LOS ANGELES

TRADE WINDS-Last week I asked Mexico’s Secretary of the Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo, whether he fears that a Trump presidency will revive the anti-Americanism that was once a staple of Mexican life but receded to negligible levels over the past two decades.

Surprisingly, his answer was all about a Monday Night Football game played less than two weeks after the election. Namely, the first-ever regular season Monday night game played outside the United States, in Mexico City’s iconic Estadio Azteca. The Oakland Raiders beat the Houston Texans before a sellout crowd of nearly 80,000 fans, but what Guajardo found most telling was the moment before the game when the anthems of both countries were played.

Guajardo explained that the NFL hesitated before playing the U.S. anthem in the Azteca for fear of how the crowd might respond, live on ESPN, but at the end of the day the league went ahead. And with the exception of a few scattered boos, the Mexican crowd’s response was gracious and respectful. Guajardo said this was a hopeful moment—that positive attitudes toward people on the other side of the border, often acquired through first-hand experience, can transcend political differences or efforts by demagogues to distort the essential truth of our mutually beneficial North American partnership.

One can only hope. The stark reality is that Donald Trump won the presidency by running against Mexico. For a candidate with a short attention span and malleable policy stances, his views on Mexico throughout the long presidential campaign were remarkably consistent and sustained. Mexican immigrants are rapists who must be deported; the North American Free Trade Agreement is a disaster that must be torn up; U.S. companies opening plants in that country are treasonous; indeed, Mexico is so dodgy, we need to build a massive wall along the 2,000-mile border. And guess who’s going to pay for it?

He’s so glad you asked.

Forgive Mexicans if they end up taking it all a bit personally. Mexico has become a far more accommodating and friendlier neighbor —more of the middle class, democratic, open-to-the-world country Washington always wanted—in the two decades since NAFTA went into effect. But you hardly ever see this acknowledged in the U.S. media, or politics. Instead, in the Trump campaign narrative, Mexico was portrayed as the leading villain standing in the way of making America great again.

One big question is whether Trump really believes his own anti-Mexico vitriol and is determined to act upon it, or whether he simply peddled it as part of a convincing “enraged populist on campaign trail” TV performance. On the other side of the border, a related big question is whether the damage has already been done, whether the mere act of electing such an anti-Mexican president will tarnish the United States in Mexican eyes for a generation to come. Keep in mind there are plenty of populist Mexicans politicians eager to match Trump’s xenophobic nationalism for their own gain, especially as Mexico gears up for its 2018 presidential election.

One big question is whether Trump really believes his own anti-Mexico vitriol and is determined to act upon it, or whether he simply peddled it as part of a convincing “enraged populist on campaign trail” TV performance.

In the meantime, I take heart at the outbreak of sports diplomacy like the Monday Night Football game.

On the Friday night of election week, the U.S. and Mexican national soccer teams met in Columbus, Ohio for a World Cup qualifying match. This has become one of the most heated regional rivalries in the world’s leading sport, and a World Cup qualifier doesn’t require a seismic political event to ratchet up the level of intensity.

Still, on this occasion it was for the American sportsmen to worry that politics (and Trumpian-style invective about our southern neighbor) might rear their ugly head in a U.S.-Mexico showdown coming three days after the election. Michael Bradley, the U.S. captain, eloquently said before the game: “I would hope our fans do what they always do, which is support our team in the best, most passionate way possible. I would hope they give every person in that stadium the respect they deserve, whether they are American, Mexican, neutral, men, women, children. I hope every person that comes to the stadium comes ready to enjoy what we all want to be a beautiful game between two sporting rivals that have a lot of respect for each other, and hope that it’s a special night in every way.”

It ended up being a more special night for Mexico, which won 2-1. Politics was a subtext of the match (I know of Mexican-Americans who usually root for the U.S. who couldn’t help but root for Mexico in post-electoral solidarity), but there were no chants about building a wall or mass deportations.

In January, the Phoenix Suns are playing regular-season NBA games against the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs in Mexico City. Much like the NFL, with its estimated 20 million avid fans in Mexico and talk of a possible franchise there, the NBA doesn’t see America’s neighbor to the south as the poor, conniving disaster of a country depicted in the recent election. Instead, American pro basketball is treating Mexico as a venue for future growth: a dynamic market with an expanding middle class and an appetite for American goods, culture, and entertainment. As do the U.S. cities these NBA teams represent, all of whom are organizing events alongside the games to try to attract more Mexican investment, trade, and tourism.

Mexico is the second largest buyer of U.S. goods in the world, a market whose importance to most Fortune 500 companies cannot be overstated. These companies increasingly see North America as one integrated manufacturing platform too, a manufacturer that is more competitive with other parts of the world as a cohesive unit. Politicians bash companies like Ford for opening plants in Mexico, but 40 percent of the components of the goods imported from these plants are produced in the U.S., demonstrating how porous the border has become as an economic matter, and just how seamless the back-and-forth is within North American supply chains.

One underappreciated danger for both American and Mexican workers is that companies will be spooked by populist protectionism and take more of their global manufacturing out of North America altogether.

Back in the realm of sports diplomacy, one way for North Americans to transcend the ugliness of politics and assert a shared identity would be by hosting a World Cup together. The 2026 World Cup is the next one to be awarded, and the North American region is a strong contender, given the tournament’s traditional rotation among continents. Both Mexico and the U.S. are expected to submit compelling bids.

There has also been talk throughout the year of a potential joint U.S.-Mexico bid; World Cups are typically played in eight host cities, and there’s the precedent of Japan and South Korea sharing the 2002 Cup. But that talk was followed by speculation that Trump’s election makes a joint bid less likely.

It would be a shame to abandon the idea on account of politics. Quite the contrary: A shared North American World Cup (can we include Toronto too?) is needed, now more than ever.

(Andrés Martinez is the executive editor of Zócalo Public Square  … where this perspective was first posted.)

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CALIFORNIA POLITICS--Gov. Jerry Brown’s nomination of Democratic U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles to become the state’s first Latino Attorney General, replacing Senator-elect Kamala Harris, is a shrewd and surprising political move and a superb pick.

It not only instantly positions one of California’s most talented politicians as a national leader of anti-Trump progressive forces, but also prepares the state for looming bitter legal battles against the president-elect’s reactionary policies on immigration, health care and climate change.

Becerra is keenly aware of the challenges.

“Right now, when California continues to lean forward on so many issues: environment, clean energy, immigration, criminal justice and consumer protection, we’re going to need a chief law enforcement office to advance those positions and protect them,” he told the Sacramento Bee.

All in all, it’s the first bit of good news we’ve had since election night. (even though we were poised to endorse furniture breaker and populist legal bruiser Joe Cotchett for the job).

Political gamers impressed. Becerra, 58, is the son of Mexican immigrants who grew up in Sacramento, earned his undergraduate and law degrees at Stanford and has served as a leader of the House Democratic and Congressional Hispanic Caucuses. He also has served in the California Assembly and as deputy attorney general under John Van de Kamp.

“Once again, Brown surprises,” said Democratic consultant Garry South, noting that Becerra’s name was not on anyone’s speculation list of potential appointments to fill the last two years of Harris’s term.

“This is not a Rose Bird kind of appointment,” South added, referring to the controversial former chief justice of the California Supreme Court whom Brown appointed in 1977. “He has the experience, character and background to be a credible attorney general.”

“It’s a shrewd pick,” drawled graybeard California Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, describing Becerra as “really smart, politically savvy and somebody who can manage that office.”

The political implications of Becerra’s nomination – his confirmation by the Democratically controlled California Assembly and Senate is all but assured – are myriad.

No sooner was the ink dry on Brown announcement of Becerra’s nomination when former Assembly Speaker John Perez declared he would run to fill Becerra’s seat in Congress, which is liable to be hotly contested. Speculation about other political impacts came fast and furious. Asked Thursday by NBC’s Chuck Todd whether he would rule out running for governor or U.S. Senate in 2018, Becerra artfully sidestepped and said only he will be grateful to be confirmed as attorney general.

Which leaves speculation running rampant about:

– Attorney General: Democratic Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones – who has tangled with Gov. Brown over regulation of insurance rates in the past — had already announced his intention to seek the AG’s job in 2018; with Becerra holding the office with the ability to seek two full terms, the likelihood of an internal party contest for the post arose immediately. As the first Latino AG with a wide national network, however, Becerra would be in a prohibitively strong position to seek election to the post. Jerry serves his revenge cold.

– Governor: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Treasurer John Chiang all have announced bids for governor in 2018, as has Delaine Eastin, former Superintendent of Public Instruction. Other possible contenders include billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and former State Controller Steve Westly, to name a few.

While Becerra would make another top-tier potential candidate for governor, Calbuzz insiders on Thursday suggested he is unlikely to jump into the 2018 race for governor. In part, it’s expected that during Legislative confirmation hearings he’ll have to say he intends to serve as attorney general, and in order to run for governor he would have to pivot almost immediately to planning a campaign or 2018. The timing and optics would be ugly. (Prince Gavin and Tony V especially can likely breathe a sigh of relief.)

– U.S. Senate: What remains less clear is what would happen in 2018 if, at the last minute – her preferred timeline – 83-year-old U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (who will then be 85) decides to retire and the Democrats are scrambling for a first-rate replacement who could step into the job seamlessly. Although California Secretary of State Alex Padilla is said to be eager to seek Feinstein’s job, Becerra might look to many Democrats as a stronger choice. (Difi, showing no signs of slowing down, has staked out a high-profile position to scrap with Trump in Washington, as the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee and close ally of Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York).

In the meantime, Becerra has an opportunity to play a crucial role as the chief law enforcement officer of the largest state – one where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by more than four million (!) votes – which is also a leader on climate change, immigration, health care, civil rights, women’s rights and so much more.

Bottom line: We’ve met with and interviewed Becerra several times and came away extremely impressed. Jerry Brown has made an inspired choice and allied himself with a forceful, intelligent Latino politician who we expect to carry the banner against Trumpism and all its despicable effects, while competently carrying out the duties of California’s Attorney General.

