not likely to rent luxury apartments at 333 S. LaCienega. In fact, with such low incomes, it is doubtful they could even afford the 13 low income and affordable apartments that Caruso Affiliated pledges to build to qualify for on and off-menu Density Bonus incentives.  

While I realize that some readers may struggle to find the humor in this column, can’t we at least agree that the creativity of the consultants and their abettors at City Hall ought to be recognized? If not through a new comedy series, then perhaps we should consider something else, perhaps the next Doublespeak Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

(Dick Platkin reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch. He is also serves on the Board of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, which opposes the requested zone change, height district change and General Plan Amendment for the proposed luxury apartment tower at 333. S. LaCienega. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

IT’S THE ECONMOMY, STUPID (PART 2)-In Part I, we explored how Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was Obama’s “Promise of Hope” and both plagiarize Bill Clinton’s, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But no one cares as long as they deliver. 

“We have a mandate” is a pathological delusion in which politicians believe that because they won, they have a mandate to do whatever they want. Trump has no mandate, just as Obama had no mandate to do Health Care before fixing the economy. 

It turns out that not fixing the economy is the true third rail of American politicians, but I guess it’s the great talent of politicians to deceive and mislead, which then causes them to deceive and mislead themselves into thinking that they personally have some mandate. No. They do not. 

How will Trump fix the economy? 

If Trump has any idea, he is as secretive about it as he is about his plans to defeat ISIS. In fact, if I were a betting person, I’d bet he has better ideas how to decimate ISIS than he does how to manage the economy. 

The Basic Flaw in Managing the Economy 

The worst people in the world to manage a national economy are businessmen -- including people with a Wall Street mentality. That was Geithner’s fatal flaw that paved the way for Trump. 

The government’s responsibility for the economy has nothing to do with how one runs a business or how a family manages its finances. While sometimes an analogy can helped illustrate an aspect of macro-economics, it is dangerous to use examples from business or personal finances because they are based in micro-economics. Asking a businessman about macro-economics is like asking a person who only speaks German to teach you French. 

Managing the Economy Is the Function of Macro-economics 

Businessmen run businesses and people run their family finances, but the government has an entire different responsibility. Its main domestic function is to set the parameters for the economy itself. It sets the rules of the system. 

The Price System 

Adam Smith, writing in 1776, John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1936, both placed protection of the Price System at the core of the economic system – much in the same way as the Right to Privacy is at the core of Liberty. Without a right to privacy, there is no liberty. Both the price system and the right to privacy are so intrinsic to the economy and our constitution that we seldom enunciate them. 

The Price System is the mechanism by which everyone knows what something is worth from moment to moment. It is sometimes called the law of supply and demand. In totalitarian systems like Communism, they try to have a central authority set prices. There is nothing better to establish the value of any commodity than what a willing buyer will pay to a willing seller. These decisions are made billions of times a day. 

The Price System needs to be protected. The biggest threat is fraud, such as when people send out false information about the cost of wheat and deceive people into selling it far below market value. The fraudsters buy up huge quantities and when the market corrects itself, they sell their wheat for a huge profit. Not only are the people who sold their wheat for below market value harmed, but others who depend upon them to purchase merchandise are harmed. The fraudsters have nothing of value to wheat and they have provided no value by their transactions. 

Wall Street has been allowed to run wild with fraud since the end of the Clinton Administration and neither Bush nor Obama did anything to stop that from being the modus operandus. People were deceived into investing in housing, based upon the fraudulent idea that there was a huge market of buyers for single family homes; in fact, the market was already greatly over-built. Many people chose to invest in home construction, but what about all the places where they did not invest their money? We will never know what medical advances could have been made if those billions of dollars had gone into genetic research. No one knows how much farther along science would be if those billions of dollars had gone into space exploration. 

Thus, the first domestic job of the Trump Presidency is to “Protect the Price System.” 

That will require beefing up the old Glass-Steagall law and outlawing credit default swaps. Dodd-Frank is a poor platform from which to begin. We need to separate the investment banks from the commercial banks and make certain there are no loop holes allowing them to indirectly coordinate. 

