LOS ANGELES

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-LA’s March 7 election appeared to be decisive. Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, was soundly defeated. As a result there is no legal mandate to stop the steady flow of pay-to-play mega-projects that the City Council approves through spot-zoning and spot-General Plan Amendments. Likewise, there are no clarifications to the City Charter’s prohibition on these legislative actions. Likewise, there is no mandate to quickly update the General Plan or to produce a finding that every ministerial (by-right) land use decision is consistent with the General Plan. 

Nevertheless, such prominent opponents of Measure S as Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Los Angeles Times immediately sounded like they made an about-face. Within a day they repeated many Yes on S’s campaign points. They cautioned that the election results should not be over-interpreted. They both stated that the defeat of Measure S should not justify City Hall maintaining the status quo of pay-to-play spot-zoning substituting for a legally required professional planning process. 

More specifically, on March 9 Mayor Garcetti issued Directive 19. It is a comprehensive executive order that, if actually followed, could make a significant difference in the way Los Angeles is planned. Its 18 specific sub-directives almost sound like the points I have repeatedly offered in many CityWatch columns. For example, the Mayor wrote, “The Director of Planning shall develop a schedule for the immediate systematic public review and update of all elements of the General Plan, with a periodic review process to occur every five years thereafter. This program should include the review and possible updating of the thirty-five Community Plans.” 

But, let’s not count our chickens before they hatch. This is what I read between the lines, and why I fully expect that little will change at City Hall. Appearance should never be confused with substance, especially when it comes to our esteemed elected officials. The City Hall leopard is not about to permanently change its spots. 

Why the appearance of reconciliation by the Mayor and the LA Times? 

The no on S campaign had a strong victory on paper, but it was only a superficial ballot box victory. In the words of the LA Times, “Measure S tapped into the angst that many Angelenos feel about how growth and development are changing their communities, and in some cases displacing their inhabitants. The concerns over density, traffic and gentrification are not going away because the forces behind them are not abating.” 

To paraphrase the LA Times in straightforward English, about six percent of the voting public was persuaded by duplicitous arguments. The no on S victory depended on farfetched claims that Los Angeles could address its housing crisis through new luxury housing and trickle down deals from real estate speculators. Meanwhile, as the public waits for these miracles, they do not like what endless real estate speculation produces in Los Angeles: unplanned density, with its predictable consequences of displacement, gentrification, and traffic congestion. The LA Times and the Mayor recognize this will be the real outcome of the no on S victory. They also know that goose laying its wonderful golden eggs could be sent to the slaughterhouse in the next voter initiative. 

And they also know their victory came with another serious cost. It was based on explicit promises to the Democratic Party’s liberal base in Los Angeles, and there is little chance that City Hall can deliver significant housing for the homeless, even through Measure HHH and inclusionary housing via linkage fees and Measure JJJ. 

The bottom line is that Angelenos will not see continued arbitrary loosey-goosey land use decisions decrease rents, reduce economic and racial inequality, improve LA’s public infrastructure and services, facilitate bicycling and walking, generate alternative energy, plant one million trees, and combat climate change. 

What other flies are in the no on S ointment? 

This following list is only a beginning: 

1) The urban growth machine’s tactic of turning to the California State legislature to override local land use planning will run its course. In fact, many activists already are targeting the errand boys of the real estate industry, like Santa Monica Democrat Richard Bloom. A few defeats of these surrogates will quickly realign local planning politics. 

2) Many major projects are in the pipeline. Measure S might have stopped them, but its defeat means they will soon appear in many Los Angeles neighborhoods. They will generate displacement, traffic snarls, and demolitions. They will also result in many more project-specific movements and lawsuits. In fact, the defeat of Measure S is a full employment act for land use attorneys and the experts they hire to pursue their cases. 

3) Real estate investors will still engage in soft-corruption at City Hall by making a variety of payments to elected officials. 

4) Without Measure S cleaning up the City Charter, many new real estate projects will apply for and obtain spot-zones, spot-Height District changes, and spot-General Plan Amendments. The Charter’s unclear findings for General Plan Amendments will continue, despite a lack of evidence of good zoning practices and public benefits. 

5) Even though the City Charter bars individuals from initiating General Plan Amendments, the Department of City Planning will still do this on behalf of large real estate investors, in conflict with spirit of the City Charter. 

6) Real estate investors will continue to select their EIR consultants, and all EIR findings of significant environmental impacts will be cast aside through the City Council’s Statements of Overriding Considerations. Boilerplate about mega-projects generating jobs and transit ridership will be approved with perpetual 15-0 City Council votes. Once adopted, these claims will never be monitored or verified. 

7) The updates of the General Plan’s citywide elements and its Community Plans will continue to rely on chronically inflated demographic data from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). 

8) Once updated, the General Plan will not be regularly and reliably monitored to determine if its demographic assumptions are correct. Likewise, City Hall decision makers will never know if the updated plans’ implementation programs appeared and if they meet the General Plan’s goals. 

9) The General Plan will still be prepared and adopted in reverse order, beginning with re:codeLA, then Community Plan updates, and finally the citywide General Plan elements, such as the General Plan Framework element. 

10) Code enforcement will continue to be the weakest part of the land use process. Zoning and building code violations will still be rampant, with contractors regularly gaming the system since they know that Building and Safety cannot or will not stop their dirty tricks. 

11) Finally, it is unimaginable that the Mayor will fire any General Managers who slow walk his 18-point planning-related directive. Mayoral precedents of showing three recent Directors of Planning the door for not processing zoning applications quickly enough will not repeat with Directive 19. 

Can the City Hall Leopard Change its Spots? 

CityWatch readers, please join me in a City Hall Watch, to see what unfolds at City Hall after the March 7 election. Will it be the pieties of the Mayor and the Los Angeles Times? Or will pay-to-play return to City Hall after a short vacation? Will the leopard’s spots quickly return?

(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch LA. Please send your comments and corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CALWATCHDOG--President Trump on Wednesday launched the first salvo in what seems likely to end up a war with the state of California and many liberal states over vehicle mileage rules that Gov. Jerry Brown and environmentalists depict as crucial to control pollution and to reduce the emission of gases believed to contribute to global warming.

At a ceremony at a Detroit-area auto facility after meeting with auto executives, Trump declared his intention to pursue “fair” regulations that “protect and defend” jobs.

Before his remarks, Trump staffers gave background briefings to reporters on his plans to scrap mileage rules approved by President Obama’s EPA in his final weeks on the job. The new rules would require cars and small trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025, up from the present 36 miles per gallon.

Automakers were unhappy with the Obama administration’s speedy decision-making – new rules weren’t required until 2018. They believe the rules will require them to sell vehicles Americans don’t want to buy in an era in which gasoline prices are low and relatively stable because of a heavy increase in domestic oil production. Warning that the new rules would put more than 1 million jobs at risk, automakers have been lobbying Trump since they were enacted.

Brown administration officials have already filed a challenge to Trump’s directive, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Any weakening or delay of the national standards will result in increased harms to our natural resources, our economy, and our people,” the brief asserted.

13 states use California’s tougher standards

But while the president rattled state officials with his actions, he didn’t go as far as some environmentalists feared.

Under the federal Clean Air Act of 1970, California was given the right to waive federal vehicle mileage rules in favor of stricter standards because of the state’s severe problems with smog and ozone pollution in Southern California. The waiver allows other states to follow California’s tougher standards. Thirteen do, and as a result about 40 percent of the nation’s residents who buy about 40 percent of vehicles do so under California’s stricter rules, irking automakers who don’t like to have to deal with what are essentially two national standards.

The Trump administration could have tried to end California’s waiver entirely or prevent other states from using the Golden State’s rules. Instead, Reuters reported the administration hopes to work with the state on a compromise.

But that is close to certain to be a nonstarter, given Brown’s and the California Legislature’s approval of a law requiring the state to have greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Achieving that goal appears close to impossible without sharply cutting emissions from the state’s transportation sector, which generates 36 percent of California’s carbon emissions, according to the most recent statistics.

Vehicle emissions rule a potent weapon for state regulators

Stanford environmental law professor Michael Wara said tough vehicle mileage standards have been the state’s strongest tool in combating greenhouse gas emissions.

“California is going to fight, to deploy every resource it has, to keep this stuff, because this is big,” Wara told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Wednesday’s developments were foreshadowed by the January confirmation hearing of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, like Trump a climate change skeptic and longtime EPA critic. Under questioning by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-San Francisco, Pruitt refused to say whether the Trump administration supported allowing California to continue to waive federal air pollution rules in favor of tougher standards.

Given that California’s waiver is written into federal law, it is unclear whether the Trump administration could force the state to follow federal rules. In 2008, George W. Bush’s administration challenged new state rules, prompting a lawsuit from then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that was joined by 15 other states. But no court decision was forthcoming before Barack Obama succeeded Bush the following year. The Obama administration quickly dropped the challenge

(Chris Reed is an editorial writer for U-T San Diego and a contributor to CalWatchdog … where this perspective was first posted.)

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EDUCATION POLITICS--Last month a seven-member panel met in the state Capitol to discuss the calamitous funding situation of the California State University system, as well as the prospects for creating free public higher education in the state. The latter idea of nationally establishing cost- and debt-free learning at the college and university levels had been popularized by Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign last year. Yet in California, the legacy of the revenue-slashing Proposition 13, which California voters approved in 1978 to cut property taxes, remains a formidable stumbling block. (Photo above: Cal State University professor Melina Abdullah.)

At the heart of the February colloquium in Sacramento was a new report released by the California Faculty Association called Equity, Interrupted: How California is Cheating Its Future. (Disclosure: CFA is a financial supporter of Capital and Main.) Among the report’s findings is that the CSU student body rose 64 percent from 1985 to 2015, yet state funding for the system as a percent of the total general fund fell from 4.4 percent to 2.4 percent.

Panelist and Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) stressed the practical politics of raising taxes and spending them on public higher education. Ting, who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee, pointed to November’s approval by San Francisco voters of Proposition W, which will establish free City College of San Francisco tuition for students who are city residents. It will be funded by a real estate tax on properties that sell for over $5 million.

A similar proposal is on the radar in New York state, where Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed in January that residents with annual household incomes of $125,000 or less attend state colleges without paying tuition. New York’s 2011-2015 median household income—the point at which one-half is below and the other half is above— was $59,269, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Such large-scale public investment in free education is not new. In 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill of Rights. That federal policy allowed mainly white ex-soldiers to attend colleges and universities, free of fees and tuition. (Jim Crow segregation kept nonwhite veterans from attending many public higher education institutions.)

The economic impact of the GI Bill investment, which also funded apprenticeships and job-training, in California and across the U.S., was huge. Upward mobility accelerated, according to panelist and Assemblymember Jose Medina, (D-Riverside), a retired classroom teacher who today chairs the Assembly Committee on Higher Education. “The support and the lower cost was there,” he said.