Nice work, Gandalf.

(Jerry Roberts is a California journalist who writes, blogs and hosts a TV talk show about politics, policy and media. Phil Trounstine is the former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, former communications director for California Gov. Gray Davis and was the founder and director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University. This piece appeared first in CalBuzz.)

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On June 15, 2012, President Obama created a new policy calling for deferred action for certain undocumented young people mainly Latino who came to the U.S. as children. Applications under the program which is called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) began on August 15, 2012. 

This policy allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children … through no fault of their own … to come out of the shadows and receive a temporary work authorization and protection from deportation. 

According to the Immigration Equality website, deferred action is a discretionary, limited immigration benefit by DHS. It can be granted to individuals who are in removal proceedings, who have final orders of removal, or who have never been in removal proceedings. Individuals who have deferred action status can apply for employment authorization and are in the U.S. under color of law. 

There is no direct path from deferred action to lawful permanent residence or to citizenship.  And, it can be revoked at any time. 

President-elect Trump said on the campaign trail that he plans to reverse Obama’s executive actions and orders, which would include DACA. If the Trump administration decides to end DACA, it would be at the discretion of DHS secretary to determine priorities and whether protected status is removed together with work permits. 

President Obama has asked Trump and the incoming administration “to think long and hard before they are endangering that status of what for all practical purposes are American kids.” Roughly 750,000 people were issued temporary protected status and, separately, work authorization. 

“These are kids who were brought here by their parents. They did nothing wrong. They’ve gone to school. They have pledged allegiance to the flag. Some of them have joined the military. They’ve enrolled in school. By definition, if they’re part of this program, they are solid, wonderful young people of good character,” Obama said during a press conference last month after the election. 

“And it is my strong belief that the majority of the American people would not want to see those kids have to start hiding again. And that’s something that I will encourage the president-elect to look at.” 

This is really basic common human decency and compassion. This group of ‘Americans’ may not have a paper that says it but they are in every sense of the word Americans. They don’t know any other country. Some don’t even speak Spanish. They are law abiding and productive members of our communities. Let’s not wreck their lives for no reason. 

I’m very hopeful that our new President will do the right thing.

(Fred Mariscal writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch. He came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He can be reached at [email protected].)

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POLITICS--When newly-elected Donald Trump took his family to a restaurant for dinner without telling the public recently, the press flipped out. A chorus of complaints swelled across the land and apoplexy ensued among the news media.

“He didn’t tell us!”
“He’d supposed to let us know!”
“That’s not how it’s done!”
“We should have come along and sat outside while he ate steak!”

Journalists and editorial writers pilloried Mr. Trump for leaving home and traveling five blocks to a restaurant. Those same reporters, along with editors and news executives, issued thoughtful pleas about the importance of documenting a chief executive-to-be’s movements.

I’m not here to defend the president-elect’s behavior or suggest that his unwillingness to play by traditional rules of engagement with the press is not a big deal. I’m a newspaper reporter, after all. And as the City Hall reporter for the only newspaper in McComb, Mississippi, I hardly find it remarkable when the mayor travels the three blocks from his office to the Dinner Bell restaurant without first notifying me.

I am here instead to suggest—from deep and unusual personal experience—that the news media and everyone else might do well to prepare for a lot more breaking of protocol.

I was the personal aide, AKA “Body Man,” to a governor of California who at the time of his election was one of the five or six most famous people on earth. Like Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed himself an outsider, a non-politician. His first campaign, like Trump’s, was a circus, with the sheer force of his persona flattening most criticisms and every opponent.

“I’m rich so I’m not beholden to special interests,” he said. “I’ll fix a broken system,” he said. Trump’s “drain the swamp” sounds a lot like Schwarzenegger’s “blow up the boxes.”

There is of course a vast difference of scale between a president and a governor, even a superhuman governor like Arnold Schwarzenegger. A governor isn’t responsible for national defense and doesn’t negotiate treaties with other countries. A governor doesn’t tend to travel in a 50-vehicle motorcade with an ambulance in it. A governor doesn’t have access to nuclear codes.

But I believe there are lessons to be learned from Schwarzenegger’s behavior as governor that will help us understand Trump’s as president, at least based on how he has conducted himself in the first weeks since his election.

Early in the Schwarzenegger era—like Trump, even before he took office—calls of “It’s always been done this way” began to be tossed about.

“You’ll have to be in the Capitol every day to meet staff and legislators. You’ll have to be here to sign bills. That’s how it’s done.”

It took a while, but Arnold chipped away at “It’s always been done this way” until the Sacramento apparatchiks got it through their heads that the governor could do business sitting by his swimming pool 400 miles from the Capitol if he wanted to.

One thing people didn’t press the governor to do was move his family from Los Angeles to Sacramento. California was at the time one of just a handful of states with no governor’s residence. That and Arnold’s four school-age kids gave him a pass on the relocation bit.

Instead he took up part-time residence in a two-bedroom hotel suite across the street from the State Capitol. Several nights a week, he slept in one bedroom, I in the other. Between the manly-man Republican action hero and the 40-something gay Democrat, we were an odd couple if ever there was one.

“What must people think … the two of us living here like this?” he said one night as he switched off the lamp in our living room before heading to his bedroom. But I don’t believe he fretted much about what people thought, about his living arrangements or anything else.

It took a while, but Arnold chipped away at “It’s always been done this way” until the Sacramento apparatchiks got it through their heads that the governor could do business sitting by his swimming pool 400 miles from the Capitol if he wanted to. Staff could fly to Los Angeles, their rolling suitcases, jammed with legislation, in tow. The mountain, it turned out, could indeed come to Mohammad.

In August 2004, less than a year after Arnold took office, he agreed to speak at a high-ticket Bush-Cheney fundraiser in Santa Monica. Our advance people and the California Highway Patrol team warned, “Governor, the Secret Service say you have to be there 30 minutes ahead of the president or they won’t let you in. They’ll shut down access.”

“Relax,” Arnold said, just as I heard him say several times a day for the seven years he held office. “Let’s go to Starbucks.” There were few things Arnold Schwarzenegger liked less than sitting and waiting. “No hanging” was a mantra.

“But Governor, the Secret Service …”

“Starbucks. Do you really think they’ll keep me out?” And he was right. He knew the power of his celebrity. Starbucks was a frequent tool for the killing of time, and the California Highway Patrol protective detail learned quickly to research Starbucks locations when plotting routes between events.

There is shorthand for a politician’s unplanned events or stops on a tour. An OTR, or Off The Record, is an unscheduled stop. There was the OTR at an H&M store in Philadelphia, where Arnold had seen interesting scarves in the window when driving past.

“What are you doing here?” the lady behind him in the checkout line asked.

“Buying scarves.”

“Makes sense,” she said.

OTRs are easier when you have your own airplane that won’t take off without you, as the governor did.

“Do you really think they’ll keep me out?” And he was right. He knew the power of his celebrity.

Then there was the jet ski OTR in Miami Beach. We were there for a conference on climate change but, as at most conferences, Arnold didn’t attend every panel, plenary, and roundtable.

“Let’s get some jet skis.”

“Uh, you’re supposed to be in the reception at 3.”

“Relax.”

Several staff members had to make quick trips to the hotel gift shop for swim trunks; others of us knew enough to have packed apparel for every Florida eventuality. It had to be an odd picture, Schwarzenegger and his posse traipsing across the sand to the surf, flanked by a team of plainclothes highway patrolmen in dark suits. It happened that we were crossing a topless beach but if the rest of the posse was titillated, I was not.

More times than I can count, the governor visited construction sites or industrial facilities where hardhats were required.

“Not gonna happen,” he would say, not breaking stride, to the man waving a hardhat in front of him.

“But it’s required!” By then it was too late.

He acquiesced only once in the headwear department, though it wasn’t with a hardhat. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance center in Jerusalem, a yarmulke is required when you enter the Hall of Remembrance to view the Eternal Flame. That time, the governor knew better than to quarrel.

Arnold’s reluctance to commit to schedules or events until the last minute sometimes meant squads of CHP officers sitting and waiting to cover every possible scenario. Teams gamely stationed themselves everywhere he was scheduled to go, or where he might go when he made up his mind. And if he decided not to go, the team drove or flew home, depending on how far away they were.

I made a wasted trip once myself. I had been dispatched to Idaho to set up a retreat for the governor’s senior staff in his vacation home. But as soon as I landed in Boise I received an email telling me to come back to California. The retreat was off. I hustled across the airport and made it onto a plane leaving just a few minutes later, but that was a $700 ticket on the state’s dime.

Despite Donald Trump’s thumb-your-nose approach to the traditional ways of doing things, I don’t think we’ll see him in H&M buying five-dollar scarves. But he could if he wanted to. And like the H&M visit, I don’t expect to see President Trump sea-doo-ing anytime soon. But one never knows.

One thing we can expect from President Trump is that “it’s always been done that way” won’t get us very far. We won’t like everything he does but we shouldn’t be surprised when he defies protocol. After all, breaking the rules of presidential campaigns is what got him elected.

(Clay Russell is a reporter for the McComb (Miss.) Enterprise-Journal and prides himself on his non-linear life path. A former professional chef, he lives with his husband and two cats in America’s Deep South. This piece was posted first at Zocalo Public Square.)

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@THE GUSS REPORT-This weekend’s deadly inferno in an Oakland warehouse that was used as, but not permitted as, a living space and concert venue is a warning shot for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the LA City Council and especially its first-term District 4 representative David Ryu. The message it delivers to them is this: if you ignore repeated community warnings about dangerous conditions, someone, perhaps many people, may die on your watch. (As of Monday afternoon, the Oakland death toll stands at 36 and is expected to go higher.) 

In the communities surrounding LA’s world famous Hollywood sign, a major tourist attraction, members of its surrounding homeowners’ associations are furious with Ryu for what they say are broken campaign promises, and his becoming unreachable, regarding the ever worsening, dangerous conditions created by City Hall giving riskier and illegal access to the sign through extremely narrow and winding hillside streets. 