Raise the cap on incomes which pay Social Security, Increase Unemployment Insurance, and Insure Residential Mortgages 

The government needs to follow the basic principle that Joseph explained to Pharaoh. During the fat years, you need to save so that during the lean years you can spend. 

There is no rational reason to cap the income for making Social Security contributions at only $118,500. The wealthier a person becomes, the less burden it is to pay Social Security taxes on higher income. It is the government’s duty to explain that Social Security payments have a benefit for businesses as well as for the individual who collects them. 

When the economy turns down, and it always does, the government can ward off recession by adding money to the economy. The higher the social security payments to seniors, the more disposable income they have and the better that is for business. The entire society benefits when seniors have more money to spend. 

Social Security was devised when people thought individuals would all have private pensions, but as we have seen, private pensions have become a fiction for everyone except the extremely wealthy.   Thus, Social Security has to be the main source of income for the elderly. To this end, it is the duty of the Trump Administration to increase Social Security payments. 

There are two basic ways to do this: 

(1) Starting in 2018, and each year thereafter Social Security payments will by at least 5% more than any increase in the Consumer Price Index. 

(2) An alternative would be to keep the current rate of increase at the CPI, but set an automatic “sur-increase” if there is a decrease in the economy. That way, as the economy becomes weak and moves towards recession, seniors and the disabled with have more money to spend and that extra money will help businesses weather the downturn. Since this increase would allow the country to head off a crisis, the amount of increase would have to be significant. 

Either way, Trump needs to lift the cap on Social Security contributions. 

For the same reason, we also need to start increasing the deductions for Unemployment Insurance. We need to set aside more funds to handle increased unemployment insurance payments because an economic downturn always increases unemployment.   

Similarly, we need to insure all residential mortgages with a type of insurance that is similar to life insurance and fire insurance. An economic downturn is similar to a fire that only burns down the den and the master bedroom. A family may lose part of its income due to a layoff. Thus, the mortgage insurance would kick in to pay that portion of the mortgage that has become out of reach. An automatic program like insurance with pre-set criteria is required; a time consuming and complicated refinancing system would only harm the banks at the time when everyone needs help. 

Thus, two things which we need to hear from Trump are his vigorous protection of the Price System and the institution of more programs to remove money from the economy while it is doing well in order to have the funds to add to the economy when it becomes weak. 

A Word about Los Angeles and Macro-Economics 

Measure HHH, Affordable Housing for the poor, is a horrible idea and is pseudo-macro-economics. It is a relic from the soviet-style CRA type of government in which Garcetti bureaucrats decide where poor people will live. Garcetti and the other central planners of the world suffer from the delusion that somehow GOD imbued them with the right to make these personal decisions for other people just because they are poor. The only thing that Measure HHH does is give the corrupt city council $1.2 billion to dole out to their buddies. 

Late Breaking News Article about LA’s Decline 

Although we’ve been writing for a couple of years about Family Millennials’ leaving Los Angeles, LA Weekly has presented some additional confirming data in its November 15, 2016 piece by David Romero, “Millennials Are Leaving Los Angeles.” 

Here is the underlying study in the November 4, 2016 issue of Apartment LIST, “Where are Millennials Moving to?” by Andrew Woo. Note that the article’s focus on 18 to 35 year olds tends to conceal that the exodus is among the older Millennials, i.e. the Family Millennials. The City’s investment in high rise Transit Oriented Districts is a local form of mismanagement of macro-economics. The diversion of billions of dollars into DTLA high rises and into Hollywood InFill Projects, along with Garcetti’s war on the single-family home, have driven out the replacement generation for Los Angeles’ Middle Class. 

Part III will discuss the political evil which allowed this disaster to befall the City.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-I guess I have a very different view of our recent Presidential election. Truth is, Donald Trump won, Hillary Clinton lost. Period. Donald Trump will be President of the United States come January, and no amount of protests or whining is going to change that outcome. 

For me, the more useful analysis has to do with what in the heck we do with our Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party here in California. After all, the Republican National Committee and the Republicans have already given us their version of change -- President Trump. 