Government intervention on behalf of higher education through targeted taxation and spending worked then and later, with the California Master Plan. The CMP provided free higher education to state residents at public universities, along with state and community colleges, beginning in 1960, although a decade later Governor Ronald Reagan would cut higher education spending and set the stage for tuition-based funding.

“I think we have to revisit that vision of raising taxes to spend them on public higher education for the CSU,” Medina said, while Ting added that California voters are “aspirational,” and care enough about their kids’ futures to vote for taxes to hike investment in higher education.

Ting believes that a battle to win the hearts and minds of voters must be waged to convince them that the local and state taxes they approve for higher education will actually get to students and teachers. He pointed to such voter-approved initiatives as Proposition 30, which increased personal-income and sales taxes to fund public education and thereby avoid deep spending cuts. (The law was extended in November with the passage of Proposition 55.)

Another panelist, Robert Shireman, who is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, spoke of another fraction of voters to sway in the battle over public opinion, albeit a tiny one: elite opinion makers on editorial boards of news media. Paradoxically, he said, many of these same elites attended well-resourced institutions of higher education, e.g., Ivy League universities, where ample private funding stands in sharp contrast to CSU’s continual disinvestment.

Improving access and success in higher education does require more money, according to Shireman. For instance, he emphasized the importance of CSU libraries receiving adequate funding to keep their doors open and shelves stocked. These libraries, Shireman said, provide alternatives to cash-strapped students coping with the high cost of textbooks.

Economics have intersected with demographics in startling ways for the state university system. From 1985 to 2015, the enrollment of CSU’s white students declined from 63.2 percent to 25.7 percent. At the same time, nonwhite CSU enrollment, which was 26.8 percent in 1985, rose to 62 percent 30 years later. The population of Latino/a CSU students spiked from 13.1 percent in 1985 to 37.6 in 2015, nearly tripling. Meanwhile, the African-American CSU student body has plunged significantly.

“We have seen a plummeting of Black student enrollment in the CSU, with the Black student population cut in half,” said panelist Professor Melina Abdullah, chair of Pan-African Studies at CSU Los Angeles wrote in an email. Abdullah is a founding member of Black Lives Matter in L.A. “That is almost identical to the percentage cut in state funding to the CSU over the last 30 years.”

One recurring theme during the CFA panel discussion was that state spending reflects policymakers’ priorities – which are revealing.

California’s budget for 2016–2017 provides $14.5 billion of general fund revenue to the University of California, CSU and community college systems versus $10.6 billion to operate the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, according to the Public Policy Institute.

Alma Hernández (photo above), executive director of the 700,000-strong Service Employees International Union California, said her members have deep concerns about being able to fund their kids’ higher education — no small stressor in the households of working families. (Disclosure: Some California SEIU locals are financial supporters of this website.)

“I had a conversation with an eligibility worker,” Hernández said, “and in order to fund half of her kids’ education under the ScholarShare program, she needed to be putting away $552 a month. She said to me, ‘That’s what my paycheck is.’ So you can image the fear and the concern. Our members are also fighting for their children to have a pathway to the middle class.”

Margarita Ines Berta-Ávila, a professor in the College of Education at CSU, Sacramento, laid out the impacts of nonwhite CSU students receiving less state resources than what white CSU students got 30 years ago. For example, she shed light on why first-generation CSU Chicana/o and Latina/o students, whose family members’ lack higher education experience, seek out her and other nonwhite faculty for help to navigate the system. Too often, however, CSU minority faculty are absent on campuses because CSU disinvestment has increased class sizes, with fewer professors teaching more students, she said.

In a question-and-answer period that ended the CFA panel briefing, Berta-Ávila stressed the importance of engaging with first-generation minority students’ parents to harvest progressive policies for the CSU.

“When parents realize that their child is working so hard to go through those four or five or six years to graduate, or they see how much their son or daughter struggles, they will make those phone calls and write those letters and make sure that they advocate for their child,” she said. “So we cannot forgo the power of our communities in making these changes.”

(Seth Sandronsky is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. He can be contacted at [email protected].) 

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TENANTS RIGHTS--Los Angeles, Homeless Capital of the Nation, is a city in which 64% of its residents are renters and a majority of those renters are paying unaffordable rents. That’s why I support the passage of Assembly Member Richard Bloom's AB 1506 repealing the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act: it will address the problem of Vacancy Decontrol on rent-controlled housing in California. 

LA is the most unaffordable city in the nation for renters with tenants paying the highest percentage of their income to rent in the nation. We have the highest poverty rate in the country at 26%, meaning one out of every four households lives in poverty. 

We have the most over-crowded conditions; seven out of the top ten zip codes with the most over-crowded housing conditions are here in LA. 

We are the homeless capital of the nation. How can this be if we have rent control? Two answers: the Costa-Hawkins Housing Act and the Ellis Act, which provide landlords the ability to leave the rental market and evict tenants. 

The Costa-Hawkins Act ties the hands of local governments to adequately address their housing needs. It is the reason LA cannot pass an inclusionary housing ordinance to obtain more affordable housing units the City so desperately needs. 

The Costa-Hawkings Act puts a bullseye on the back of every long term, low rent tenant in every rent-control jurisdiction in the state. That's because landlords know if they can get those tenants to move, either by legal or illegal means, they can jack up rents without limits due to mandated vacancy decontrol. 

This is the reason why 64% of Angeleno renters are paying unaffordable rents. If we are ever going to adequately address our affordable housing crisis we must let local municipalities have the flexibility to develop policies to address the particular needs of their communities. 

This is why we fully support the repeal of the Costa Hawkins Housing Act and why AB 1506 should be passed by the State Legislature.

(Larry Gross is Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

IN HIS OWN WORDS (VIDEO)—LA’s just reelected Mayor Eric Garcetti answers these questions and more in this special 7 ½ minute interview with one of SoCal’s most important journalists … PBS reporter David Lazar. What’s ahead for LA’s rising crime stats, transportation, community plans, density, his political future? Get the answers straight from the Mayor to you. A CityWatch guest report. 

(David Nazar is a longtime Los Angeles journalist and PBS reporter.)

-cw

GUEST COMMENTARY-In the aftermath of Measure S, it seems everyone is offering their post mortem observations about this giant struggle over land-use and development in Los Angeles. I'd like to add my "two cents.” 

First, the voters made the right choice in sinking Measure S. We can breathe a sigh of relief that a blanket moratorium did not go into effect that would have vaporized thousands of construction jobs and wreaked havoc on our economy. Now we can continue to address the serious shortfall in housing in our region. 

Second, although the voters rejected Measure S, it was not a vote of support for the status quo. Far from it. Both residents and businesses made it clear that the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. 

Third, the Mayor and City Council need to follow through on the reforms that were promised, among which were to update community plans in a timely fashion and to have the Planning Department select the consultants performing environmental impact reports. 

Fourth, once community plans are updated, "spot zoning" (changing land-use rules to accommodate specific projects) should become the exception rather than the rule in approving projects. It would be helpful if criteria could be drawn up that explains when it is appropriate to grant an exception. 

Fifth, greater transparency should occur throughout the entire process, so that trust can be established with the public. One particular area that needs improvement is with community benefits packages. The Planning Department and councilmembers now negotiate these packages, sometimes extracting millions of dollars from developers for projects that will benefit LA. This process needs to be revised so that the public has more of an opportunity to provide suggestions on things that would benefit the impacted neighborhoods. 

And once a package is finalized and the developer hands over to the City mitigation funds, there needs to be accountability so that the public knows to which department the funds went and that they were spent according to the plan. 

An example may help. When the Hollywood & Highland complex was built back in 1988, the City negotiated a contribution from the developer for more than $9 million to be spent on traffic improvements, etc. Years afterward, when I tried to find out if the money had been spent, I could get no answer. Yet, more than 10 years after the project was completed, I saw a motion before the City Council approving the expenditure of some of the mitigation money from that project. I am not implying that anything was done incorrectly. What I am saying is that the system was not set up for transparency with the public. 

With today's technology, there is no reason that a tracking system cannot be set up on a City website that easily allows the public to see what the community benefits packages are for each project and to track the expenditures of those funds as they occur. This is an issue of trust. If the public can see that these funds are truly going to benefit them and are actually being spent on the purposes intended, it will help to instill trust in the system. 

Finally, in my conversations with neighborhood councils, one of their largest concerns is with evictions that are taking place to make way for some new projects. Most of these evictions are occurring with rent-controlled buildings and by-right projects. With the affordable housing crisis, some tenants are losing their homes with no place to go. The city needs to review its current policy to strike a balance between property rights and fairness for those being evicted. It is a complicated issue with no easy answers because of conflicting state and local laws, but the conversation needs to occur. 

The voters have indicated by large margins in the last two elections that they understand the need to "densify" our City rather than to continue expanding outward. That is the proper course of action, but it is not easy to achieve. The Hollywood Community Plan update will be coming back later this year for reconsideration. Stakeholders will have ample opportunity for public input into the process. With all of the development and changes occurring in Hollywood, we really need to have an updated plan rather than operate under one that dates back to 1988. Let's have the discussion necessary to adopt a plan that will move this community forward and which will help to reestablish trust in our land-use process. 

(Leron Gubler has been serving as the President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for the past 24 years. His tenure since 1992 continues to oversee the great comeback story of Hollywood.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

FILM WATCH--The most pernicious aspect of our purposefully failing, corporate-profit-driven public education system (when it comes to students of color and the poor) is that student victims of this system end up thinking something is wrong with them. The truth is, the public education system has let them down from the moment they entered kindergarten. 

The real problem lies in public education's unwillingness to educate all students in a timely age-sensitive manner. Instead they are assigned to often arbitrary, inaccurate grade-level designations determined by age rather than their subjective ability level. The longer this public education system is allowed to do this, the more damage will be done to innocent students, whose lives it continues to destroy. 

Predictably, this leads to more violence and costly damage to all of our society. Ultimately, this continued failure to socially and economically integrate such a large segment of our population costs big bucks. Surprisingly, it would be easier and much less expensive to integrate and educate these students so they can become part of this country's future. At some point one must ask if the real purpose of public education as it is presently constituted is to educate the young or to reinforce class and racial stereotypes to maintain the status quo. 

The movie “The Bad Kids”  is a new feel good documentary that will screen on your local PBS station at 10 p.m. on March 20. It purports to show (in a faux “objective” documentary format) the day-to-day life of "bad kids" – a.k.a., underachieving students. What it never addresses is that although these students are being offered a second chance at getting an education and making something of themselves, they are also victims of fraud. Their second chance ignores the measurable academic deficits these "bad kids" have been allowed to acquire after years of being socially promoted with no mastery of the prior grade-level standards. This has impeded their ability to reach their academic potential. 