Locals primarily blame the conditions on two things. One is Ryu’s predecessor, Tom Labonge, the seemingly attention deficit challenged, termed-out City Hall lifer who ignored common sense. Locals say California’s environmental CEQA rules were ignored by Labonge in 2011 when he illegally used his own office staff to clear a perilous cliffside vista for tourists to view the sign, rather than going through city departments that have engineers, public safety and park experts. The other cause, they say, is technology like Google Maps, Yelp and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft that allow tourists to share with one another closer, riskier access points to the sign. 

In the Spring 2015 primary for Labonge’s City Council seat, Ryu defeated outsider activists, as well as crusty City Hall heir-apparents, to face off against Labonge’s Chief of Staff, Carolyn Ramsay. In doing so, he sought and received help from Tony Fisch, a Hollywood Hills consultant and 12 other activists who met with Ryu to discuss well-documented dangers ranging from huge brushfires believed to be caused by tourists’ cigarettes, tourists driving off cliffs, and tourists seeking selfies -- sometimes with children in strollers – inches away from 200-foot plunges. 

According to Fisch, “Thirteen of us activists sat with (Ryu) in my living room at the beginning of the runoff. He said he’d assure our public safety and we were specific about the Vista.  After the election he asked us for residential consensus to close the Vista along with other safeguards. (We) hand-delivered 75% of residential signatures to him in his office. He said he would get back to us with a timeline, but we never heard from him again.” But now that Ryu is nearing the half-way point of his first term, Fisch says of Ryu, “He is a corrupt liar.” 

At Friday’s City Council meeting, when asked to comment on the subject, Ryu declined to answer “due to a lengthy Council meeting today.” But the meeting had only an eight-item agenda, much of which was ceremonial, and took only half as much time as Wednesday’s marathon four-hour meeting. He referred me instead to his Communications Director who talked about their conducting 50+ meetings about the subject, but could not provide any specific plans for dealing with the problems or meeting with Fisch and his activist neighbors again. 

On Saturday morning, I ventured high into Beachwood Canyon to speak with locals and to see first-hand what was going on. 

What I saw was nothing short of a cavalcade of chaos. I met Guy, a local house restorer who has lived in the area for four years. He estimated that, at the top of his extremely narrow road, which ends in a cul-de-sac, there are upward of 1200 to 1500 daily vehicle “turnarounds.” 

I witnessed tourist vehicles and Uber and Lyft drivers parking their cars in (and in front of) driveways and in the middle of the street. This is not only a back-breaking nuisance for residents, but a tremendous danger should first responders need to access the gated, dirt access road at the top of the street in the event of another brushfire. Sometimes, the ride share drivers drop off their fares and drive away, only to come back minutes later, doubling the traffic nuisance. 

Local parking enforcement officials expressed frustration that they have to patrol a large area, but that when they respond to calls for illegal driveway and street blocking, the tourists and ride share drivers jump back in their cars and drive away. 

Residents, it should be noted, welcome hikers and cyclists enjoying the scenery, although they say the city has done nothing to enforce limited hours of access to those trails, leading to drug and alcohol consumption, used condom disposal on their streets and late night bike riders. 

Bad as the conditions I witnessed were, this pales in comparison to something else I discovered…..coming soon.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640 and Huffington Post. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Remember this past July when we were sure Trump’s run for presidency would be toppled by the leaked Access Hollywood Bus Tapes? Months later, we’re trying to avert our eyes from early morning tweets, the Apprentice-scale Cabinet competition and buddy to buddy calls with foreign dignitaries. 

Back in 2013, two years after Anthony Weiner had resigned from Congress over a sexting scandal, the politician had risen from the ashes as a reformed family man and hero of the middle class but his NYC mayoral campaign came to a halt mid-primary season after another online relationship was revealed. Weiner revealed two days after dropping out of the Democratic primary that he had engaged in online sexually charged relationships with between six and ten women after leaving Congress. 

It would seem personal scandals can either stick like Velcro or bounce off a candidate’s back, depending upon the scenario or perhaps, depending upon the candidate. Closer to home, we wonder if LA Councilmember Jose Huizar’s “illustrious” past will place an obstacle before his possible Congressional run to fill the 34^th Congressional District seat expected to be vacated by Rep. Xavier Becerra’s appointment to fill the final two years of Kamala Harris’s State Attorney General post. 

According to Huizar’s campaign aide, Rick Coca, the Chair of the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee has been reported to be considering an election bid to represent the central and northeast areas of Los Angeles. Despite a past that includes a settled sexual harassment suit, an extramarital relationship, and a city-settled lawsuit over a fender-bender, he managed to get reelected to his third and final full council term last year. 

Just a year earlier, in 2014, Huizar was in the center of not one but two lawsuits. In March, the LA City Council voted unanimously to approve a $185,000 settlement to David Ceja, a former Huntington Park police officer. Ceja’s 2002 Saturn was hit by Huizar’s city-owned SUV in October 2011. Ceja’s attorney had filed an initial claim against the city for over $500,000 in December, questioning whether the council member had received special treatment from LAPD since, according to the attorney, the investigators had waited 2 ½ hours to administer a breathalyzer test, which came out clean. A few weeks prior to the settlement, Ceja’s attorney stated he had no concerns about the police treatment. 

Just months later, Huizar agreed to settle a 2013 sexual harassment case brought by his former deputy chief of staff, Francine Godoy (photo left), who did not obtain a payout from the city, though the city did have to pony up tax dollars for Huizar’s legal fees. In April, the council had voted to approve up to $200,000 to the firm representing Huizar, though it was unclear whether the limit had been reached. 

Godoy alleged in her suit that her former boss had retaliated against her for refusing to submit to his request for sexual favors, a charge Huizar denied, although he did admit to an extramarital relationship with Godoy, who had worked for Huizar from 2006-2013. During her employment, her salary had grown from about $47,000 to over $132,000, according to personnel department officials. Godoy alleged that Huizar denied her promotions, forced her transfer and pressured her to quit her job. She also alleged he had sabotaged her attempted run for Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees in 2012. 

A panel that investigated her complaints concluded a lack of evidence to support her allegations of discrimination and retaliation but did find that she had received pay raises multiple times at a “faster rate” than other staffers in Huizar’s office. 

As reported in City Watch, last week, the LA City Planning Commission (and Huizar) gave a billionaire developer a green light for special spot-zoning for his 20-story luxe high-rise known as “333 La Cienega,” proposed for the intersection of La Cienega and San Vicente, “opening the door to more tall development in the area.” CityWatch reported that Rick Caruso and his associates at Caruso Affiliated Holdings had contributed over $120,000 in campaign contributions to 42 candidates in LA. Caruso has contributed $65,750 to elected officials, including $2,200 to Huizar. 

Do you think Huizar’s past will catch up with him if he decides to run for Becerra’s congressional seat? We’ll have to wait to see.

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

GUEST COMMENTARY--The Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) has expressed deep concern and outrage at President-Elect Donald Trump's announcement today of the selection of Ben Carson to be the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). CES does not believe Carson has the knowledge, experience, ability, compassion or commitment to the goals of HUD to lead the nation's housing agency. 

Over the last 4 decades, CES has been the leading organization in the Los Angeles area that has provided outreach, education and organizing assistance to tenants living in HUD subsidized housing in an effort to preserve this important and significant number of affordable housing units. 

HUD oversees federal rental assistance programs that serve over 5 million of the country's lowest income households, as well as administers tens of billions of dollars in community development, disaster recovery, and homeless assistance funding, enforces fair housing laws and acts as one of the largest mortgage insurers in the world. HUD plays a critical role in alleviating poverty, stabilizing and revitalizing communities, increasing the educational attainment and incomes of low-income families, and providing safe, affordable homes to deeply poor elderly or disabled families. 

But by his own admission, Carson has stated that he "feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency," when his name was suggest to head the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Carson's aide, Armstrong Williams, has stated recently, "He's never run an agency and it's a lot to ask. He's a neophyte and that's not his strength," 

Carson has been deeply critical of social welfare programs. He has characterized the country's safety net of cash assistance, housing allowances and social services as a failure that perpetuates dependence on government. 

He is known for offering provocative commentary on a wide range of issues, including comparing the modern American government to Nazi Germany in a March 2014 interview with Breitbart, and saying at the Voter Values Summit in 2013 that Obamacare is "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." 

In a 2015 opinion for The Washington Times, Carson compared an Obama administration's "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" regulation to "the failure of school busing" because it would place affordable housing "primarily in wealthier neighborhoods with few current minority residents." 

The regulation is designed to end decades-old segregation by offering affluent areas incentives to build affordable housing. Critics, including Carson, called it government overreach. 

Ben Carson is totally unqualified to be HUD Secretary. HUD is among the most important federal agencies tasked with ensuring compliance with the Fair Housing Act, and creating affordable, preventing housing discrimination and ensuring inclusive communities. Ben Carson has shown a complete disregard and open hostility to government efforts to confront racist and discriminatory practices in the housing industry. 

The appointment of Ben Carson indicates that Donald Trump and his admiration has a complete disregard for tenants' rights and an absolute lack of commitment to ensuring America's poor will have a roof over their heads that is decent and that is one they can afford. This clearly is not a holiday present low-income HUD tenants wanted."\

(Larry Gross is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival and an occasional CityWatch contributor.)

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LAPD WATCH--We’re not against the police. We’re not against the police department, but we are against police who commit misconduct (and those who help cover it up.) 

A Los Angeles Police Department internal email shows that the department has misclassified up to 80% of aggravated assaults as simple assaults. That’s important because if they can label a crime as belonging to the Part II family of crimes it doesn’t get counted in the overall violence crime statistics reported publicly -- the only numbers that really matter to the LAPD and City Hall. 