My point of view is framed by having been a lifetime Democrat, and my dad was one of a handful of dentists in Orange County who was a Democrat. But the Democratic Party I belonged to and fought for back in the day is not the Democratic Party of 2016. 

Nobody wants to admit that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were responses to two national private clubs, the DNC and the RNC, that are absolutely rigged against ordinary Americans. Trump won, and we will have to see how he copes with the reality that the nation also re-elected most of the same old same old Senators and Congress Critters that he argued against. And they are mostly still charter members of the one dollar one vote brand of politics in America. 

As for the Democrats, I see no real movement to get back in touch with that 90 percent of the electorate that does not represent the 1/2 of 1% of the rich and powerful. Face it, the DNC is a slush fund that sets its own rules to keep its current members in power, and those folk’s skill set is doing whatever it takes to grab as much corporate and billionaire money as they can. I think we all know the price for that trade. 

As long as television networks like MSNBC are a subdivision of the DNC, paying ridiculous sums of money to DNC agents like Donna Brazile and other talking heads, you and I are in a world of hurt if we actually believe they represent us beyond the sound bites heard during the national elections, even as they look for gigs in a new administration. 

Hillary Clinton Did Not Happen In a Vacuum  

I remember when Bill Clinton got elected. He talked so good, and I gave him my hard earned money and thought how grand life would be. Sure. Then we got GATT & NAFTA & Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. 

Bill Clinton was a “better” Republican than most in the Republican Party. I was crushed. And then we got Bush’d. Holy Moly, war without end, amen, and militarization of our police departments. Maybe Clinton wasn’t so bad after all. Except for the fact that most of my friends didn’t have jobs, and none of us had laws protecting us from the financial elites. 

Then came my final disappointment: Barack Obama. Again, he talked so good that I gave him a bunch of money and bought into the “audacity of hope.” Boy did we hope and pray it was true. Maybe we could all get along and remove ourselves from the endless wars that were economically destroying our way of life. More on his legacy in a bit, but first, why don’t we try and put all of these relatively recent happenings and disappointments in historical context? A context I should have remembered. 

A Fine History of Political Corruption 

Most folks don’t realize it, but we in the United States have a fine history of political corruption. For those mildly interested in American history, Mark Wahlgren Summers wrote a couple of great books, The Plundering Generation about the Civil War Period, and the even more revealing, The Era of Good Stealings about the post Civil War Reconstruction period. 

In his Preface to The Era of Good Stealings, Summers wrote, “From the bribery of lawmakers to ballot-box stuffing to administrative officers on the take, corruption had less important consequences than the corruption issue.” 

That issue has never really gone away. We had muckrakers like Lincoln Steffens (The Shame of the Cities) at the Turn of the Century into the progressive era, proving again that political corruption has always gone hand in hand with financial corruption.

When the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) was just laying around, President Teddy Roosevelt dusted it off and made it his vehicle for “trust busting” the Wall Street financial class. I find it fascinating that his first target was J. Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s. Under the heading, “you can’t make this stuff up,” I cannot resist noting that old J.P.’s current incarnation, J.P. Morgan Chase, was at the heart of our 2007/08 financial services industry meltdown.

To jet ahead to now, we had the Great Depression and the establishment of the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to reign in the financial services industry. And then we had President Bill Clinton who repealed it. Good move. 

Now we have been given, in order, the almost great depression of 2007/08, Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Ain’t progress grand? All the same political and financial corruption issues that Summers and Steffens wrote about over a hundred years ago. 

Back to the Obama Presidency 

Presidential candidate Obama did something that hadn’t happened for quite a while: he articulated a vision of hope and working together for a better America, and did it well. A lot of us bought into this vision because we wanted to believe that it was possible, even in the face of the meltdown of our financial services industry and permanent war around the globe. 

I won’t go into the details of his presidency, other than to say “so sad too bad,” and to point out a few things that we now know were actually going on within the campaign even as we all stood in line to attend Obama rallies. 

As a quick popular read, you might check out a book by Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. 

The book is not without its critics or faults, but most of the criticisms are inside baseball kind of stuff. Frankly I could care less about Larry Summers or Timothy Geithner or Ben Bernanke. What they and their cronies did and who they took money from is a matter of public record. 