Placing these “bad kids” in a continuation school to help them finish high school is an act that is doomed from its inception, because it is based on the false assumption that you can make somebody ready for high school by merely waving a magic wand and declaring it so. This is in being done despite them not having mastery of the prerequisite prior grade-level standards that would actually give them a chance to succeed. Not exactly a formula for building self-esteem. 

Simply stated: How can you do Algebra, when you haven't learned your times tables? Or how are you supposed to read a 12th grade English literature or Government book, when you have a 3rd grade reading ability? But these and other issues are never addressed in “The Bad Kids,” whose sole purpose seems to be the creation of positivity and hope without any substance to back it up. 

In addition, the mystical value of a high school diploma is set as the unquestioned goal for all students at Black Rock High School Continuation School students in Yucca Valley, California. No context or questioning of this goal is ever presented and no subsequent academic success or failure of the students is ever presented. 

The Black Rock website lists statistics touting 38% for English and 50% for math as the numbers of students in the school district that are at grade-level; however, the specific statistics of Black Rock Continuation High School students are noticeably omitted. And when it comes to how many Black Rock students are actually "College Ready," the website says "N/A" for not applicable. Why is that? 

At no time during the after screening discussion I attended, lead by KPPC Reporter Adolfo Guzman Lopez, was the premise of “The Bad Kids” ever questioned critically. That is, not until I raised my hand and mentioned what I thought there were relevant questions that needed to be addressed: 

1. Since 70% of students going to California junior colleges with high school diplomas cannot pass the entrance/placement examination and wind up taking remedial classes until most drop out, why is a high school diploma so important, especially since students could get a GED or high school diploma contemporaneously with doing other community college work? Are all high school diplomas created equal if some are given away irrespective of whether or not a student has mastered the material? 

2. Since the total capacity of all colleges and universities in the United States is only 40% of all high school graduates, why are we closing down industrial arts and other direct occupational training programs that could enable students to find gainful employment, making them self-sustaining, tax paying members of our society with professions and/or the ability to pay for further education without going into debt? 

3. What justifiable rage and antisocial behavior is predictably acted out when the vast majority of students in continuation school programs like Black Rock High School ultimately figure out that they have been scammed by being given high school diplomas that aren't worth the paper they are written on? And how much effort would it take the school district or the state to test students to see if they really earned a high school diploma? 

While schools in the past served as the key societal integration mechanism that levelled the playing field by equalizing academic opportunity for all American socio-economic classes, the difference in opportunity between what the affluent receive and what minorities and the poor receive today has never been greater. Is it any wonder there are over 2.3 million people behind bars? If nothing else, it would seem that the cost of timely education would be far less than the $78,000 a year it costs to incarcerate a juvenile...unless you are the for-profit corporation running the prison. 

The free exchange of ideas and knowledge we need as a putative democratic society to continue making decisions that will allow America to be great – “great again” or maybe for the first time -- requires that we the people be given a marketplace of ideas from which to choose -- something more than mere propaganda. Could that be why the core of these rights are in the First Amendment? 

What I found most reprehensible at the screening of “The Bad Kids” was witnessing an example of the cowardice of the news media (both commercial and public) who seem to care more about keeping their jobs than going to where the facts lead them, irrespective of the corporate or foundation interests that either own or subsidize them. The Reporter Adolfo Guzman Lopez, who emceed the evening, is an extremely intelligent person and excellent writer who knows more than I do with regard to what is really going on in public education. But, as a reporter, he’s doing nothing to question the education system; rather, he gives distorted credibility to it by his mere unquestioning presence. 

When I asked him why he never questioned something as irrational as LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King's recent call for 100% graduation rate, while LAUSD has an audited effective truancy rate of 52%, Guzman Lopez said, "She must have meant she would like to have 100% graduation." Other than President Donald Trump's Press Secretary Sean Spicer, is it the function of a reporter to slant and interpret without input? Or rather, should he proactively ask how such an apparent contradiction could exist? Shame on you Adolfo!

(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.

TASER TROUBLE-Last chance for Charlie Beck. Back-to-back Taser-stained police shootings last weekend--one by LAPD officers, the other by LA County Sherrif's Deputies--have brought things to a head, and it’s time for Beck to make a choice: will he pull the plug on his aggressive Taser deployment policy, or let it pull the plug on him?

It may be too late. To save his legacy there's two things he can do: 

First, take the lead in the nation in calling out Taser International for what it is  -- a fraud -- and then dump it wholesale, demanding LA’s money back. 

Second, take the $370 million all-overtime contract he just snatched for providing Metro security and use a big portion of it to subcontract a private security force that can field enough personnel to provide each bus a dedicated guard. 

The jury is in: not only do Tasers fail to reduce police shootings, they cause them. The two police shootings last weekend were just two more data points on a graph that everyone in law enforcement across the country knows to be true. 

1) Tasers fail up to fifty percent of the time and thereby not only provoke the subject into aggressive behavior (leading to shootings by police officers) but also leave the officer exposed at close range and so more in need of using deadly force. Taser International advises officers to avoid shooting at the torso of a subject for fear of causing cardiac complications. At which part of the body is an officer supposed to aim? 

2) There is already an effective means of subduing subjects -- pepper spray -- which, however awful and imperfect, is reliable. It’s also sufficiently messy and inconvenient to discourage unwarranted use. The groan of rank and file cops over having to suffer that inconvenience will be like the groan of teenagers being forced to do something that they know is right. 

Charlie Beck let the Wall Street wolf into the chicken coop. By masquerading as pro-cop, the hedge fund managers who own Taser International are laughing all the way to the bank. 

Monday morning the City of Los Angeles Claims Board will grapple with a multi-million dollar Taser-involved police shooting judgment from 2013. What if the shootings last weekend had taken place at a Metro stop under Beck's all-overtime contract? The liability would be off the charts. 

It takes a village to put so many people -- cops, civilians, taxpayers -- in harm's way, but Eric Garcetti is off this weekend at what the Times is calling a “cattle call” for Presidential hopefuls, and he’ll be long gone when all this comes crashing down in flames. 

Will Charlie Beck's legacy come down with it? 

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. Joshua is a teacher.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--In a shock to many, Measure S failed by a wide margin ... after a host of City Council motions and reform measures were promoted to suggest that Planning and Zoning and EIR's would be updated and changed to reduce developer/Downtown collusion and corruption. 

Jill Stewart, former LA Weekly editor who stuck her head in the lion's mouth to preserve the integrity not only of the neighborhoods of Los Angeles but of the laws and policies of Los Angeles, wrote a well-timed piece that emphasized how Measure S lost the election but won the argument. 

Similarly, Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation … the key funder of Measure S … who also put his head in the lion's mouth just to maintain a legal and sustainable LA, said it best when he stated, "This will go down in history as a campaign that didn't win the vote that had the best results.  Nobody in this campaign has defended the current system." 

So there are two big questions to answer:   

1) If Measure S was so awful, why was there such a big last-second push at City Hall to implement it?  

2) What happens next? 

Well, I've got my own "ears to the ground" and found a few reasons that Measure S failed in such a surprising manner. Here are my "top ten" (an ode to David Letterman, back when he was still funny): 

10) All those Democratic and Republican mailers that opposed it (wait ... why are they all coming from the same address?)! 

9) To screw all those volunteer community and homeless advocates who wanted Reform and Affordable Housing! 

8) Planning and Zoning Laws?  We don't need no stinking laws! 

7) Who needs "Neighborhood Integrity" when we've got Herb Wesson, Curren Price and Paul Koretz to save us all and uphold the law? 

6) Take THAT, Donald Trump! 

5) EIR's? Community Plans? Boooooring! 

4) Because the LA Times told me so ... because the LA Times told me so ... because the LA Times told me so ... because the LA Times told me so ... because the LA Times told me so... 

3) We're LA, damn it!  We can handle the traffic!  Heck ... traffic is COOL! 

2) Don't you mess with MY job!  I get PAID by these developers you keep talking smack! 

1) Measure S?  What's Measure S?  Wait ... there's a vote coming up?  Didn't we just have one last November?

(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 CD11 Transportation 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.)

-cw

IMMIGRATION WATCH--As the Trump administration ramps up deportations of undocumented immigrants, federal officials say they need more lock-ups in which to hold them, especially near the border with Mexico.

But California may refuse to help — with detention or any other aspect of the deportation surge. In fact, the state is considering a bill that, among other provisions, would bar county sheriffs from contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house immigration detainees in county jails.

Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leon’s Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, is seen as a statewide sanctuary law that would largely keep state law enforcement officials and other state institutions from collaborating with federal immigration authorities.

The California State Sheriffs’ Association is one of the bill’s staunchest opponents, in part because since the 1990s, local sheriffs have reaped millions of dollars annually by renting jail space to ICE for its detainees.

Some legislators might sympathize with the sheriffs’ financial concerns. But poor conditions in which many detainees are held could also shape the debate. Inspection reports have shown county jails have violated ICE rules by denying detainees timely medical treatment or adequate recreation. And, in the Yuba County jail in Marysville, about 40 miles north of Sacramento, detainees like 38-year-old Orsay Alegria Sumita are alleging outright brutality and mistreatment.

Alegria said in a sworn statement that he suffers from epilepsy, especially when he’s stressed. Last October as he waited to be booked in the Yuba County jail, he felt an epileptic seizure coming on. He vaguely remembers that a guard told other detainees not to help him. Then the guard began kicking him. Alegria said that after the beating, he was left alone in a cell for three days, and later pressured to withdraw his complaint against the guard who assaulted him, which he refused to do.

Alegria and approximately 1,400 other ICE detainees housed in jails in three other California counties, including Orange, Contra Costa and Sacramento, aren’t accused of crimes.

They’re simply awaiting deportation or, like Jorge Alberto Manriquez, fighting immigration cases before a judge while confined at the Yuba County jail.

Manriquez is a U.S. Marine veteran who said in a sworn declaration that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on when he witnessed two cadets kill themselves during basic training. He is anxious and has trouble sleeping. When he entered the jail, he said he told a nurse that he needed medication for his PTSD, but he didn’t get to see a psychiatrist for three months. Manriquez also alleged that it took two weeks for him to get medication for a heart condition.

In Yuba County, ICE detainees are distinguished from other prisoners by their red jumpsuits. County inmates who are awaiting trial or serving time wear orange. But Carter White, who heads the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of California, Davis law school and represents the Yuba County Jail inmates in a class action lawsuit, said that’s largely where the differences end. ICE detainees and inmates serving time or awaiting trial, sometimes for serious crimes like murder or rape, are treated the same.

“They’re all treated badly. There are serious problems, especially with mental health, but also with medical care. It [Yuba County jail] is understaffed and staffed with people who are not qualified. That transcends red and orange,” White said.

White and his students have interviewed more than 200 inmates in three years, enlisted experts in their investigation and toured the jail repeatedly.

White and other attorneys for the prisoners are asking a judge to put an end to alleged constitutional violations at the jail.