A November 3, 2016 email from the Commanding Officer of COMPSTAT Division John Neuman, shows that between January 1, 2015 and October 29, 2016 an inspection of simple assault crimes that included a dangerous weapon were classified by the department as a less serious Part II crime when they should have been classified as a more serious Part I crime like an aggravated assault or robbery. 

According to Neuman’s email: 

“The inspection is looking at a total of 1,792 Simple Assaults Citywide from the past 22 months. A very quick sampling of such showed that up to 80% of these were misclassified.” 

Neuman’s email also indicated that the department was taking steps internally to fix the numbers but made no mention of alerting the public. If the department doesn’t fix and release the adjusted actual and real violent crime statistics for 2015 they’ll never be able to get an accurate account of the increase or decrease in crime from 2014. The same goes for 2015 and 2016. 

Neuman’s emails seems to indicate that this was a random sampling so I am sure the number is much higher. 

This isn’t the first time the LAPD has been caught cooking the books, though. 

In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that 14,000 serious assaults had been misclassified as minor offenses during an eight-year period, thus lowering the city’s crime levels. An internal audit by the department’s inspector general said that number was 25,000. The Times reported that, “More than a quarter of the errors were due to the LAPD failing to count cases in which suspects brandished weapons as aggravated assaults.” 

At the time, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said they were taking steps to correct the problem. We’re now headed into 2017 and apparently the problem still isn’t fixed. 

Here’s the email from John Neuman: 

It looks like not only will the department have to adjust its numbers but also so will Chief Beck. If these numbers are off, then his weekly report of crime statistics is off too.

And finally, while we don’t blame the LAPD for the increase or decrease in crime–quite frankly that’s all on the public they police–we do expect Chief Beck and co. to be forthcoming and honest about what the numbers really are.

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

‘NO ONE SHOULD DIE THIS WAY’-The deadly warehouse fire in Oakland, California that claimed the lives of at least 36 people at a Friday night dance party was a symptom of the Bay Area's massive housing crisis, artists and advocates are saying. 

The Fruitvale-area warehouse, known as Ghost Ship, was a live-work space that supported underground artists and provided makeshift residences for people priced out of rapidly gentrifying Bay Area cities. It lacked basic fire safety mechanisms, which came into play on Friday as the blaze broke out at the electronic music party and engulfed the building, blocking the main escape path—a rickety staircase—and quickly becoming what may be the deadliest structural fire in Oakland's history.

As cadaver searches continue on the property, tenants' rights activists and Bay Area residents say the tragedy happened because of a lack of access to affordable housing fueled in large part by the technology boom that has transformed San Francisco into one of the most expensive cities in the world. They say housing policies have continually failed to protect marginalized communities and force low-income people to take up increasingly unsafe residences.

Ghost Ship housed some two dozen people who lived together as an artist collective. According to officials, the death toll is expected to rise. Local PBS affiliate KQED compiled a list of ways people can support relief efforts. 

"No one should die this way. No one should have to live without proper fire safety measures in their home just to try to make ends meet, just to try to make art, just to be in the city," the Oakland-based tenants' rights organization Causa Justa (Just Cause) wrote on Facebook on Saturday. "Black and Latino working class Oaklanders are pushing for habitability and affordability solutions for our city, for this very reason." 

"If you can't afford to buy a million-dollar home, then you can't afford to live in this city unless you're willing to risk your safety. And that's unconscionable," Causa Justa director María Poblet told the Guardian.

Gabe Meline, online arts editor for KQED, wrote in an op-ed on Sunday titled "It Could Have Been Any One of Us" that the warehouse spaces sought out by these communities "are what have kept us alive." 

"For the tormented queer, the bullied punk, the beaten trans, the spat-upon white trash, the disenfranchised immigrants, and young people of color, these spaces are a haven of understanding in a world that doesn't understand—or can't, or doesn't seem to want to try," he wrote, continuing:

They don't understand why we don't just live in a $3,000/mo. apartment where everything is safe and sterile and clean; why we live in a warehouse, or a garage, or an attic or shed or laundry room; why there is a mattress on the floor with a space heater where there normally would be a Queen size bed with a duvet and a nightstand and central heating.

[....] They don't understand that we do not fit into the boxes the world tries to sell us. That their world is unacceptable, and that even for all the ragged edges, we need our own world on our own terms.

Nihar Bhatt, a DJ and record label owner who survived the fire, told the Guardian, "Warehouse parties have been a central part of Oakland for decades. There's a movement in Oakland of experimental black and brown and queer people who don't necessarily want to be in a bar or a club."

Many of the underground venues that provide space for these communities operate without license in buildings that are not up to code. Yet when tenants do raise concerns about unsafe conditions, they may find themselves simply being evicted by city managers who deem the buildings too dangerous to live in, as happened earlier this year with another Oakland warehouse.

Such an eviction often allows real estate developers to buy up the property and transform it into luxury housing or other profitable venue.

As Oakland musician Tarik Kazaleh told the Guardian, "That's a slumlord landlord's best-case scenario. They'll just get a tech firm and get more money."

Jonah Strauss, a record engineer, added, "Lack of affordable living spaces is the single greatest threat to Oakland arts and music."

Musician Kimya Dawson wrote on Facebook, "It's hard to find words. I have played in so many spaces with precarious floors and beams and stairs and not enough exits and certainly no sprinklers. Warehouses, squats, basements, rooftops, barns. Playing music saves my life. People tell me listening to music saves their lives. People telling me that my music saved their life saves my life even more. And we take the risks. Playing and listening in unsafe spaces. Because when we feel like we are dying anyway the risks don't seem as risky as the risks we already face every day."

Oakland District Attorney Nancy O'Malley on Sunday announced she had opened a criminal probe into the fire. As always seems to be the case, it comes too late to matter to 30-plus lives.

(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams  … where this piece was first posted.)

-cw

Fix the City, a neighborhood watchdog group, has sued the city of Los Angeles over its dubious handling of the 8150 Sunset mega-project, a highly controversial development proposed by Townscape Partners and designed by famed architect Frank Gehry. 

Activists and residents have long decried that 8150 Sunset, a giant mixed-use development located at Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards, is too big for the surrounding area, will ruin neighborhood character and close down a public street and will cause more traffic nightmares at a gridlocked intersection.

While LA City Council member David Ryu of District 4 gained some concessions from Townscape Partners, residents still believed 8150 Sunset was mightily flawed — and Fix the City has now filed a lawsuit. The City Council approved the oversized development in November.

In the lawsuit, Fix the City states that City Hall violated the City Charter and several state laws, including the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

The suit also charges that the city’s Planning Department “acted as spin doctors for [Townscape Partners] by concealing information from decision makers and the public about the issues [Fix the City] identified in its appeals that presented serious legal problems underlying the project’s approvals. These are critical safety concerns. Closing a street in a fire district within an earthquake zone shows a callous disregard for public safety.”

And the lawsuit drops the bombshell that only “after the project’s approval was final were internal emails released that City staff had concerns about many of the issues raised in Fix the City’s appeals…including the improper vacation of a city street, improper use of a city parcel of land, failure to satisfy earthquake safety requirements and required implementation of CEQA mitigation measures to ensure adequate emergency response and traffic capacity. Planning staff ignored the concerns from other departments that the project could not be approved as presented without other discretionary approvals.”

Neighborhood activists have long contended that the city’s planning department works only on the behalf of developers, regularly ignoring residents’ concerns. Now, apparently, the planning department also ignores other city agencies.

It’s just one of many reasons that Angelenos believe LA’s planning and land-use system is rigged, unfair and broken — and why a growing, citywide grassroots movement is now focused on reforming that system through the ballot measure known as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.

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

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POLITICS--On the mourning [sic] after I was brought up short by this common lawn sign. 

It seemed to me then that few really comprehended the tragedy our children were experiencing.

Parents got it, at least the “attached” ones; I had been sympathizing all day with multiple, numerous parents who had all been wide awake at four am rocking and comforting, holding children – even teenagers – who simply could not sleep. Inconsolable they trembled, they cried, they were just so fearful that sleep would never come. They seemed not to have developed the coping mechanism of maturity that enables sticking one’s head in the sand or underneath the covers and simply willing oblivion in the form of sleep.

I was always enamored of the parenting philosophy that exhorted not lying to children with false platitudes about “everything being OK” when reality dictates that no one knows what will be, OK or otherwise, and moreover, our children never were so dumb as to not know this. The prudent course, the philosophy urges, is to assert no untruths, just be there, rock in solidarity and sympathy, hold and touch and breath together.

By now I think it is clear to many the urgency and fear our children reflexively expressed that night. So many of us adults thought to count to ten, wait, give patience and forbearance a chance. Our children felt otherwise.

Time belies the wisdom of “maturity”, sometimes. The rogue’s gallery of advisers and actors is a searing signal of the pain to come, the nail in the coffin of America’s lower 99%, and all quite independent of the bogus claims of the orange scalawag.

It’s not new, any of this. People have been warning against the aspirational lure of two-birds-in-the-bush trumping one-in-hand since time immemorial. People abdicating their best interests in favor of a pipe-dream is one of mankind’s older stories, as is the corollary pain of choosing the lesser of two evils: Ecclesiastes IX – A living dog is better than a dead lion. 

Day after day the Golden Rule remains unassailable, if reworked for Californian car-culture: Drive Like Your Kids Live Here. They’re watching you, they’re learning from you, your job is to secure their future. In their future lies your best interest.

But with this election we have repudiated our children alongside the parable. We have sanctioned separation and segregation, different rules for different folks; a Wall.

This is a time of crisis, to decide whether the fear is substantive or metaphoric, whether this is the second for action or watchful waiting.

I approve the advice from one child’s teacher: “Brush Your Teeth and Do Your Homework”.

But I wish I knew how to steer clear of our children’s fears.

(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)

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GELFAND’S WORLD--Here is a curious story that follows on the Seabreeze scandal.  You may recall that the Seabreeze developers put a little more than half a million dollars into the accounts of local politicians. They got their way on the development, in spite of local protests. The LA Times story mentioned that Council District 15's councilman Joe Buscaino (photo above) was the recipient of $90,000 of that money. Buscaino is quoted in a news story (and telling a radio interviewer) that the way the money was allegedly collected, if true, is illegal. That's the word he used. 