My interest in the book is simple: It shows that while Barrack Obama was running for the White House on a platform of populism and togetherness, he was, in fact, in bed with and subsidized by the very financial services industry he was promising to fix. As for targeting blocks of voters, Suskind’s electoral math at the beginning of the book shows that Obama was targeting the “ten million low to moderately skilled white workers,” under the banner of restoring our infrastructure. Sounds right to me. Of course it didn’t happen, and oh gee, I wonder what current president-elect echoed those refrains? Hint: it wasn’t the Democratic nominee. 

It is a fact that, under the Obama administration, not one of those crooks in the financial services industry has been indicted or gone to jail. Instead, they got private meetings with the Attorney General of the United States and cut deals to have their shareholders pay fines without any admission of personal liability. And their lobbyists in Congress got to turn the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 into a 2300 page giant telephone directory of mishmash. 

Ultimately, as a result of endless litigation, stalling, and an army of lobbyists buying both houses of congress, the bill is still getting (re)written. Further, between the legislative budget manipulation, fiddling with the regulatory agencies, and the Administration’s own lame appointments (read industry shills,) Niccolo Machiavelli would have to update The Prince to be current. 

I was especially amused by Morrison & Forerster’s Cheat Sheet from 2010. If you take a look, it will give you a taste of what I’m referring to in Dodd-Frank. 

As an A-List San Francisco behemoth, I just had to give some credit to MoFo as a relatively “local,” front for corporate America. Not to mention they produce a spiffy pdf. 

So What the Heck Do We Do Now? 

Ok, ok, even if what I say is true, what now? The real question after the 2016 Presidential election is what can we do to change this mess? Trump or no, the fact is that the vast majority of both houses of congress represent politicians totally beholden to the DNC, the RNC, and the billionaire class that owns the financial services industry. Groovy. 

Bernie was right on. You and I have about as much influence with these people as the serfs of Imperial Russia.

Here in California, there are also warning signs that the relative stability and economic success of my generation is now gone forever, for both us and our children. Factor out the uber-rich from Silicon Valley and the Entertainment Industry moguls, mix in the incestuous California Democratic Party, and I think you will find a state that’s not that different from the rest of the nation underneath; just more diverse. And our budget is largely dependent on the “temporary tax” on those rich folks that was just extended by the voters on November 8th. 

When I talk to my neighbors and people who actually live in Northeast LA, it’s about jobs and economic survival. Something like nine million jobs disappeared between 2007 and 2010, and by and large, they haven’t come back. A lot of those jobs were good paying jobs that let people have a home and send their children to school and plan for retirement. 

Don’t They Get that It’s All about Jobs? 

The jobs that have been generated lately have been either at the bottom end of the wage scale or the high-end tech and professional occupations. CityLab’s Laura Bliss has a good article on this reality here.  

Notwithstanding all the statistical modifications and revisions, simply disappearing the long-term jobless from the rolls of our state and federal employment statistics doesn’t do a heck of a lot towards getting them work. Just because the Democratic elites joined with the Republican elites in ignoring any pretense of providing full-time decent jobs with benefits, doesn’t say much for either one of them. William Black has a telling article about the phenomenon.  

Further, our younger workers, categorized as “Millennial’s,” are very nervous about their own employment prospects and for cause. The “shared economy,” “gig” employment, student debt and low wages do not make for anything other than anxiety and pessimism about the future. See the recent study results on the Millennial Economy. 

Millennials are leaving LA in droves, and our young people can’t get jobs at all. 

Back to the Roots - Re-Forming the Democrats 

It used to be that the Democratic Party represented working people, their hopes and aspirations. Those days went bye bye with Bill Clinton and have never returned. Bernie Sanders has it 100% right about politicians needing to represent the 99% of people instead of toadying up to the 1%. 

This not about “left” or “right.” Those are simply stupid and divisive labels used by professional political elites to brand their version of two party HORSE PUCKEY. My name is Tony, not “white college educated.” My wife is Paula, not “multi-racial API with PhD.” My friend Edwin is named Ed, not “African-American professional,” and my pal Raul is named Raul, not “high-school educated Latino.” 