“These include the County’s deliberate indifference to suicide hazards, woefully inadequate medical and mental health care, segregation of the mentally ill including in unsanitary ‘rubber rooms’ covered in blood and feces, and the lack of meaningful access to exercise and recreation,” court papers say. The attorneys further alleged in court documents that there were at least 41 suicide attempts at the jail in 30 months.

In its 2014-15 report, the Yuba County Grand Jury painted an equally dreary picture of jail conditions, noting that some inmates are housed in a section of the jail known as “the dungeon,” which has few windows and is perpetually dark. There is no registered nurse on staff and a doctor visits for just a few hours a day. Suicidal inmates are confined to padded cells, sometimes for weeks, and may or may not get blankets. “…little stabilization can be expected under such bleak conditions,” grand jurors wrote.

Yuba County Sheriff Steve Durfor told Capital & Main that he can’t comment on pending litigation. But he argued that inmate safety is important to him and his officers.

“It’s the highest priority,” Durfor said. “We take very seriously the proper treatment of all individuals in our care.”

Yuba County has housed ICE detainees since the 1990s, and its contract with the agency has been a financial windfall, currently providing about $5 million annually. That’s nearly half of his $11 million jail budget, Durfor said, and 20 percent of the entire sheriff’s department budget.

“It’s a huge financial impact,” Durfor said of the potential loss of revenue that SB 54 would bring. “It offsets costs of employing officers, medical and mental health staff and maintaining the jail.”

ICE detention contracts have also meant big infusions of cash to sheriffs’ coffers across the state. Orange County takes in about $22 million annually for housing more than 800 people in two of its jails. A spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department said its average daily population for calendar year 2016 was 3,920. Of those, 138 were ICE inmates. In fiscal year 2015-16, the county received a total of $4.9 million in reimbursement revenue for housing the ICE inmates at the department’s Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center. A contract provided by Contra Costa County shows that ICE pays nearly $6 million annually, also to hold some 200 detainees in its jail. The Santa Ana city jail has also housed ICE detainees, but an ICE spokeswoman reports the government is ending its contract with the city.

If SB 54 passes, Yuba, Orange, Sacramento and Contra Costa counties would likely continue to house ICE detainees until their agreements with the federal government expire.

In addition to ending the practice of local detention contracts with ICE, de Leon’s bill would bar law enforcement from sharing information and collaborating with the agency in most cases and limit assistance with immigration enforcement at other public facilities, including courthouses, schools and health clinics.

Sheriff Durfor called SB 54 “misguided” and said that “SB 54’s severely limiting cooperation with federal authorities doesn’t serve effective public service. We all need to work together.”

As in Yuba County, detainees in other county jails in California have also been held in substandard conditions, according to reports by ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight and Orange County’s grand jury. The reports cited are the most current that Capital & Main could immediately obtain.

A 2014 ICE inspection in Yuba noted that jail personnel failed to investigate a potential sexual assault and that two inmates subjected to use of force by guards waited three and five hours, respectively, for medical care after the incidents.

The 2015-16 Orange County Grand Jury cited an investigation into the Orange County Jail by the Department of Justice that found limited mental health treatment and an over-reliance on segregation cells and said so-called safety cells “don’t sufficiently mitigate risk for suicidal patients.” The DOJ report also noted concerns about use of force and medical care, grand jurors said.

Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens declined an interview request.

A 2013 ICE inspection at Orange County’s Theo Lacy jail revealed that staff didn’t do required weekly reviews of prisoners who were placed in segregation for disciplinary reasons. Thus, they may have remained apart from fellow inmates longer than was necessary. ICE inspectors further found that jail staff used a chokehold on an ICE detainee. In total, the Lacy facility complied with just seven of the 18 ICE detention standards reviewed by inspectors.

A 2012 review by ICE of conditions at the Sacramento County Jail showed it complied with just six of 18 standards. Among inspectors’ findings: Jailers denied recreation to inmates placed in segregation cells and failed to offer a medical exam to a detainee involved in a use of force incident.

In Contra Costa County in 2013, inspectors found the jail complied with nine of 17 standards. They noted problems with medical care for chronically ill inmates, no dental screenings and the use of detainees to interpret for medical personnel.

“We take them very seriously,” said ICE spokesman James Schwab of failures to meet detention standards. Schwab promised to respond further but couldn’t do so in time for publication.

On Monday, SB 54 is set for a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, where it is likely to come under attack by the sheriff’s association.

The detention ban carries unintended consequences, said Cory Salzillo, a spokesman for the group.

After all, ICE won’t stop detaining unauthorized immigrants just because local sheriffs won’t house them, and it may be better for detainees not to be shipped out of state, far from friends and family, Salzillo said.

Moreover, detainees might find equally inhospitable and sometimes dangerous conditions in ICE detention centers across the country, many of which have come under fire by human rights groups for years.

So far, support for the bill has been along party lines, with five Democrats voting to pass it out of the Senate Public Safety Committee in late January, and two Republicans voting no.

The California Peace Officers Association also opposes SB 54 in its current form. But other law enforcement groups have been mostly mum, neither supporting nor opposing.

De Leon’s bill is an urgency measure and as such requires a two-thirds vote and would take effect immediately after passage. That’s 27 votes in the Senate, or the exact number of Democrats in that body.

Democratic defections may be unlikely.

“It’s authored by the president pro tem of the Senate, so I think it has a good chance,” Salzillo said.

(Robin Urevich is a journalist and radio reporter whose work has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Las Vegas Sun. This report was posted first at Capital and Main.) 

-cw

TAKING THE HYDRID APPROACH-To reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California, the state has pledged that by 2030, emissions will be brought to 40% below 1990 levels. One major component in reaching this goal is to achieve a 23% reduction in driving by the state’s residents. This is a challenge. It will be difficult. Electric vehicles are part of the solution, but not the complete solution. They currently account for under 5% of vehicle sales, and should the percentage of electric vehicles increase, it is seriously doubtful the entire stock of vehicles in California could be turned over by 2030 to meet the 23% reduction in driving emissions. 

No matter how many electric vehicles are on the roads in the near future, there will still be plenty of vehicles with gas powered engines. Indeed, with projected population growth, there will be more vehicles on the road, increasing gridlock. While an electric vehicle does not emit tailpipe exhaust, the health strains of driving in gridlock still remain. 

I switched to a hybrid commuting style that involves some driving but also taking mass transit for as many trips I can for as many days possible. This is change to one’s concept of moving around Los Angeles. It is a challenge, but it can be done on many levels. 

The reduction of driving by using mass transit can be achieved in the daily work commute, and for other trips, too, like shopping, movies, concerts and eating out. This is what I do. It can be done. 

In the March 6, 2017, edition of the Los Angeles Times, the director of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG,) Hasan Ikhrata, is quoted as saying, “We’re doing to our best, but I think it’s too ambitious, to be honest with you.” Honesty from public officials is fine, but where is the attitude of pursing a goal and chasing it down every pathway in a relentless pursuit to achieve something? Where is the resolution to step-up and make a change? It’s not there.  

This is an attitude of capitulation. Cleaning the air of pollution and reducing greenhouse emissions will not be achieved this way. We must face the problem head-on and charge into it.  

Moreover, the current trend toward finding a partial solution for reducing greenhouse emissions is to create dense housing around transit hubs and centers that will encourage those residents to ride transit. This is a good goal, and could come to fruition, but why stop there? Why be locked into rigid thinking that only residents of dense housing will ride transit? 

Why are the residents of single family homes not called upon to do their share too? This is outdated thinking based on social norms, the belief that if a person lives in the suburbs, exurbs or in the homes with lawns inside cities, riding mass transit is a sign of descending into society’s lower depths.  

As long as there is the lack of will from officials to confront the very serious issue of a planet warming from greenhouse emissions from vehicles, as well as the idea that certain people living in single family homes do or will not ride mass transit, then we are lost. Air pollution will continue to increase. The earth’s temperature will continue to rise, melting the ice caps, raising the levels of the oceans and causing widespread devastating floods. Damaging storms will grow in frequency and intensity, destroying homes, farmland and life.  

We see this here in California, having experienced the worst period of drought over the past five years followed by a record-smashing period of rainfall. Right now, the wet Spring ground which should remain moist for months to nurture life is already being dried by sudden spikes in temperature and drying winds which in the not too distant past only blew in the Fall.  

The threats are here from global warming, and this is predicted to only get worse if action is not taken to drive less and reduce greenhouse emissions. These are dangers we can try to run from, or drive from, but we cannot hide from them. These threats will find us unless we show resolve and change our social norms. 

(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native. He is a transit rider and advocate, a composer, music instructor, and member and president and executive director of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

FRONT LINE REPORT-- Dateline March 25, 1911 – On this day, tragedy was the spark that resulted in International Women’s’ Day. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City was a firetrap waiting to happen. The women who worked there, mostly young immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, did not have the right to vote. They did not have the right to any kind of break, lunch or otherwise. The bosses locked them in each day to make sure they wouldn’t try and take one. 

Just one year earlier, the women of the Triangle Factory, along with many others across New York’s garment district, had organized a strike for better wages and conditions. The owners refused to concede. When the fire broke out that day in March, 126 young women burned to death or died leaping from the ninth floor windows of the factory. They perished in just 20 minutes. 

The horrific event sparked a movement for justice and equality that continues today. In 2016, women have yet to be paid equal to men and we bear the majority of household and child-rearing work as well as the work of saving mother earth. 

Ironically, today’s corporate bosses are doing their damnedest to co-opt the spirit of International Women’s’ Day. This past week, companies such as Caterpillar, British Petroleum and PepsiCo were listed as supporters of InternationalWomensDay.com. Looking at their website, a gal would think these mega giants invented the day themselves as a way of paying tribute. 

But today’s woman will not be fooled. She knows that British Petroleum has brought the greatest destruction to the environment in US history; that PepsiCo is the wet nurse of childhood obesity and diabetes and that Caterpillar destroys homes and sacred burial sites everywhere from Standing Rock to Palestine. 

She knows that the gains we have today were not handed over but won through decades of struggle. 

Today’s woman is in for a fight. We’re fighting for rights, which many of us never thought would be jeopardized. Nineteen states passed sixty new abortion restrictions in 2016. 

Our Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief intends to take the food out of the mouths of babes with his plans to restrict access to food stamps so that immigrants cannot feed their children. 88% of those children living with immigrants are themselves citizens. 

All over the country, women are getting involved in the push for change. The national March for Women on the day after the inauguration began the counter-inaugural and the resistance that will continue. We intend not only to hold the ground we’ve gained, but to move even further into new territory, with gender parity, much needed programs for women’s’ empowerment and childcare and a cultural revolution in the way we think about the roles of women and men. 

For the women of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, for the women of Standing Rock, for the women who pick our food every day: We march on.