So the next time we had a local neighborhood council meeting, I asked the councilman's representative about that money. I asked, "Has he made any decision about giving it back?" 

It seems like an obvious question. It also seems like a question that the councilman would love to answer if he is really on the up and up. So what answer did I get? 

Like I said, the story is curious because the answer was curious. I was told that I would have to ask the campaign, because this is a campaign matter. 

I can sympathize with the councilman's representative, because he was in the position that Tom Wolfe referred to as a "flak catcher." The rep is there to take flak for an elected official who isn't going to come to the meeting. There's no easy way out for a question like this. If he says that the money will be donated to charity, that is something of an admission that the councilman accepted a bad campaign contribution. If he doesn't say so, then the public is left to think that the councilman is holding onto $90,000 worth of tainted money. Still, there is every reason for the politician to answer the question immediately because otherwise, it will keep coming up and thereby do much more political damage than if it were answered promptly. 

But instead we got this gobbledygook of a non-answer. 

Sorry, but the question goes well beyond campaign finance by itself. It is relevant because it bears on the performance of the office and on the public's evaluation of the job being carried out by the councilman. Crooked or straight? Straightforward or evasive? 

It's a stretch to try to convince people that the staffers are avoiding answering the question out of ethical considerations. Yes, it's important to keep the staffers from taking on electoral jobs while they are being paid by the city for city work. But this question wasn't inviting the staffer to hand out campaign literature or sing the official campaign song. It was an invitation to inform the public that the office is not compromised by dirty money. The evasion by councilman Buscaino's representative seemed fishy. 

Having $90,000 of illegal money in your bank account ought to be embarrassing. It's hard to imagine the councilman not having a prepared answer. Its equally hard to imagine the councilman's staff not being coached in how to give that answer. 

But no. As of now, the people of San Pedro represented by the neighborhood council haven't had their question answered. The question goes right to the issue of ethics in campaigning. 

Thanks to Tony and Dan for taking up the stakeholder definition argument 

I have been singularly honored this year by having my City Watch column on neighborhood council stakeholder status be answered by two (count 'em) columns which call me by name and disagree with my views. Tony Butka and Dr Dan Wiseman have added to a debate which began before there were neighborhood councils, continued with the Neighborhood Council Review Commission, and survives to the present day. I'd like to offer a couple of recent thoughts on the matter. But first, I'd like to mention a definitive piece on the origins, political and philosophical, of the system. 

I would love to be able to say that I wrote that piece, but the honor goes to Robert Greene's article "Not in my neighborhood council,"  published in the August 26, 2004 edition of LA Weekly. It's been 12 years since that article came out, and a lot has changed, but the overview of how the councils were formed out of a mass of confusion and self-contradictory rules was true back then and continues to define us even now. Here's just one example. The legal requirement was that each neighborhood council be diverse, but the law didn't explain how to reconcile that rule with the reality of voters who select non-diverse governing boards. In practice, the city government has figured out that allowing the voters to select their own representatives, no matter how non-diverse they may be, is the way to go. 

An issue that Greene pointed out was the tension between competing ideals: the neighborhood council as the people's lobbyist vs. the neighborhood council as just another of the city's governmental go-alongs. (As an example of this tension, imagine how a council operating as the people's lobbyist would have handled the Seabreeze scandal. The question should at least have appeared on the agenda!) 

I suspect that it is these built in contradictions that continue to drive the discussion of what a neighborhood council should be, and in particular, how we should define who gets to vote in a neighborhood council's election. I've presented an argument that limiting voting rights to residents of the neighborhood council district makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Still, I would be the first to admit that my proposal limits the scope of participation at the electoral level. 

My argument was that limiting electoral participation strengthened the effectiveness of each council by defining it as the true spokesman for a particular group of residents. Specifically, your City Council representative understands that you represent his constituency when he hears from you. To the extent that he sees you as a statistical sample of his entire voting constituency, he will take your views seriously. 

The alternative -- wider participation by geographic outsiders -- certainly broadens the scope of who can play in any one council. Whether it ultimately improves city government or lessens the effectiveness of the councils by making them look less representative to the members of the City Council is one key question. The other key question is whether the current definition is so broad that it seriously harms our ability to do business. I think Dr Wiseman has sketched out his vision of a broader system for stakeholder status quite nicely. I suspect that ultimately, our disagreement on this point is a value judgment. I can't prove that he is wrong because his argument is logical. My argument is equally logical, but based on a different vision of what the councils are for. 

One thought that keeps occurring to me is that our neighborhood councils are way too large, particularly when you think about a neighborhood unit that is designed to prepare for a large disaster. A population much larger than about 4000 is getting to be too big. A group of 4-5000 people is optimum for citizen participation; at least some studies have suggested this. Instead, we have neighborhood councils that range from about 20,000 up to four and five times this number. Lots of smaller councils with proportionately smaller budgets would be better for disaster preparedness and, I suspect, for citizen participation. How such a system would work with regard to City Council relationships is a harder question, to be left for another day. 

The idea here is not to pound on theoretical niceties, but to consider the practicalities. If our city had a thousand small groups instead of about a hundred large groups, the smaller groups would be getting lots more done in the aggregate. Yes, we would have to develop better regional and citywide alliances, but at least we would have a chance to do great things. It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that smaller councils would be more likely to represent the immediate concerns of residents rather than trying to be all things to all people. 

One other thought. I notice that a lot of neighborhood councils, including those in my own region, take a lot of time and resources to communicate to their stakeholders. Unfortunately, they seem to be spending the most effort just in communicating their own existence. It's not a bad idea to use your communications resources to build up the number of participants, but this is just the first part of what should be the goal. The next part is to become the go-to organization for your constituents to voice their concerns. But you're still not done. The real goal is to turn the information you've received from your constituents into political power being used on behalf of their views. 

Communications is not the game. It's just one tool. Political power used on behalf of your constituents is the goal.

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

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LABOR ON IMMIGRATION-Maria Elena Durazo knows about immigrant workers, labor and civil rights. She has been the hospitality union UNITE HERE’s General Vice President for Immigration, Civil Rights and Diversity since 2014. Before that she was the first woman executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents 600,000 workers, many of whom are immigrants and Latinos. She became a force for labor and living standards in the nation’s second-largest city -- and a thought-leader for the rest of the nation. 

When she was growing up, Durazo’s farm-worker family picked crops up and down the West Coast. Recalling that time, she told film maker Jesús Treviño, “As migrant farm workers, my dad would load us up on a flatbed truck and we would go from town to town and pick whatever crop was coming up. I think of my dad when he had to negotiate with contratistas [contractors]. I knew we worked so hard and the contratistas were chiseling us down to pennies. What was pennies to them meant food on the table for us.” 

Durazo spoke with Capital & Main about the threats to working people and immigrants from a new Trump administration -- and how to fight back. 

Capital & Main: Let’s begin with the Big Question. What do you see as the next battle fronts for labor and immigration -- what needs defending? 

Maria Elena Durazo: There is a great degree of worry about Trump giving permission to do harm in our communities, to immigrant families and immigrant neighborhoods–permission for people to attack, to harass kids, adults. 

Our job in the labor movement is to create safe-work places. Here in Los Angeles, and in a number of cities, officials are standing up and saying we’re not going to allow our local police to cooperate with ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.] Our schools are saying we’re not going to allow ICE to come in. 

Families have an earthquake plan. Who do you call? How do you react? How do we protect ourselves? That’s the very first level, and we have to give confidence to our communities. We know how to be safe. Let’s remember that and do that stuff right away. 

C&M: The president-elect has said he intends to cut federal funds to cities that don’t collaborate with federal authorities on immigration policies. Local municipalities are saying no—Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has staked out his position–but what happens? Los Angeles could lose $500 million this fiscal year. 

MED: Remember the threats around apartheid? There were threats that pension funds in cities that divested from South Africa would be breaking the law…threats of lawsuits. Then divestment happened across the board. But it took a few to start it, to have the courage to say we’re not going to be threatened that way. 

C&M: Some people called President Obama the “deporter-in-chief”—news reports cite 2.4 million “removals” during his administration. Is that title fair? 

MED: He certainly dramatically increased the number of border patrol agents. We in the labor and immigrant rights movement had big clashes with President Obama. He did try to do a version of [having] local law enforcement cooperate with ICE. We fought that. 

At first he didn’t agree with giving deferred action to young people. ( DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  -- the Dreamers.) We pushed back, and he eventually agreed with it. He tried very hard to get a complete overhaul of the immigration laws and immigration system. He tried in his way. We certainly pushed in our way. We got as far as bipartisan Senate approval of a piece of legislation.

Other Republicans were adamant about blocking him at every single step. He only got as far as the enforcement part of it, which is why he was given the title. But other than DACA, he was never able to get the other pieces of legislative immigration reform. 

C&M: What lies ahead for the DACA students? There are some 750,000 young people completing their educations and working under a temporary protected status -- it seems that makes them a very vulnerable population for deportation. 

MED: Unless we fight back harder they present an opportunity for Trump to be able to say, “See? I’m doing things. I told you I was going to do something.” 

C&M: How real is President-elect Trump’s immigration rhetoric –“round them all up”? Should people be as afraid as they feel? 

MED: We should be worried about that. Not just worried, we should be acting on what he pledged to do, and what he continues to say he’s going to do. 

The people that he’s considering for these different [government] positions are very serious. It’s not a threat. It’s a very explicit promise. 

The other danger is to use the term “criminals” as a pretext to deport millions. [Trump] never said the majority of immigrants are hard-working men and women. There are at maximum a few hundred thousand immigrants [and] some that have had a run-in with law enforcement. That’s the pretext for going after millions. That’s the scary part because he knows people in this country could fall for that.