I think that we all have an absolute moral imperative to either hang up or lie through our teeth to any political pollster. Let them rot, instead of making money in trying to manipulate us. 

We need to get rid of fear and get the Democrats moving on -- worrying about how to create and maintain decent jobs for Angelenos, jobs where they can get and stay out of poverty. As the Brookings Institute noted, “poverty crosses party lines.”  Duh. 

On the Local Level 

We do not need our essentially all Democrat LA City Council and Mayor to continue to run around and spend money we don’t have on new tax initiatives, even as they sell their souls to big developers. They will not be around when the bill comes due and you and I need a job or help. We need to elect Democrats who will generate decent jobs that are more than a gig or a project. 

We need to elect Democrats who will actually represent the men and women of their political boundaries, not just cater to and manipulate a fraction of the less than 10% of people who even bother to vote in municipal elections. And stop blaming us that only 10% of the City votes. Look instead at our choices of candidates and their performances. 

I know you will not be surprised that I am a great fan of Bernie Sanders and OurRevolution.  

Bernie is joined by other people across the country, like Tim Canova in Florida, who recently lost to Debbie “PayDay Loan” Wasserman Schultz. He also has set up a grass roots movement called Progress For Now. Other real Democrats throughout the country are doing the same. 

It’s time for real people to get together, organize, and elect people who will take care of the 99% for a change. Otherwise, these idiots in both parties are going to take us down in another crash they can’t fix. 

Let’s go for it. As The Donald said, “What have we got to lose?”

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

IMAGINE VENICE-Well, that hasn’t happened yet -- but it won’t be long before Venice residents really do hire a fully engaged law firm just to represent all their neighborhood concerns and interests. 

Sick and tired of endless meeting hours, organizing and talking, talking, talking with city officials in one city department or another and the California Coastal Commission, residents are organizing. When all that talk falls on the deaf ears of the “deciders”’ and legitimate questions and problems blown off, the noisy annoying resident rabble will rise up -- and they are doing that now. 

Serious misdeeds are ignored and rules regularly broken. Our “deciders” quickly and efficiently serve constituents with “juice.” In case you don’t know what “juice” is… it’s those big landowners, developers, “Silicon Beach” powerful techies and “hot” restaurateurs who have lots of power, real influence, spend plenty of money paying for consultants and who put lots of dollars in politicians’ coffers. Voila! Parking requirements get changed secretly, bar operators get permits to take over public parking spaces for their private moneymaking use and building and safety rules get massaged with private “adjustments.” Public property deed restrictions are ignored and bogus building permits issued. Might makes right in Venice now. There are so many pissed off people around here and so many real problems, they don’t know which war to join. 

Residents have engaged the services of law firms to force enforcement of the rules. Groups not yet in full combat are consulting with lawyers now. Residents want development decisions based on the rules and that’s not happening now in Venice. Lobbyists, consultants of one stripe or another are running the show. Residents don’t have those kinds of warriors on their side. Banding together and hiring lawyers to even up the playing field is mandatory in Venice now. 

Don’t think for a minute that residents want to spend their own dollars, putting in endless frustrating hours of personal time exhausting themselves because they love a good fight. Every one of the “hot” issues here in Venice is all about residents’ unmet expectation that the rules on the books are for everyone and the rule of law is important to the “deciders.” 

There are a half dozen neighborhood associations already formed to level the playing field. It is war.

Lax enforcement allowed a massive amount of our housing stock to be taken over by the Airbnb’s of the new economy, restauranteurs have pages of unenforced citations on the books. Zoning Administrator conditions are ignored. Citations mean nothing. Secret deals at Building and Safety and Planning are a daily occurrence. Right now there is a taking of a Deed restricted public recreation property for a homeless use. Residents’ complaints and suggested alternatives are ignored. It’s not hard to understand why this neighborhood group hired a lawyer to fight the city and protect their neighborhood from predictable future problems. Residents now believe that only a lawyer will get their voices heard. 