(Jennifer Caldwell is a an actress and an active member of SAG-AFTRA, serving on several committees. She is a published author of short stories and news articles and is a featured contributor to CityWatch. Jennifer can be reached at [email protected].  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jennifercald - Twitter: @checkingthegate ... And her website: Jenniferhcaldwell.com) 

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--My CityWatch colleague Ken Alpern recently published his views, as a practicing physician, on the current controversy over Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, colloquially referred to as Obamacare. I agree with several of his concerns, but as a medical consumer rather than a medical provider, I tend to disagree with some of his views. Let's consider the agreements and the disagreements. 

Dr. Alpern makes the point that drug prices are too high. He is definitely right on this. He argues, "Innovation and capitalism are great, but predatory pricing must end. NOW!" 

Dr. Alpern also supports the aim of preventing insurance companies from refusing coverage based on preexisting conditions. He mentions in a positive light the rule that coverage on parental policies should continue to extend to offspring up to the age of 26. This has been a popular rule under Obamacare, and I certainly agree with Dr. Alpern on this. 

Dr. Alpern makes the general point that government should not create rules that by themselves create economic disincentives for businesses to maintain and expand employment. He makes the valid point that economic sustainability is a must. 

I don't have any problem with these points as general principles and as problems to work on. The real question is what to do about them. 

We might begin with a fundamental disagreement that is partly a matter of judgment but which depends on the facts. Dr Alpern states quite directly, "Which is arguably why 'Obamacare' was doomed to fail. Some benefitted, and some were truly hurt." 

This has to be my strongest disagreement. I don't think the Affordable Care Act is a failure. Whole shelves of books have been and will be written about the ACA and the historical era in which it was passed, so it would be redundant to insert an extended argument here. Instead, I will simply link to an excellent summary by Kevin Drum in which the overall success of the ACA is described:  At the time that Obamacare began, the United States had nearly one-fifth of its under-65 citizens lacking health insurance. At this point, the number of uninsured is down to ten percent. The success would be even greater except for the resistance by Republican governors and legislatures to the expansion of Medicaid in many states. A prominent example is the state of Texas, with an uninsured population of more than 4.3 million people. 

The problem isn't the Affordable Care Act itself, but the fact that a politicized Supreme Court created the loophole that allowed Republican governors to throw a wrench in the gears. Dr. Alpern uses the term predatory to refer to some pharmaceutical companies, but I think that the term fits equally well for the Republican governors who have been withholding Medicaid coverage from their poorest residents. Without this purely partisan (and spiteful) action, the levels of uninsured in the United States would be well below ten percent right now. 

And, might I suggest, a lot of heart attacks and cancers would have been treated earlier and more effectively had the victims of these predatory governors had access to Medicaid. 

There are a few other points to be made about Obamacare as a success. I suspect that most of us know someone who did not have health insurance prior to Obamacare. I know of at least two people close to me who have health insurance through the system. One has a low level chronic condition that now receives treatment, and that treatment makes it much less likely that he will suffer a major difficulty such as a heart attack. The overall benefit to our nation of limiting the need for treatments such as cardiac surgery is enormous, even if you only consider it on economic grounds. If you consider it from the standpoint of the individual who manages to avoid surgery or a prolonged hospitalization, it is even greater. 

Dr. Alpern seems to be optimistic that the new president and the Republican congress will be reasonable. He quotes the president as saying the he wouldn't let people die in the streets. He remarks, "The new GOP Congress is sticking its neck out there, and they should be open to compromise and negotiations with all sides -- especially Democrats -- because a loss of coverage for millions of Americans is NOT an option." 

Allow me to mention one fact that is all over the news. The repeal of Obamacare under the current bill in the House of Representatives is likely to reduce the number of insured in the United States by 15 million people, give or take a few. That's what the experts say. There is an expectation among the same experts that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) will come up with a number pretty close to this level. 

So what did the Republican congress actually do when faced with this issue? Did they talk with their Democratic counterparts and try to find some compromise? Did they listen carefully to medical associations and business associations that oppose the bill? 

Hardly. The two House committees that had jurisdiction over the bill rushed to pass it out of committee before the CBO report could be finished. In addition, the right wing news outlets have been engaging in a propaganda campaign of their own to undermine the credibility of the CBO. The Republican allergy to facts and reason is getting to be a problem, whether it be medical economics or global warming. 

I'll give Dr. Alpern a plus for asserting an idealistic vision of Republicans and Democrats working together for the common good. I don't see it, but then again, I have a problem with the Republican bill getting rid of Planned Parenthood funding. I don't believe that the Republicans (or Donald Trump) will do anything about drug pricing. Mostly, I understand the view of expert economists that the real function of this bill is simply to cut taxes on the rich and pay for it by reducing medical services to the poor. 

And this brings us to one other fundamental point. Dr. Alpern makes a heartfelt argument about rights (in this case medical coverage) being linked to responsibilities. Here is some of what he says: 

"But otherwise-healthy individuals need to be (and this should be at a STATE level, not a FEDERAL level, because of that thing we call the CONSTITUTION) offered opportunities to work for their benefits, even if it means a part-time job that is required for state-covered healthcare. 

"If a person works 1-2 jobs without benefits, and is forced to get that part-time job just to get that healthcare, it's still an opportunity.  And it is NOT an incentive to avoid work to GET health benefits, which is what California and so much of the nation has now." 

Curiously enough, I agree with some of the sentiment expressed here, in the sense that people should have a chance to have gainful employment. Dr. Alpern says that people should be offered opportunities to work for their benefits. This sounds at least a little like the way that the federal government created WPA jobs during the great depression. 

He also suggests that creating disincentives to employment is a bad thing. I couldn't agree more, but I seriously doubt that the existence of Medicaid (or MediCal, as we call it in California) is enough by itself to convince people to avoid starting careers. For some people, getting medical attention is what they need to be able to hold a job. 

I will disagree with Dr. Alpern's assertion that job programs and medical coverage subsidies need to be on the state rather than the federal level as a matter of Constitutional law. Everybody likes to cite the words in the Preamble "to promote the general welfare," which seems to fit the ACA, but there is also Article I section 8, which gives Congress the power to tax. The Chief Justice of the United States argued the Constitutionality of the ACA based on this expressly stated authority. 

I would like to bring up one problem that neither the congress nor Dr. Alpern have talked about recently. The United States, for whatever reason, spends way more on health care per capita than any other advanced nation. We are all alone, out on the edge of the curve, for medical spending. For that amount of money, we don't get better longevity, and unlike other civilized countries, we leave some of our citizens entirely without coverage. 

The Affordable Care Act was supposed to be a start on dealing with both horns of this dilemma, the uninsured citizens was the first part but the uncontrolled growth in costs was definitely intended as part of the equation. This is the sort of problem that has to be confronted at the federal level if there is to be any progress. Perhaps Dr. Alpern has a different idea, but I don't see a big future in getting drug costs under control without federal intervention. The same argument may possibly apply to hospital bills too, since the amount that is paid depends largely on contracts with insurance companies and with Medicare. 

I think we've just scratched the surface here, and I suspect that Dr. Alpern and I may actually agree on a lot. For example, the number of medical residencies (and therefore the number of new doctors we turn out) is rather artificially restricted. That could be changed. Preventive medicine saves pain, lives, and money, as thousands of melanoma survivors understand. Let's not go back to the days when the history of a single basal cell carcinoma was a preexisting condition that made it impossible to get insurance in the individual market. 

But let's also try to remember that the current system makes being a medical consumer an ordeal almost anytime you have to deal with an insurance company. I wish the doctors would understand that the current health insurance system is just as hard on the patients as it is on your office staff.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS--A plaintive parent declares that with “one kid in a regular public district school and another in a charter school”, we should all just “get along”.

Here’s the formula for getting along: (1) You have to tolerate me and (2) I have to tolerate you; (3) Your existence cannot impinge on mine and (4) my existence cannot impinge on yours.

Charters and regular public district schools do not operate independently from one another, because two commodities are shared: (i) money (aka “resources”) and (ii) pupils.

These commodities are not infinite; both entities (charters and “regular district schools” – let’s call them “RDS”) essentially compete for the same “fixed” (amount of) commodity. This is what’s known as a zero-sum setup; the “margins are fixed”, the amount of available education dollars is more-or-less invariant, the amount of available pupils will not change (not appreciably, cities swell and drain a little but basically, babies have been born to this cohort already and we’ve got who we’ve got present now to educate).

The only change these commodities can see therefore is to “rearrange the deck chairs” – the ship is still going down the same way, but the chairs might be clustered differently. Pupils might congregate inside different schoolyards; monies might get distributed differently.

To make matters worse, the needs of both entities is not reciprocal, nor is the distribution of these commodities without impact on the other entity. That is, the cost to educate every pupil is not equivalent, some are costlier than others. And where you cluster funds is not a matter of +$1 here means -$1 there because the impact of a dollar matters depending where it is. There are economies of scale, for example, to be gained or it is long-acknowledged that severely disadvantaged communities require more money to come to equity (this is what Federal Title 1 dollars provide, it is why the new “LCFF” uses a formula to assign more money per capita to poorer schools than to relatively richer ones).

Therefore while it’s possible for both entities to tolerate one another, it’s not possible for their existence not to impact the other.

That’s where the fallacy lies. Folks who wonder ingenuously why we can’t all “just get along”, seem not to understand the pernicious consequences of charter schools on the totality of a public education system.

The underlying game-plan of charters is to rarefy its pupil-population, by hook or by crook. Sometimes in the past, this has been done illegally through fixing lotteries or selections processes. Sometimes the lottery process has been weighted through a sanctioned, if questionable, process. Empirical reports of “counseling out” already admitted kids are easy to come by; discouraging applicants to begin with through onerous application or enrollment procedures, for example, which disproportionately impact the “wrong sort” is another trick.

There are many, many, many sleights of hand employed to fix the underlying demographic of a charter school in a certain fashion (there are, after all, many, many charter schools). The reciprocal of fashioning a student body just-so, means that elsewhere in the system whatever is overrepresented among charters, is underrepresented among RDS.

Because remember, attendance is zero-sum; you cannot get more students into a school system than are there at the bottom line, you can only shuffle their distribution between schools.

That’s the meaning of segregation. It means collecting a certain type in one place.

By definition, then, the density of that type must be diminished elsewhere. When one school concentrates all jugglers within their walls, say, that means there are far fewer jugglers available to reside within a different set of walls.

When one school concentrates all ‘engaged-parents’ within their walls, say, that means there are far fewer engaged parents available to reside within a different set of walls.

This is the “business plan” of charters. To manipulate the pupil demographic (and concomitant parent demographic) to their advantage.

And the problem is that this necessarily impinges on me, my children and their school. By definition.

And this violates rules #3 and #4 of “just getting along”.

Sure we can get along if what you need does not negatively effect what I need. But your school system inherently, necessarily, diminishes mine. It will inherently, necessarily, with time, bankrupt mine. And it will inherently, necessarily, with time grow what is to me democratically intolerable social inequity with time.

“Regular Public District Schools” were designed to be by, for and about the public: it is democracy itself.