How many civil rights laws in our history have been violated–as recently as George W. Bush, as far back as what was done to Japanese Americans? In the 1950s we had the deportations of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. It wasn’t in the millions, but it certainly was at least in the hundreds of thousands. We’ve been through this. Are we in a position to fight back and refuse? 

C&M: How do we refuse? 

MED: There’s no doubt in my mind we have all the makings across this country to push back and show him. We won marriage equality, we’ve pushed and we’ve won a number of things on the environmental front. 

A million people march in the streets. We’ll disobey and we’ll have solidarity. We’re showing that in Los Angeles. We’re showing that in other cities. We have police chiefs saying they will not cooperate. That’s a very powerful thing that we have on our side. Community-based organizations saying we’re going to set up family safety procedures. The school districts saying, “We’re not going to allow that.” 

I spoke with Reverend James Lawson, the other day -- when I talked to him he said, “We know how to win. We’ve got these victories. Feel proud and great about them. This guy, there’s no way we’re going to let him destroy our country.” 

C&M: Major industries in this country benefit from the immigration system being broken. Are they going to go along with mass deportations– an enormous disruption in the economic system? 

MED: It’s a new opportunity to exploit immigrant workers even more. Wage theft will just go through the roof because there will be such a dramatic increase in this atmosphere of fear. There are sectors of our economy where employers will love it because they’ll be more in control. They know that 12 million people are not going to be deported overnight. But they’re going to take advantage of that fear. 

C&M: A chicken-processing plant in a Southern right-to-work state wouldn’t be happy if all its undocumented workers were deported. 

MED: No, they wouldn’t be happy, but let’s say Trump says, “You’re not going to like that. But how about if I give you unfettered guest workers?” They’ll be provided an alternative on that level. That’s one way that they could look at it. 

Look at these high-tech industry leaders that pretend to be so liberal. What do they want? Guest worker status for “highly skilled” workers -- to be able to have them here, to work them. They don’t care about them being permanently allowed to live in this country. 

There are industries like hospitality, where I expect those employers to defend their work force. In the past they’ve shown courage by publicly being on the side of [immigration] legislation. But they haven’t really taken much risk. Now it’s going to take more risk to defend their work force. Courage.

Leadership. They’re going to have to do more than just sign off on legislation. 

(Bobbi Murray has reported on politics, economics, police reform and health-care issues for Los Angeles magazine, LA Weekly and The Nation. This piece first appeared in Capital & Main.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST COMMENTARY--Think of a typical college town: bars and dispensaries galore, miles of bike lanes and stores that appeal to students. Now think of Westwood: two bars, virtually no bike lanes and full of niche stores like Sur La Table and Paper Source with almost no use for students.

The blame falls on the Westwood Neighborhood Council, which has favored high-end retailers instead of ones serving student interests. The council has a distinct lack of student representation, a problem made worse by the fact that it extended its member term length from two to four years. 

Supply and demand principles should govern Westwood stores instead of the outlandish desire to see expensive, Beverly Hills-type retailers in a part of Los Angeles dominated by university students.

And the problem isn’t just with business. Last year, the neighborhood council opposed creating a bike lane on Westwood Boulevard. A bike lane would benefit students commuting from south of Wilshire Boulevard as well as people traveling to Westwood. Instead, the council somehow devised the logic that a bike lane would actually make the road more dangerous for cyclists. This is like saying, “Let’s not build lanes for cars; it’ll make the road more dangerous for them.” When pressed for explanation, Councilwoman Lisa Chapman did not respond for comment. Contact Chapman or Councilman Paul Koretz if you agree with this logic and give them a hearty congratulations for concocting something so bizarre.

Despite the recent statewide legalization of recreational marijuana, Westwood Neighborhood Council Vice President Sandy Brown opposes the opening of marijuana dispensaries in Westwood. She fears they would harm its retail scene. When pressed on the issue, Brown became defensive and said, “(Students) can’t own the town. The town needs to represent the people who pay the taxes.”

Except students are far from owning the town. If Brown doesn’t want to address students’ desires, she would be more fit to preside over the neighboring Century City where the median age is 46, not the vibrant, young Westwood with a median age of 27. Brown, along with the rest of the neighborhood council, needs to acknowledge Westwood’s plurality of students, better represent them and in turn, attract more students and their money to Westwood.

The neighborhood council should support a recreational marijuana dispensary in Westwood and stop foolishly dismissing an opportunity to raise money for the city, the county and the state, especially considering most marijuana users fall within Westwood’s college-dominated age range. Yet Brown believes she knows best for Westwood, all while disregarding the thousands of students who indirectly pay property taxes through apartment rent, sales tax on purchases and income tax on revenues.

The neighborhood council isn’t the only association trying to keep Westwood from becoming the college town it’s meant to be. Steve Sann, chairman of the Westwood Community Council constantly reminds the community of the two organizations’ differences, but neither of the two councils seem to have students’ interests at heart.

Sann thinks that retail environments thrive with complementary uses to each other and thus, that a marijuana dispensary would offset expensive stores like Sur La Table. He consistently mentions The Grove while providing examples of how Westwood’s retail scene should operate. Once again, a council member neglects Westwood’s college-age demographics and their needs in contrast to those of high-class shoppers.

Westwood has the potential to be a unique place in the west side of LA. In a region full of expensive boutique shops and irritated drivers displeased with bikers and pedestrians, Westwood could have expansive bike lanes and stores and bars that attract students. Westwood could be an alluring college town nestled in a hectic city, but only with the support of the Westwood Neighborhood and Community Councils.

(This Jonathan Friedland perspective was posted originally at The Daily Bruin.) 

Graphic credit: Gwen Hollingsworth/Daily Bruin.

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CAN THEY CO-EXIST?--California is now the capital of liberal America. Along with its neighbors Oregon and Washington, it will be a nation within the nation starting in January when the federal government goes dark. In sharp contrast to much of the rest of the nation, Californians preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. They also voted to extend a state tax surcharge on the wealthy, and adopt local housing and transportation measures along with a slew of local tax increases and bond proposals. 

In other words, California is the opposite of Trumpland. 

The differences go even deeper. For years, conservatives have been saying that a healthy economy depends on low taxes, few regulations and low wages. 

Are conservatives right? At the one end of the scale are Kansas and Texas, with among the nation’s lowest taxes, least regulations and lowest wages. 

At the other end is California, with among the nation’s highest taxes, especially on the wealthy; toughest regulations, particularly when it comes to the environment; most ambitious healthcare system, that insures more than 12 million poor Californians, in partnership with Medicaid; and high wages. 

So according to conservative doctrine, Kansas and Texas ought to be booming, and California ought to be in the pits. 

Actually, it’s just the opposite. 

For several years, Kansas’s rate of economic growth has been the worst in the nation. Last year its economy actually shrank. 

Texas hasn’t been doing all that much better. Its rate of job growth has been below the national average. Retail sales are way down. The value of Texas exports has been dropping. 

But what about so-called over-taxed, over-regulated, high-wage California? 

California leads the nation in the rate of economic growth -- more than twice the national average. If it were a separate nation it would now be the sixth largest economy in the world. Its population has surged to 39 million (up 5 percent since 2010). 

California is home to the nation’s fastest-growing and most innovative industries – entertainment and high tech. It incubates more startups than anywhere else in the world. 

In other words, conservatives have it exactly backwards. 

Why are Kansas and Texas doing so badly, and California so well? 

For one thing, taxes enable states to invest in their people. The University of California is the best system of public higher education in America. Add in the state’s network of community colleges, state colleges, research institutions, and you have an unparalleled source of research, and a powerful engine of upward mobility. 

Kansas and Texas haven’t been investing nearly to the same extent. 

California also provides services to a diverse population, including a large percentage of immigrants. Donald Trump to the contrary, such diversity is a huge plus. Both Hollywood and Silicon Valley have thrived on the ideas and energies of new immigrants. 

Meanwhile, California’s regulations protect the public health and the state’s natural beauty, which also draws people to the state – including talented people who could settle anywhere. 

Wages are high in California because the economy is growing so fast employers have to pay more for workers. That’s not a bad thing. After all, the goal isn’t just growth. It’s a high standard of living. 

In fairness, Texas’s problems are also linked to the oil bust. But that’s really no excuse because Texas has failed to diversify its economy. Here again, it hasn’t made adequate investments. 

California is far from perfect. A housing shortage has driven rents and home prices into the stratosphere. Roads are clogged. Its public schools used to be the best in the nation but are now among the worst – largely because of a proposition approved by voters in 1978 that’s strangled local school financing. Much more needs to be done. 

But overall, the contrast is clear. Economic success depends on tax revenues that go into public investments, and regulations that protect the environment and public health. And true economic success results in high wages. 

I’m not sure how Trumpland and California will coexist in coming years. I’m already hearing murmurs of secession by Golden Staters, and of federal intrusions by the incipient Trump administration. 

But so far, California gives lie to the conservative dictum that low taxes, few regulations, and low wages are the keys economic success. Trumpland should take note.

(Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO WALLED-OFF US--On Tuesday Nov. 8, Californians voted in record numbers to reaffirm our commitment to freedom, openness and really just basic human decency.  This fundamental difference in values offers an alternative future for America and indeed the world.

Civilizations succeed when they open themselves to new ideas and new people from new places. There is nothing great in closing off a country from the world.  Simply compare the backwardness of inward-looking medieval Europe – filled with castle walls – to the flourishing in the open minded Renaissance.

As an alternative to a walled off America, California builds bridges to every corner of the globe.  Every iconic Apple product says “designed in California,” and Hollywood movies inspire millions.  That open and imaginative attitude is exactly what the world needs to build a bright future.

Today, Californians work to automate driving, pioneer personalized medicine and colonize Mars. Under Gov. Jerry Brown’s leadership, California’s economy has growth to the sixth largest economy in the world, and our once-troubled state finances have stabilized.

Yes, California still has its share of problems.  Housing costs prohibit all but the creative elite from affording life in too much of coastal California.  Too many of our roads are chock full of potholes. The quality of too many of our kids’ schools is too often a function of the zip code they live in.  And a lingering drought challenges us to do more to prepare for an uncertain water future.