Residents “manning the barricades” are not a bunch of crazies. They are from every neighborhood. Each of the recently formed Neighborhood Associations has its own crisis to manage. They want to assure their efforts yield real results -- there is a coalescing of neighborhood groups which never occurred before. Maybe now, the “little people” will finally get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T. 

Residents just want the rules enforced. They want an end to the rules-avoiding secret deals made for the powerful. They are not asking for anything more. 

The New Venice 

We don’t know how many commercial buildings and how many residential apartments were converted and taken over by Snapchat this past year or two, but it is getting easier to recognize a building housing the Snapsters. 

How? Take a look. (photos left) 

The Snapsters now have their own quasi police force. These private security people are all over our town from Abbot Kinney to Ocean Front Walk – reminding us of San Miguel de Allende where every rich person’s villa had an uzi-wearing guard outside on 24 hour patrol. 

It sure looks like our new fabulous people just don’t want to mix with Venice’s un-washed. So much for all that PR: “We love Venice’s culture and we love being here.” These are our new Venetians. We know they just love to hang out on Abbot Kinney and drink at Venice’s pubs and bars -- it won’t be long before we see their security force everywhere they are -- protecting our new elite. 

This is what we have become. First the takeover of our neighborhoods by Airbnb and the rest of the STR Wall Street gold rush tycoons who have turned our neighborhoods into neighborhoods of strangers -- and now, our new “Silicon Beach” eliterati who even have their oven private security protection to keep us away from them. 

The sharing economy and the social media crowd have brought a tide of money to Venice, got their huge tax breaks from the City, and are filling the coffers of our politicians -- but what have they taken? 

We are concerned, longtime Venice residents who no longer want to watch what we treasure about our community melt away. Our aim is to lead the conversation clarifying, informing, and uniting us in the preservation of our unique community. 

We hope you will find interesting new thoughts here as we ImagineVenice together.

(Marian Crostic and Elaine Spierer are Co-founders of ImagineVenice.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.)

RANTS AND RAVEZ--While California and the Los Angeles region remain a strong Democratic Blue State, Republican President - Elect Donald Trump won the race for president of the United States of America. What a blow to all the pollsters and newspaper editorial boards and so-called political pundits. 

While most Liberal Americans were banking on Hillary Clinton winning the office of President, they were suddenly surprised and shocked when the election returns began rolling in. One by one the states across America were turning Red for the somewhat wild and controversial billionaire Donald Trump to rescue them and set a new course of action for the citizens of America. 

In the final count, Donald Trump received 290 Electoral Votes (60,072,551 Popular Votes) while Hillary Clinton received 228 Electoral Votes (60,467,601 Popular Votes.) Once this sweeping victory for Donald Trump was confirmed, out came those that can’t accept the results. Their course of action was immediate protests and vandalism across many American cities. Breaking windows and blocking freeways and all other types of protesting actions.   

When the Democrats won other elections in the past, I don’t remember any Republicans protesting or carrying on in a hostile manner. While every American has the legal right to protest any and all issues, they don’t have the right to block freeways and break windows and cause damage to public and private property. Like many other issues in our society, this too will pass and there will be another Presidential election in four years to judge if Donald Trump delivers to those who voted for him or fails on his promises like many other politicians in the past. 

Local Elections and increased Taxes

With a $15.00 an hour minimum wage coming to workers in a few years, some of those dollar will be chewed up by new taxes. 

Measure M …

… Was passed by the voters and will add a one-half cent tax to all purchases in Los Angeles County. The one-half cent tax will increase to 1% on July 1, 2039. The money will be used for a variety of promised transportation projects. Some will take up to 40 years to complete.  

It is interesting that the move to public transit has become so popular with our elected officials. Those of us who grew up in Los Angeles can remember the rails that ran across Los Angeles in past years. Down Santa Monica Blvd and so many other areas around Los Angeles like the Red Line and all the others that were so popular. It was the car industry that pushed to scrap the rails around Los Angeles and push for the comfort and relaxing ride in a car. 