Charters are simply the modern incarnation of ancient tribalism, constitution-era separatism, pre-Plessy “separate but equal” schools. 

Sending your child – yes, yours – to sit beside someone who is different, smells different, looks different, speaks differently, thinks differently, acts different: this plurality is intrinsically valuable. It sustains a system of equal opportunity and it assures a possibility of awareness and tolerance of things-different.

As we march today nationally, even internationally, toward fascism, protecting with fierceness a public education system of equity for, and by us all, seems about as critical – most very especially for “progressive democrats” – as the very sustenance of democracy itself.

(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com)

-CW

Tags: Sara Roos, Education Politics, public schools, charters, equality, fascism, racism, segregation

NEW GEOGRAPHY--No issue divides the United States more than immigration. Many Americans are resentful of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, worry about their own job security, and fear the arrival of more refugees from Islamic countries could pose the greatest terrorist threat. At the other end of the spectrum are those who believe the welcoming words on the Statue of Liberty represent a national value that supersedes traditional norms of citizenship and national culture.

What has been largely missing has been a sharp focus on the purpose of immigration. In the past, immigration was critical in meeting the demographic and economic needs of a rapidly growing nation. Simply put, the country required lots of bodies to develop its vast expanses of land and natural resources and to work in its factories.    

The need for foreign workers remains important, but the conditions have changed. No longer a largely rural, empty country, more than 80 percent of Americans cluster in urban and suburban areas. Many routine jobs have been automated; factories, farms and offices function more efficiently with smaller workforces. Since at least 2000, notes demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, the “Great American Escalator” has stopped working.

These changes suggest the need to rethink national immigration policies. In a country where wages for the poorest workers have been dropping for decades and incomes have stagnated for the middle class, allowing large numbers of even poorer people into the country seems more burden than balm. They often work hard, but largely in low-income service jobs and in the low end of the health care field. In California, home to an estimated 2.7 million largely Latino undocumented immigrants, approximately three in four Latino non-citizens struggle to make ends meet, as do about half of naturalized Latino citizens, according to a recent United Way study.

Overall, our current immigrants, legal and illegal, have not advanced as quickly as in previous generations. This, along with the crisis in much of Middle America, should be our primary national concern. This doesn’t necessarily translate to mass deportations or even severe cutbacks in legal immigration, as some, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and several congressional Republicans, have said. But it certainly does suggest taking a fresh look at how we view immigration.    

Learning From Abroad

So, what kind of immigration is best for America?

Models to consider are those that put premiums on marketable skills and language proficiency rather than family reunification. The Canadian and Australian systems, as President Trump correctly noted, are more attuned to their own national needs, compared with the U.S approach, which emphasizes family re-unification. Canadian authorities allow some 60 to 70 percent of their immigrants to come for economic purposes, notes Carter Labor Secretary Ray Marshall, supporting their system mainly by “filling vacancies that are measured and demonstrated in the Canadian economy.”    

Such a needs-based program would be a better, and fairer, way of addressing skills shortages than the odious H-IB program, which allows temporary indentured tech workers to replace American citizens. Instead, talented newcomers would be welcomed as future citizens and given the right to negotiate their own labor rates and conditions.

This emphasis on admitting immigrants with needed skills leaves Canadians and Australians with generally more positive views about immigration than Americans. Australia is one of only three countries in the world where children of migrants do better at school than children of non-migrants. Canadian support for immigration is particularly high in Toronto, which has been transformed from a sleepy Anglo enclave to a vibrant, diverse global capital.

But such hospitality is not limitless. A former Canadian immigration judge told me recently, in a tone of alarm, that his country’s invitation to 25,000 Syrian refugees could incubate the same sort of disorder that we see across Europe. There, in many heavily immigrant communities, poverty and isolation has persisted, sometimes for generations.    

I doubt many Americans would want to see the kind of social unrest we see across once peaceful places like Sweden, where women now complain of being perpetually harassed, even as supposedly feminist politicians look the other way. In France, Muslims make up about 7.5 percent of the French population compared to 1 percent in the U.S., but France has been ravaged by Islamic terrorism, Muslim-fueled anti-Semitism, and a widening cultural gap between the immigrants and the indigenous French population. In France and many other European countries, we see the rise of nativist politicians that make Donald Trump seem like Mother Theresa.

Citizenship and National Culture

The United States could be headed to a similar devolution. America’s ideals may be universal, but our political community has always been based on U.S. citizenship. You should not have to be an Anglo to admire the Founders, or to embrace the importance of the Constitution. Yet it’s now fashionable among some progressive activists to reject established American political traditions, which constitute a fundamental reason people have come here for the last two centuries.

Yet the “open borders” lobby on the progressive left increasingly demeans the very idea of citizenship. In some cases, they see immigration as way to achieve their desired end of “white America.” Some advocates for the undocumented, such as Jorge Bonilla of Univision, assert that America is “our county, not theirs” referring to Trump supporters. Others, like New York Mayor Bill di Blasio, refuse to differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants.

As usual, California leads the lunacy. Gov. Jerry Brown, who famously laid out a “welcome” sign to Mexican illegal and legal immigrants, has also given them drivers’ licenses and provides financial aid for college, even while cutting aid for middle-class residents. Some Sacramento lawmakers are pressing to give undocumented immigrants’ access to state health insurance. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon recently boasted, “Half of my family would be eligible for deportation under the executive order, because they got a false Social Security card, they got a false identification.”

The “open borders” ideology has reached its apotheosis in “sanctuary” cities which extend legal protection from deportation to criminal aliens, including those who have committed felonies. Donald Trump opportunistically emphasized this absurd and inappropriate situation—sometimes invoking the names of murdered Americans—during his 2016 campaign. The only mystery is why it would surprise the chattering class that many voters responded to his message.

Most Americans are more practical about immigration than politicians in either party. The vast majority of us, including Republicans, oppose massive deportations of undocumented individuals with no serious criminal record. Limiting Muslim immigration appeals to barely half of Americans. Only a minority favor Trump’s famous “big beautiful wall” on the Mexico-U.S. border.

Yet even in California, three-quarters of the population, according to a recent U.C.-Berkeley survey, oppose “sanctuary cities.” Overall, more Americans favor less immigration than more. According to a recent Pew study, most also generally approve tougher border controls and increased deportations. They also want newcomers to come legally and learn English, notes Gallup. This is not just an Anglo issue. In Texas, by some accounts roughly one-third of all Latino voters supported Trump.

Sadly, immigration as an issue has been totally politicized. Obama deported far more undocumented aliens than his Republican predecessor, or any previous president, for that matter, without inciting mass hysteria. To be sure, Republicans face severe challenges with new generations that are more heavily Latino and Asian and generally more positive about immigration. The undocumented account for roughly one in five Mexicans and upwards of half of those from Central American countries, meaning that overly brutal approaches to their residency would be eventual political suicide for Republicans in many key states, including Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Colorado and even Georgia.

Any new immigration policy has to be widely acceptable -- both where immigrants are common as well as those generally less diverse areas where opposition to immigration is strongest. Unlike many issues, immigration cannot be devolved to local areas to accommodate differing cultural climates; it is, and will remain, a federal issue. A policy that melds a skills-based orientation, compassion, strong border enforcement, expulsion of criminals, and forcing the undocumented to the back of the citizenship line seems eminently fair.

Economic Growth: The Secret Sauce of Immigration Policy

Strong, broad-based economic growth remains the key to making immigration work. A weak economy, unemployment, population density, or sudden uncontrolled surges in migration, notes a recent Economic Policy Institute, drives most anti-immigration sentiment. The labor-backed think tank suggests it would be far better to bring in migrants with skills that are in short supply and avoid temporary workers, such as H-1B visa holders, who are paid lower wages, undercutting the employment prospects for Americans.

Given the demands of competition and changes in technology, it seems foolish to allow many additional lower-skilled people enter our country. This is not elitism: Industry needs machinists, carpenters and nurses as well as computer programmers and biomedical engineers. What we don’t need to do is flood the bottom of the labor market. Again, this reality is race-neutral. Economist George Borjas suggests that the influx of low-skilled, poorly educated immigrants has reduced wages for our indigenous poor, particularly African-Americans, but also for the recent waves of immigrants, including Mexican Americans, over the past three decades.

Like most high-income countries, America’s fertility rate is below that needed to replace the current generation. This constitutes one rationale for continued legal immigration. But our demographic shortcomings are also entwined with lack of economic opportunity, crippling student debt, and the high cost of family-friendly housing stock. In other words, one reason Millennials are putting off having children is because they can’t afford them.

Overall immigration is a net benefit, if the economic conditions are right. An overly broad cutback in immigration would deprive the country of the labor of millions of hard-working people, many of whom are highly entrepreneurial. The foreign-born, notes the Kaufmann Foundation, are also twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans. It’s always been thus—and these aren’t just small, ethnic, family-owned restaurants we’re talking about. More than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their offspring.    

American immigration has succeeded in the past largely due to economic expansion. The historical lesson is clear: a growing economy, more wealth and opportunity, as well as a sensible policy, are the true prerequisites for the successful integration of newcomers into our society.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of New Geography … where this analysis was first posted. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. He lives in Orange County, CA.)

-cw

STOP EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS-When applied to a city, “entropy” means that the socio-political structure is disintegrating toward chaos. Re-phrased for Los Angeles, Entropy Theory asks: When will Los Angeles’ entropy reach a critical mass so that the city implodes as a viable entity? 

Economists ask a similar question: How can we know when the boom phase of the business cycle will crash and we enter the bust phase? 

One thing seems pretty clear – no one in the world is worse at predicting when a crash will occur than Wall Street. I doubt Wall Street has noticed a crash except in hindsight. Leading up to the Crash of 1929, there were many signs of trouble, but Wall Street attributed each jolt as an idiosyncratic event like Clarence Hatry’s use of fraudulent collateral to purchase U.S. Steel. Collectively, Wall Street failed to realize that the Whack of Mole Syndrome was due to an underlying systemic weakness. By the autumn of 1929, however, the problems may have been too deep to have yielded to any painless intervention. Also, when people are making money, their ears are closed to any warning of financial danger. 

Afterwards in 1936, John Maynard Keynes published his General Theory, showing that we did not have to wait until disaster was upon us, but rather could temper a too heated boom while lessening the decline of the bust phase. To say that Keynes is referring to “deficit financing” is to show that one does not understand Keynes. Step one in protecting the economic system was the same for Keynes as it was for Adam Smith in 1776, when he published Wealth of Nations – protect the price system. 

Similar to how the Barons of Wall Street ignored the price system during the 1920s, the United States departed from both Keynes and Smith in 1999 when Congress and President Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall. That allowed massive trillion dollar frauds to wreak havoc with price system. Around the same time, the government legalized credit default swaps. The result was the Crash of 2008. 