Yet fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with California that cannot be addressed by what is right with California.  Gov. Brown’s call for common sense reforms could lower housing costs. New sensors can map potholes radically more affordably and comprehensively. 

The web can connect students with opportunities unimaginable a generation ago and help us move beyond our one-size-fits-all public education system. And new data technologies enable new ways to measure and thus better manage California’s precious water resources. 

Today there is a global crisis of confidence in our basic public institutions. Meanwhile, ultimately none of those promising pilots linked above are certain.  Ultimately, they simply highlight a new frontier for public problem solving. Of course, the pioneers’ journey by land and sea to California was far from certain as well.

Today’s challenges offer a golden opportunity for Californians to bring that pioneering spirit to bear on our pressing public problems.  America – and indeed the world – needs nothing less from California today.

(Patrick Atwater is an author, entrepreneur and frequent Calbuzz commentator.  He currently runs a big water data project to prepare California to adapt to our historic drought and whatever the future holds. This perspective was posted first at Cal Buzz.) 

-cw 

ALPERN AT LARGE--With all due respect to those who live in a housing project, I think it's safe to say that most of us want to live in a home, and not in a beehive.  And with all due respect to those who live in Manhattan or in Downtown LA, I think it's safe to say that most of us would move to those places if we wanted to truly live there. 

Similarly, when we ask for a drink of water, we don't want to be firehosed and swept off our feet.

We're in a war of words, a war of paradigms, and a war of math, in the City of the Angels. 

Example #1: Mass transit always leads to overdevelopment and traffic, and/or fighting mass transit prevents overdevelopment and traffic. 

As time and experience allows us to learn the difference between our fears and our realities, we've seen mass transit and freeways through bad neighborhoods not spruce up the housing and traffic, and we've seen mass transit and freeways through good neighborhoods jack up overdevelopment and traffic. 

Which is why our mayor deserves kudos for being a transportation advocate, but also deserves scathing criticism for overdevelopment.  Hollywood needs its Red Line, and a north-south link to the developing Purple Line Subway and Crenshaw/LAX light rail line, but then-Councilmember Eric Garcetti of Hollywood pushed through OVERdevelopment. 

In other words, despite the good that Garcetti has done for Hollywood, he's also done some bad ... and it's OK for us to both praise and scorn him for his good and bad efforts, respectively (and respectfully). 

Similarly, with respect to traffic, those who fought the Expo Line tooth and nail (make it go underground from Overland to Sepulveda, even if it costs $300 million and the LADOT doesn't support it!) also fought the rail bridges.  The LADOT worked with electeds to get the Sepulveda rail bridge (which is beautiful and works well), but now we've got a traffic problem on Overland. 

Good job, anti-Expo NIMBY's, because the Expo Line Authority DID have a plan to elevate the Expo Line at Overland, and the LADOT recommended a rail bridge there, but by insisting that everything be underground, we now have a street level Expo Line crossing at Overland that is the problem everyone knew it would be. 

So let's get over the "mass transit always leads to this, or fighting mass transit leads to that", because common sense comes from all over, and stupidity, greed, and narcissism also comes from all over. 

Example #2: Addressing Affordable Housing always leads to megadevelopment, and we've got to get used to big monster projects. 

Nonsense.  Poppycock.  Garbage.  We've created stupid megadevelopment before mass transit, and we're doing it during mass transit, and if we'd voted down Measure M and voted to end all new mass transit tomorrow, our city leaders and its crony-capitalism developer clique would still advocate for overdevelopment. 

No one but NO ONE has a realistic chance of fighting a big development downtown, or on the Wilshire corridor, or wherever a "downtown" atmosphere/planning zone is SUPPOSED to be, but there's always a fight to avoid making the City into a series of Downtowns and create a new traffic jam all over again. 

And I suppose that uberdeveloper Pamela Day, an acolyte of the "Alan Casden school of overdevelopment" deserves a big "thank you" for her honesty when she spoke her true feelings at a Planning town hall regarding an 80+ foot-tall project in a 30-40-foot-tall corridor about how she thought Mar Vista was a lousy place to live, and insulted Mar Vistans as a whole. 

Fortunately, we've got Councilmember Mike Bonin and his team to remind Ms. Day and her team that 80+ foot-tall projects is still too damned high in the suburbs, and that her financial betterment isn't the driving force as to whether her project should be approved, and that infuriating the neighbors while threatening traffic, parking, and blocking out the sun is probably a bad, bad, BAD idea. 

Similar to signage, there's proper compromise, and then there's urban blight.  And if the public sees a bad idea, then the public's elected leaders should represent them. 

People want HOMES and NOT PROJECTS.  Housing, not beehives.  We could create 2-4 story-tall projects throughout the city (and both north AND south of the I-10 freeway!) to create sustainable, delightful, and happy apartments, condos, and townhomes to address the needs of those who want a place to call "home". 

And when we create tall megadevelopments, they should be located where they make sense, and require lots of mitigation to acknowledge the impacts these megadevelopments have on their taxpaying neighbors (who still, believe it or not, have rights, too). 

Example #3: The sidewalks are too expensive to be fixed, and too challenging a project to fix in 5-7 years. 

One of the main reasons that Angelenos had some misgivings about Measure M was that it didn't fix the sidewalks quick enough, and provide enough rapid funding to address this horrible problem.  But Measure M was one of the best ways to get some funding, and to get the ball rolling for private-public and other funding initiatives, to address our sidewalks.  So it was passed. 

But today, after the bruising and drama-laden election cycle that ended in November 2016, we've got new battles to fight. 

Any and ALL mitigation for new light rail lines and rapid bus lines should involve and include a prioritization of fixing the major commercial corridors adjacent to all major rail and bus stops--and with a timeframe of 3-5 years. 

Street Services, Public Works, the LADOT, Metro, and Neighborhood Councils should derive lists of the most major sidewalk fixes (and ADA-compliant sidewalk carveouts for the handicapped and for bicycles to reach their destinations) with a 3-5 year goal of fixing those problems first. 

And NO development, particularly one with variances, should be allowed to escape or avoid the sidewalk repair mitigation funding requirements needed to resolve a "War on Sidewalk Safety". 

Commercial/business zones, family-friendly neighborhoods, areas fighting urban blight, and mass transit all have something in common:  keep the sidewalks safe, clean, and user-friendly. 

And with spring 2017, with all of its City Council races, and the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative on the ballot, the time is NOW to demand that the right balance of common sense be applied to ensure we build (but don't overbuild) the right Los Angeles for the 21st Century.

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

-cw

EASTSIDER-Is homelessness a real problem in LA? You betchy. Should we do something about it? Of course. Can the LA City Council handle the problem? So far, indications aren’t good. 

In the run up to passing a $1.2 billion dollar bond measure on November 8, the LA City Council was all over the problem of homelessness. I mean, we had committees, plans, pontification and platitudes galore. Political fodder of the highest order, but what was underneath the rhetoric? 

Speaking as a recovering bureaucrat, I have noticed that public agencies handle their documents in two very different ways. When they are serious and want to do something odious, the documents are usually a black and white memo, full of technical jargon and indecipherable gobbledygook. On the other hand, when they want to sell snow in the wintertime to the public, it’s an entirely different deal. In this case, they write huge full color documents, with pretty color charts and graphs and tons of headings and subheadings which prove that they know what they are doing and so you should trust them. The City’s Comprehensive Homeless Strategy is a shining example, and you can find it here.  

Be forewarned, it will take a while to even load the document in your browser, since it is a 300 page piece of dazzling you know what. The glitz starts on page 7 and goes on and on. I found a particularly pretty color flow chart on page 18 that shows all the public and private agencies that work together on this knotty problem. 

For a shorter and even flashier version, check out the Mayor’s summary version of how the Mayor is single handedly transforming LA into the vanguard of homelessness solutions. 

If you look at the fine print, the City of Los Angeles has already pledged allocating $100 million in the budget towards the problem, which they recognized was a drop in the bucket. The Committee working on this was led by no other than Jose Huizar, whose PLUM Committee has created plenty of homelessness by blessing every developer’s dream over the last few years. 

First Reports. 

A key part of the City’s Plan has been to use City owned property to provide quick housing. Indeed, City Controller Ron Galperin has developed a very cool database to map the approximately 9000 city properties which may be underutilized. For a good read on how this came to happen and how it works, check out this article at The Planning Report. 

After all this, the first public report on the homeless strategy progress was released by the Homeless Strategy Committee on November 7. It’s a good example of a “serious” memo, black and white, full of technical jargon. 

The reason for the report’s awkward language is pretty clear -- the core first steps relating to “crisis response” efforts aren’t going that well. As the LA Times  put it, “Proposals for storage lockers and toilets for street dwellers are stalled, new shelter capacity is being added at a trickle, and the city bureaucracy moving more slowly than some council members expected.” 

Buried in the report is the fact that it was community opposition that derailed storage facilities in Venice and San Pedro, and CD 9’s La Opinion site turned out to be no good “due to the rehabilitation cost.” 

Also, the 9^th District Court of Appeals torpedoed the Council’s hot flash vision of a Citywide Safe Parking Program. So back to the drawing board on that one. 

You have to wonder how much use Ron Galperin’s database of city owned properties is going to be in the face of all of this pushback. Using city owned properties was a key element in providing supportive housing for the homeless. 

Speaking of Quick Homeless Housing. 

Part of phase one of the City’s ambitious 300 page Comprehensive Homeless Strategy was to provide quick, permanent supportive homeless housing on some 12 city-owned parcels. A big part of this plan was to establish a list of prequalified developers who could quickly build on those parcels. This list ultimately included 39 developers and recommendations for the disposition of the twelve parcels. 

Well, that didn’t last long. In a mid-November move, the recommendations had suddenly winnowed down to four developers, and the types of housing now magically include “Permanent Supportive Housing, Affordable Multifamily Housing, Mixed-Income Housing, Affordable Homeownership,” and my favorite, “Innovative Methods of Housing.” 