The General Motors plant was built in Van Nuys and those Chevys rolled off the assembly line and into our driveways. There was Cruise Night along Van Nuys Blvd. Now the homeless occupy many parts of Van Nuys Blvd. There was the Ford plant in Pico Rivera and more jobs for those in the auto industry. That is all a lost memory for many and the congestion and road rage has replaced it all. 

The safety and convenience of your personal car is going to be replaced in future years with more bus lines and rail lines and bicycles as the city sees more congestion and jammed roadways. You can thank our city leaders for the situation we are in and the voters for the increased taxes we will all be paying in future years. 

LAPD TRANSIT COPS?

While reviewing Measure M, you may be seeing LAPD Officers enforcing the transit routes in Los Angeles City next year. The Metro Board has recommended that Transit Security within the Los Angeles City Area be transferred from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to the LAPD. This change is expected to occur in 2017. It will be interesting to see how the LAPD will handle this added responsibility with the current number of LAPD Officers many working 12 hour shifts.  

Measure CC …

… is a $3,300,000,000 bond that will cost you in your property tax. This will add $15.00 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. CC is aimed at spending money at the community colleges.

Measure HHH …

… is a $1,200,000,000 Bond Measure to address the 30 some thousand homeless population in Los Angeles City. The city is preparing to buy, build, or remodel facilities to provide supportive housing for the homeless. These facilities may be coming to your community since the city wants to spread the units throughout the city. The Bond will be paid from an increase in your property taxes. 

Additionally, the city will need an additional $800 million for various services associated with Measure HHH. When you see the “FREE” HHH Housing coming to your neighborhood for the homeless, don’t complain since the voters of Los Angeles approved this bond measure that was pushed by Los Angeles City Hall. 

Measure RRR …

… failed to pass. It was a way to take more of your money associated with the DWP and have a PAID expanded DWP Commission. 

Now some RaveZ for you … 

• I want to Thank Steve Meyers for recognizing that the number of current LAPD Officers listed in my previous column was incorrect. The LAPD is actually 163 officers short of the authorized 10,000 officers.      

• Thank you … David Gould for his comment on his favorite bumper sticker. “Don’t like cops?   Next time you have a problem call a Hippie.” Do we still have any Hippies left? 

• Thank you … Sam who is 80 years young for his compliments on my column. I am glad you enjoy reading them. 

• RaveZ for Councilman Bob Blumenfield … We have all heard stories about the city throwing away good items. Councilman Bob Blumenfield came up with a great idea to save old computers and put them to use for those in need. When city computers are up for salvage, they are collected and refurbished and distributed to low-income individuals or families. This program provides a connection for those less fortunate to the world of the Internet. A great program that keeps the computers in use and provides assistance to many in Los Angeles.                

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL

As we approach Thanksgiving, I want to wish each of you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving. We need to recognize our many blessings and the opportunities we all share in America. Remember our military personnel that will not be enjoying Thanksgiving Dinner with their families since they are deployed around the world and our police officers, firefighters, ER doctors and nurses and all the others that will be working on Thanksgiving Day to provide services for all of us. 

Thanksgiving 2016 is truly a time to reflect, remember and give thanks for all of our blessings.

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. Disclosure: Zine was a candidate for City Controller last city election. He writes RantZ & RaveZ for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected]. Mr. Zine’s views are his own and do not reflect the views of CityWatch.)

-cw

GUEST WORDS--Multiple donors with ties to one developer contributed more than $600,000 to the election campaigns of the mayor and members of the Los Angeles City Council. Most of those same politicians later approved that developer’s controversial $72-million Harbor Gateway project in spite of recommendations against it by both the Department of City Planning and the Planning Commission. And the public wasn’t the wiser until the Los Angeles Times reported the details about the Sea Breeze apartment development. 

Sea Breeze, according to The Times, is a “case study in the myriad ways money can flow to City Hall when developers seek changes to local planning rules.” The politicians who received donations and spoke to The Times claimed the campaign money played no role in the project’s approval. Now the LA County district attorney’s office is reviewing the situation. Whatever the DA discovers, the Sea Breeze story is an overdue call to change the way Los Angeles makes planning and development decisions. Whether or not charges are filed, the process is morally corrupt; it’s wrong.

(Read the rest.)

-cw