Yes, it is deja vu all over again. The prospect of listing Los Angeles’ obvious weaknesses is exhaustingly boring. It seems that the only thing keeping LA afloat is vast ignorance. People act on the basis of Belief with no use for Reality. People race toward a Charlatan who promises to restore them to the glory days of greatness or who serenades them with Alt-Fact after Alt-Fact. Trump’s and Garcetti’s personalities may be polar opposites, but their game plan is the same – “Alt-Facts uber alles.” 

As noted in a previous CityWatch article, “Alternative Facts’ are Nothing New for Angelenos,” the first attribute an Alt-Fact must have is to please the listener. Alt-Facts are tailored to make people feel good; myths are more soothing than reality. No one wants to hear that Cinderella was ugly and Prince Charming was an abuser. Fairy tales do not end with, “Ten years and four children later, Cinderella had to hide in the forest to escape the beatings of Prince Charming.” 

Thus, the LA Times and Eric Garcetti spin myth after myth, while most Angelenos slip off into dream land, never noticing that Wall Street is robbing them blind with mortgages and rents which are two, three or four times higher than merited. LA voters do not heed Albert Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. 

Thus, Angelenos know that for over a decade the city has been Manhattanizing, the infrastructure has been crumbling, traffic gridlock is the worse in the entire world, housing prices are among the highest in the country, Family Millennials are fleeing the City, LA has become the least desirable place for upper middle class workers, the streets are terrible, our taxes are increasing while our tax base is shrinking, we lost a $1.3 billion lawsuit due to our dangerous sidewalks, employers are leaving, crime is increasing, the city is insolvent again, and the mayor and city councilmembers are taking bribes to up-zone everything. 

Amidst this decay, Angelenos had a chance to call a halt to it and reassess the situation. Instead, they decided to push ahead doing the same thing that’s been destroying the city. They believe more densification will solve their problems as if the cure for arsenic poisoning is more arsenic. For some reason which defies explanation, Angelenos think that tearing down more rent-controlled housing and building more luxury units will reduce homelessness. 

Stories from the 1920s, however, parallel what we see in Los Angeles in 2017. People select the Alt-Facts which please them without regard to logic. When they hear that there is a glut of upper income apartments with a growing vacancy rate, they fail to realize the underlying reality -- if there were a demand for this housing, we would not have such a huge vacancy rate. The vacancy rate for rent-controlled units should not be confused with the vacancy rate for up-scale units. Tearing down 22,000 rent-controlled units does not create 22,000 tenants for high end apartments. Rather, it creates a housing shortage at the bottom end of the market which will never, ever be satisfied by constructing more luxury condos. 

Now that Angelenos, or the 8.28% of them who voted No on Measure S, have decided that we must densify, densify, densify, the task turns to figuring out when the Crash will hit. The difficulty is not knowing when people will realize that Prince Charming is wearing a “wife beater” tank-top.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. 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.

@ THE GUSS REPORT-The primary qualifications for electoral longevity in the City of Los Angeles are identity politics and incumbency. Not crime fighting, traffic reduction, budget surpluses, better sidewalks or killing of fewer shelter animals, none of which have been achieved or improved upon by Mayor Eric Garcetti. He failed to permanently return the LA Rams to their 20^th Century turf, or build Farmer’s Field, the never-to-be-built stadium where said turf was supposed to lay. He probably will not bring home the 2024 Olympics, either. 

And Garcetti evaded debates prior to last week’s city primary as though they were the inside doorknob of a public bathroom. 

How the heck former Mayor James Hahn lost his 2005 re-election bid to Antonio Villaraigosa is anyone’s guess, though it suggests that only identity politics can beat incumbency. Or Latino identity politics trumped Hahn’s familial identity politics.

But the point is this: In Los Angeles, just being there at the public trough is a reliable path to victory … when running for re-election. Why accomplish good things for the people when it doesn’t matter on Election Days? 

Of all the incumbents at 200 N. Spring Street in the era of LA term limits – ironically, expanded term limits -- nobody behaves more incumbently (yes, that’s an adverb) than Mayor Eric Garcetti. 

At 46 years old, Garcetti has spent 61% of his adult life as an elected city official, and nearly 40% of it as either City Council President or Mayor. Those percentages will grow – slightly – depending on what sliver of his second term he actually serves before unwisely seeking higher office. 

Unwisely, because Garcetti has so little to show for his time in office, he is regularly mocked on KFI-AM 640’s “The John and Ken Show” as “Mayor Yoga Pants,” in part for infamously saying that society owes a debt of thanks to parolees for serving their time. 

The statistics bear out Garcetti’s uninspiring tenure. 

Of the 2,031,733 registered voters in the city for last week’s primary, Garcetti, despite an intoxicating level of name recognition (his familial legacy includes his father Gil being the District Attorney on the losing side of the O.J. Simpson murder case,) convinced only 202,278 of us, less than 10 percent of all registered voters, to vote for him. And he did it against a field of candidates who can charitably be described as very unknown. 

How will Garcetti inspire the 90% of registered LA voters who didn’t vote for him to suddenly support him when he runs to replace Jerry Brown or Dianne Feinstein as governor or senator, respectively?

If he runs as the candidate from Los Angeles, he will have to split that label with his predecessor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is still chasing his first legitimate post-mayoral job. If he runs as the Latino candidate, he will again share it with Villaraigosa. 

As I predicted for LA in 2017, “After Mayor Eric Garcetti is re-elected, he will abandon that which helped get him hired and quietly cooperate in federal programs to deport criminal residents, causing fear within law-abiding immigrant communities.” 

To wit: two weeks ago, our friends at LAist published a piece entitled “Confusion Remains Over Garcetti's Position On L.A. As A Sanctuary City.” 

How exactly Garcetti plans on winning the governor’s job by wavering on whether LA is or is not a sanctuary city, will be interesting to watch. He seems to have check-mated himself as someone who either causes LA to lose federal funding by not cooperating with federal immigration agencies, or by losing Los Angeles votes by passively enabling mass deportation. Villaraigosa, by comparison, has the luxury of not having to waver, since he is no longer governing.

Garcetti’s two leading opponents, themselves gurus in identity politics, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom (i.e. the San Francisco candidate and LGBT champion) and State Treasurer John Chiang (the Sacramento and Asian candidate) both currently hold state-wide seats and have similar advantages over Garcetti. Fortunately for all of them, at least former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin recently decided to not run for Governor, but don’t expect her to endorse any declared candidate any time soon. 

Things are not going to be any easier for Garcetti should he instead try to run for U.S. Senator.

Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris is now firmly ensconced as Barbara Boxer’s replacement – a job she may hold onto for decades. And last week, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger toyed with the idea of running to replace incumbent Dianne Feinstein who, as she approaches 84 years of age, seems hell-bent on keeping the job for the duration. 

That leaves Garcetti having to do what he has yet embrace: his day-to-day job as Mayor of Los Angeles, rather than just its trappings and visibility. Otherwise, his second term as Mayor will be his final elected job. That’s how Antonio Villaraigosa treated being Mayor, and he is still looking for his next gig.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--The concepts and opinions surrounding the "rights" and "needs" and "responsibilities" of Americans for their own healthcare are undeniably all over the place, and are as divergent as Americans' political affiliations.  Which is arguably why "Obamacare" was doomed to fail. Some benefited, and some were truly hurt.   

But the intent was good, and the arguments that we should just repeal "Obamacare" will fall as flat as those who rammed it down the throats of so many Americans.  There was too little transparency, and too little compromise, and too little economic incentive to help the nation's businesses and working families: 

1) The "Affordability" issue must be confronted.  

The "Affordable Care Act" wasn't affordable, except in the opinions of those getting subsidized and those not having to change their health plans (and those were the individuals most in favor of it!).

Drug prices are too damned high.  Not the new blockbusters, by and large, but the generics and older drugs that were going up so much faster than inflation that it made everyone's head spin. 

But credit the new president for compromise, and it should be remembered that Trump was the one who declared he wouldn't let people die in the streets.  Trump's meeting with his otherwise-erstwhile opponent, Rep. Elijah Cummings, on drug prices therefore bodes well. 

Innovation and capitalism are great, but predatory pricing must end.  NOW!  The research and development claims have some merit, but not enough to justify the kind of price hikes we've seen over the past decade. 

2) We mustn't let "Obamacare" or "Obamacare 2" become "Obamascare". 

Those who are truly struck down medically must be protected, and afforded access to quality healthcare, but there has to be compromise to allow affordability.  However, those who need a boot in the rear to get access to health care need to be confronted as well. And both groups very much exist. 

Trump had and has made no secret that he likes the no-preexisting-conditions and coverage-until-age-26-by-your-parents part of "Obamacare".  Young people with no income and/or in school, as well as cancer/seriously-ill patients must be protected. 

But otherwise-healthy individuals need to be (and this should be at a STATE level, not a FEDERAL level, because of that thing we call the CONSTITUTION) offered opportunities to work for their benefits, even if it means a part-time job that is required for state-covered healthcare. 

If a person works 1-2 jobs without benefits, and is forced to get that part-time job just to get that healthcare, it's still an opportunity.  And it is NOT an incentive to avoid work to GET health benefits, which is what California and so much of the nation has now. 

So the "repeal and replace" is more centrist than other plans, and will probably also need to be joined with the term "rights and responsibilities" in order to make this financially work out.

And for those healthy individuals who don't want to work?  Well, their access to the county health system is free, and our need to fret about them should be minimized. 

3) Finally, this isn't about politics--it's about health care.

The new GOP Congress is sticking its neck out there, and they should be open to compromise and negotiations with all sides--especially Democrats--because a loss of coverage for millions of Americans is NOT an option. 

Yet it's also about affordability, and fiscal/economic sustainability. 

Are we going to incentivize, or smack down, businesses, families and individuals to push them towards contributing to their own health care? 

Are we willing to allow more tax credits and cut costs elsewhere in government to pay for that? Are we going to encourage policies that incentivize hiring, or incentivize not hiring? 

Because when we encourage hiring of good jobs, particularly those with benefits, we best ensure that people and businesses will pay for insurance. Arguably, this was the greatest failure of the Obama Era, and it turned the Bush Recession into an Obama Depression paid for by $10 trillion in debt. 

GOP and Democratic partisans need to deal with their parties past failures, and move forward with a sense of apology and responsibility to the American people. 

Ad perhaps that last sentiment is the ultimate motivation--and answer--the long-awaited and debated issue of health care access and affordability for the United States of America.

(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 CD11 Transportation 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.)

-cw

RESISTANCE WATCH--A New York Times column dated March 8 questioned whether Wednesday’s A Day Without A Woman protests would “test the movement’s staying power.” The answer seems to have been voiced by thousands of red-clad activists who participated in rallies, protests, and strikes in over 400 cities and over 50 countries worldwide.

In New York on Wednesday, four organizers of A Day Without A Woman were among over a dozen arrested for civil disobedience after blocking traffic near Trump International Hotel & Tower at Columbus Circle. Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez and Bob Bland – who were also the lead organizers of the Women’s March on Washington – were released by the end of the day. 

Closer to home, the day kicked off with close to 200 women in red standing behind Nury Martinez, the sole female member of Los Angeles City Council (photo above). At midday, protestors gathered at Grand Park at First and Spring, a considerably smaller crowd than had gathered on January 21 but still significant. Satellite protests were held throughout the city, including one at the intersection of Ventura Blvd. and Topanga Canyon Blvd. in Woodland Hills where a vocal red-clad group marched and shouted to the honking horns of commuters and passers-by. 

Organizers stated on the March for Women on Washington site, “On International Women’s Day, March 8, women and our allies will act together for equity, justice, and the human rights of women and all gender-oppressed people through a one-day demonstration of economic solidarity.” The group recognizes “the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system – while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerabilities to discrimination, sexual harassment, job insecurity. We recognize that trans and gender nonconforming people face heightened levels of discrimination, social oppression, and political targeting. We believe in gender justice.” 

Women were encouraged to show support in one or more of three ways – to take the day off of paid or unpaid labor, to avoid shopping for one day (with the exception of small women- and minority-owned businesses, and/or to wear red in solidarity with A Day Without A Woman. 

Regardless of how women and others showed support for A Day Without A Woman, the movement seems likely to thrive for as long as it is needed. As part of The Feminist Majority’s rallies and fundraising walks to support women’s equality – and the ERA – the group is organizing the 1^st Annual Los Angeles Rally and Walk for Equality to be held Sunday, March 26 in Pan Pacific Park, details forthcoming. 

For more information on Los Angeles-area events, visit Women’s March Los Angeles Foundation. 

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

GELFAND’S WORLD--Serious thinkers have been comparing the current situation in the U.S. with Germany and Italy in the 1930s. There is some legitimacy to this comparison, particularly in terms of the use of bullying and propaganda at the highest levels of government. But it's also fair to look back at the 1960s and '70s, to the aftermath of the civil rights movement and Viet Nam, and to the slow bloodletting of the Watergate affair. The way those events played out offer some clues as to how the Trump affair will itself play out. 

What do they all have in common? For one, they represent stark breaks from the status quo of the day. The Jim Crow, segregationist society was changed permanently, a nation at peace since the Korean War turned against itself over an undeclared war, and the presidency itself was tarnished by crime and cover up. Words like revolutionary can be used to describe the tumult. 

In the post-Watergate era, it was hard for Americans to pretend that the nation was without blemishes or that our leadership was always trustworthy. It was fashionable for commentators to use phrases like "this nation, for all its faults and for all that we must do to repair those faults, remains the greatest country on earth." You would have noticed that what we think of as American exceptionalism   took a big hit back then. Those with a long enough memory will recall that it was, curiously enough, the First Gulf War that signaled the end to the culture of self-flagellation that we had been enduring. The older President Bush had suggested that whatever position anyone had taken in the Viet Nam protest era, there should be the equivalent to a statute of limitations on blame. 

Another thing about that era and its events: Not only did the civil rights movement, Viet Nam, and Watergate signify revolutionary changes, they were also national embarrassments. Jim Crow and segregation were an embarrassment for obvious reasons. The Viet Nam conflict created distinct unpopularity overseas, and Watergate speaks for itself. 

We are now going through a moment which holds distinct parallels in terms of the revolutionary aspect of the Republican takeover and the international embarrassment that is Donald Trump. 

The point I'm reaching for is that at least in the early- to mid-1970s, Americans spoke about American exceptionalism in more hushed tones and, often enough, prefaced by the admission that as a nation, we had sinned. The current generation of Trump supporters seems to be rebelling against the idea that we could or should regret or apologize for anything. 

This raises the question which shall, I suspect, remain of paramount interest for a while: At what point if ever will Trump supporters begin to realize, and having realized, admit, that Trump is unadulterated poison to democracy and to the country's well being. When will they talk of American exceptionalism prefaced by admissions of imperfection? 

In particular, at what point will a substantial majority of the American public recognize that you cannot tell whether Trump is telling the truth or spinning a yarn -- about anything -- ever? 

We can imagine a not so distant future when it will be possible to ask with a straight face, "Which Trump are you talking about, the birther Trump or the later Trump, following his admission that Obama was born in the United States? Which Trump are you talking about, the Trump who claimed that Obama bugged the Trump Tower, or the later Trump? 

Bernie Sanders …asks, "What should we do if the president is a liar?" A tough question, indeed. 

The Republican answer to the Affordable Care Act 

Well, this is one of the emergencies we have been predicting and dreading. The House of Representatives now has a bill to replace Obamacare with its own version. As several analysts have pointed out, it's really just a tax cut for the rich which makes up for some of the federal income reduction by reducing the subsidies that poorer people on Obamacare and Medicaid have been getting. You can fill in your own reverse Robin Hood joke here, but it's potentially less of a joke and more of an American disaster. 

So far, the hard right also dislikes the proposal, but in their case, it's because the bill isn't cruel enough. 

Another thing -- when Trump was on the campaign trail, he made brash promises about fixing the whole health insurance problem so that everybody gets great care and we all spend less money. It was a typical Trump approach to campaigning -- make grandiose promises backed up by nothing but bluster, mix in a dollop of hate towards foreigners, stir, and collect the votes. It will be a big question for historians whether Trump believed his own claims or whether it was just a con. Either interpretation speaks badly of the candidate and of the country that elected him.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

WELCOME TO CITY HALL--Hat tip to Lucy Han of Playa Del Rey and her group, FOTJ (Friends Of the The Jungle), for this one. 

The Issue--While both the City and the LAUSD are charged with maintaining a safe environment for our school children, it turns out they don’t talk to each other much, and the safety of our school children can be suspect when it comes to their interactions with the homeless. 

Aside from just living in LA, there are two circumstances under which our children can interact with the homeless -- going and coming to school, and going on field trips within the City. 

In terms of going and coming to school, the City of Los Angeles has a Municipal Code (Section 85.02) which says that the homeless cannot live within 500 feet of a public school or other “sensitive area” like a park. Okay, for the majority of students who get dropped off and picked up by car or bus, that’s fine. 

But it isn’t fine for those k-12 students walking to school across the 500 foot zone. And it isn’t as if the homeless population has any clue about the Municipal Code, or would care if they did know. 

The second major area where school kids can interact with the homeless population just happens to be in the Ballona Wetlands  in Playa Del Rey. 

It’s a major preserve that over 7000 school children visit each year, and the ingress and egress from there just happens to be a place where a large number of homeless hang out, “dwelling”in their vehicles and using the public restroom facilities. 

‘No, No, Not My Problem’--The FOTJ folks have been trying to use the political system to rectify this problem. First they reached out to Councilmember Mike Bonin (CD11), a veritable paragon of probity. He’s been running for re-election, but without any serious opposition, his re-election will be a lock by the time you read this. 

His Chief of Staff, Chad Molnar, did what politicians do -- he blew the issue off on the City Attorney. So there you have it: not Bonin’s problem. This is probably true, since Bonin’s real problem is bending over for every big developer in his District. See my article, It’s Called a Bonin.  Within that context, why indeed would he care about school children? 

Being stout of heart, the FOTJ folks went to the City Attorney’s Office. Since Friends of the Jungle is not the City Attorney’s client, they got what you would expect. A regurgitation of the Municipal Code. Chalk another one up to Feckless Feurer for caring. 

Finally, the FOTJ went to the ultimate power in LA City, Mayor Eric Garcetti who is all over TV and re-election mail, but largely absent in the wetlands. After being directed to the Mayor’s “Homeless Policy Director,” Alisa Orduna, they were told how wonderful the Mayor’s Healthy Streets Program is; she opined that if the FOTJ would just talk to the homeless, these people would say “cool” and leave. 

For the rest of it, she told them they should talk to their Councilmember. Right on. 

Finally, as of the deadline for this article, they have contacted their LAUSD representative, Steve Zimmer, so we won’t know the outcome until after the LAUSD election. For those who don’t know, Mr. Zimmer is under attack by the California Charter School Assn. folks (CCSA), led by none other than our former mayor, Richard Riordan. There are a number of candidates on the ballot, but the runoff will be with Charter favorite, Nick Melvoin – all fueled by millions of dollars spent on the District 4 race instead of education. 

Personally, I hope Zimmer wins. He actually pays attention to his District, and would likely see what he can do to help the school children who visit the Ballona Wetlands. 

The Disconnect--Only in LA do you find dichotomies like this. On the one hand, there are somewhere over 50,000 homeless youths in LA County, which is a scary number. At the same time, the LA Unified School District acknowledges somewhere around 15,000 students who are homeless, and even has a special homeless unit within the District to help them. 

So, on the one hand we have a significant homeless problem, and even the LAUSD student body has one as well. 

On the other hand, the City of Los Angeles and its City Attorney have this weird way of claiming to protect their student population in the LAUSD from adult homeless folks, many of whom have severe mental and physical health issues. 

It is pretty clear that the politicians at City Hall have no clue what they are doing about this, and it is equally clear that the bureaucracies of LA City and the LAUSD don’t coordinate or talk to each other. 

The Takeaway--By the time this column posts, we in Los Angeles will have approved yet another tax to help the homeless, Measure H, a new 1/4 cent sales tax for the County of Los Angeles. This is on top of the $1.2 billion LA City bond measure the voters approved in the November 8 General Election. 

For those who voted for Measure H without reading the fine print, the expenditure of its 1/4 cent sales tax for the next ten years is to “comply with the Approved Strategies to Combat Hopelessness,” a 130 page document that supposedly integrates with the 300 pages of the LA City Bond measure HHH. You can read about the County ballot measure here, including links to the details.

If the early results of the already implemented City Bond Measure (HHH) are any indication, with Measure H we will be once more throw money at a problem without a realistic chance of success in implementing this County measure. Check out this article.  

At a recent LANCC meeting, we were told Assembly Member Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-54th AD) that once the number of homeless grows to much over 50,000 in LA, the problem rapidly becomes insurmountable. Well, by the time the November LA City Measure (HHH) was passed, I was told that the real number of homeless in LA was already well over 50,000 and climbing. As of this column, the results of a January recount were not available. 

The $1.2 billion in bonds that you and I will have to pay for are already a fizzle by all accounts. When we throw in the new 1/4 cent tax to address the overwhelming complexities of our homeless, all controlled by over 400 pages of bureaucratic “planning,” does anyone actually believe that the issue will really be ameliorated? 

Pardon my cynicism, but no wonder the City Hall elite can’t cope with helping 7000 school children avoid potential problems when interacting with the homeless parked at Ballona Wetlands. The LA City incumbents have won in a walk, and can now go back to their real business: approving every big real estate development they can find.

On the other hand, maybe Steve Zimmer will win the runoff for LAUSD seat 4. One can hope.

(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.