Also, the 12 parcels are now down to 10, with the staff recommendation that the other two parcels be sold off on the grounds that “there are no recommended proposals for these sites.” The money, of course, will go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. 

So what we are left with in the initial phases of LA City’s master plan for homelessness are 4 developers who are authorized to build affordable housing or anything “innovative.” Great. 

What Can We Expect for Our $1.2 Billion Bond? 

In a heartwarming, if naive expression of faith, over 76% of the voters approved Measure HHH on November 8, authorizing the sale of $1.2 billion in bonds to pay for about 10,000 units of affordable permanent-supportive housing in the next 10 years. It is the major long-term component of the City’s Comprehensive Homeless Strategy. 

Take a look at KPPC’s article on 10 things you need to know about measure HHH  to see what the promises were in hyping the bond measure, as well as the fears. 

If you contrast the bond measure rhetoric with what the City has actually done so far, the disconnect looms like the Grand Canyon. Affordable housing is not permanent-supportive housing; it’s simply another opportunity for real estate developers to make money building more housing. And if the 12 parcels already identified have shrunk to 10 already, where are all of these 10,000 units going to be built? Furthermore, if you believe the cost per unit for this housing, then I invite you to my lottery for the 6^th Street Bridge. 

Don’t misunderstand. Homelessness is really important, but so far, the efforts of the Council don’t seem to be remotely on track to provide the 500 units of supportive housing and key “crisis response” that was promised. As the City stated in the Executive Summary of their very own Comprehensive Homeless Strategy document: 

“In the short-term, the City must enhance its existing homeless shelter system and transform shelter beds into bridge housing by including homeless case management and integrating supportive health and social services from the County at appropriate levels of caseload via the CES.” 

Since the ability to sell bonds is not a requirement to sell the bonds, I urge all Angelenos to closely monitor the Mayor/City Council machine as they continue to try and implement their grand design. If they can’t get it right on what they have already promised to do without the bond money, maybe they should not sell bonds at all until and unless they get their act together. 

This should be about our surging homeless population, not politics as usual. 

One can dream...

(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.) Photo: Elizabeth Daniels/LA Curbed.

Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TRUMP’S MOST IMPORTANT PICK-As the Trump Transition careens along, proposing that free speech be sanctioned by depriving Americans their U.S. citizenship, we come to the most important appointment – California’s Steven Mnuchin as Secretary of Treasury. 

As explained previously in a CityWatch article, Little Timmy Giethner turned Obama’s Administration into an American tragedy, setting the stage for the rise of Trumpism. Rather than risk being turned into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife for looking back upon destruction, let’s affix our gaze to the future. 

What are the primary duties of the Secretary of the Treasury? 

(1) Protect the Price System (aka Price Structure.) 

(2) Institute policies to ameliorate the swings of the business cycle. Since we are in a mild upswing, the focus is to protect the economy from the down phase, i.e. recession.

The Price System. 

Neither businessmen nor family members can make wise economic decisions without knowing the actual value of everything. If a homeowner is deceived into believing that the true value of healthcare insurance is $1,500 per month when it is only $800 per month, he is losing $700 per month. That is $8,400 per year which simply disappears from his wealth and he gets nothing in return. 

On the other hand, if the homeowner is deceived into believing that a healthcare plan will insure his family for only $300 per month, but when a catastrophic illness befalls the family, he discovers that it pays only 45% of the medical bills, bankruptcy follows the illness. 

The law of supply and demand is often invoked along with some quasi-religious belief that if everyone is allowed to lie their heads off about the value of everything, the law of supply and demand will magically arrive at the correct price for everything. Troglodytes who adhere to this theory oppose regulations which would keep false data out of the Price System. Wall Street is filled with thieves who want no regulations on their power to lie, cheat, manipulate and thereby financially devastate the American people. 

We saw a fine example of the destruction of the Price System during the Subprime Mortgage frauds where Wall Street firms forced the rating agencies like Standard and Poor to rate junk securities as top grade. This practice was widespread when Henry Merritt "Hank" Paulson, Jr., the last Secretary of the Treasury, who was a scion of Goldman Sachs, reigned supreme in the Bush Administration. As a result of Hank’s treachery, America lost $22 trillion in wealth, but we hasten to add that Little Timmy Geithner gets more than honorable mention in guaranteeing that we’d never have a real recovery. 

The first step to protect the Price System is for Secretary Mnuchin to propose a stronger Glass-Steagall law to replace the laughable Dodd-Frank Act. Investment firms need to be restricted to their vital role of raising capital from sophisticated investors for needed projects. They need to be restricted not only as a means to stop trillions of dollars in fraud, but also to make certain that the capitalist system has a functioning institution for raising capital. That can only happen when investment houses have no access to commercial banking funds. 

Needless to say, many volumes can be written about protecting the Price System, especially for a society which has just elected a predatory real estate developer to be President. Even prior to the arrival of Trumpism, however, the fraud which has become pandemic in our financial institutions was rotting our economic system: ninety percent of all productivity increases since the Crash of 2008 have gone to the top One Percent. 

Secretary Mnuchin’s Duty is to Tame the Business Cycle. 

The upswing in the economy is a dangerous return to the Business Cycle with its Booms and Busts. Due to the reactionary economic policies of little Timmy Geithner, the Obama Administration failed to institutionalize additional safeguards to modulate the next Bust Phase. For some reason, people habitually believe that the Boom Phase will last forever. Let’s be blunt about who warned the world that the Boom Phase of any economy has a short life span. GOD told us and GOD told us what to do. People are usually surprised to discover that GOD is the true father of Keynesian Economics. 

Way back then, Pharaoh’s dream alerted him to the short life span of the good times. When he did not understand the significance of his dream where the seven lean cows ate the seven fat cows and remained lean, Joseph instructed Pharaoh in the first principle of Keynesian Economics. The wise Pharaoh saves during the fat years so that he can release grain from the storehouses during the lean years and avoid famine. Secretary Mnuchin’s Torah portion seems to have been Parashat Vayaeshev (Genesis 37.1 - 40.23) which stops just before the section where Joseph explains the basics of Keynesian economics to Pharaoh. Shall we mystically wonder whether Secretary Mnuchin is standing on the threshold of perfidy or greatness? Did he peak ahead to Genesis 41 et seq.? 

What Economic Policies Should Mnuchin Institute for the Trump Administration? 

While the Trump is obsessed with the idea that the boom phase of the business cycle will not only be infinite but should be 6% growth per year, Secretary Mnuchin’s real duty is to institute programs to prepare for the famine years. 

The income level on which Social Security contributions are based, for example, needs to be raised immediately. Currently, it stops at an income of $118,500 per year. Social Security payments protect businesses when the economy hits a down turn, but unless the government has saved more funds during the fat years by raising the income level for contributions, the fund will not have accumulated enough money to increase Social Security payments. This measure should have been undertaken in January 2010, but it could not be done due to Little Timmy Geithner’s reactionary policies. 

Because private pensions have all but evaporated for the average citizen, Social Security payments need to increase by 5% to 10% per year each over and above the annual increase of the CPI. The problem is that first we needed the seven fat years of increased contributions before we can responsibly increase payments. We do not have that accumulation of cash. 

Secretary Mnuchin faces a crisis. The recession will arrive before he has enough time to collect sufficiently more Social Security contributions to have instituted these increased payments. Thus, Secretary Mnuchin needs to maximize contributions as fast as possible so that the increased payments can begin as the recession starts. Ideally, the legislation which increases the contributions will also set an objective benchmark for when to start the increased Social Security payments. Keynesian mechanisms function best when they are automatic, as the politicians are mostly economic ignoramuses who think spending should be cut when a recession starts. 

How to Interface Mercantilism with Modern Economics 

From what one can tell, Trump’s plan to make America Great Again is a reversion to the Mercantilism of the 1500s to 1600s. That places Trumpism in direct conflict Secretary Mnuchin’s duty to modulate the severity of the Boom and Bust Phases of the Business Cycle. 

Will Mnuchin side with the goniff impulsive of Trumpism or will he be a mensch who promotes the general welfare of human beings?

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

RANTZ & RAVES--That special time between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year brings families together from around the country and the world in celebration of our annual holidays. I can remember when I was a youngster and my Mom and Dad would gather me and my brother together with our aunts and uncles and cousins for great feasts and family holiday fun times. (Photo above: Holiday decorations at the May Company on Miracle Mile in 1940’s.) 

There was Uncle Eddie and Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe and Aunt Tina and Aunt Olga and Uncles Bill and Mitchell and so many others that impressed me during those early years of my life in Los Angeles. My cousins Sharon and Joe and Eddie and Annie and Mary and Beth and Kenny and so many others. Sadly many have passed and others have grown old with time. Old like I am feeling this time of the year. 

Those Good Old Days are blazed deep in my memory and come to the surface as our annual year-end celebrations approach. During those years, Los Angeles was a place where you called your adult neighbors Mr. and Mrs. There was no calling them by their first name. It was called respect for the adults in the neighborhood. 

It was a time when Mom would yell from the front porch of the Hollywood apartment at dusk … ‘Dennis and Vincent come home for dinner.’ When the sun went down, it was a time when all moms and dads gathered for dinner with the family. We would all enjoy mom’s cooking. Could Mom cook! 

All sorts of delicious food made fresh. There was no microwave cooking just fresh food cooked by Mom in her special tasty way. Cooking with love for her family. That was long ago and a much better time in Los Angeles and the world. 

There was Black and White TV, no cell phones or Internet. It was a time when people appreciated each other and gathered in friendship on a regular schedule. It was a time with great Love and Happiness. Shopping with the Sear’s catalog and J.C. Penny, May Company, Bullocks, Orbachs and Robinsons and the Broadway on Wilshire Blvd that was called the Miracle Mile. A time when Blue Chip and S&H Green Stamps were given out at gas stations where you would receive service including water, oil and tire pressure checks. Fedmart and Zody’s department stores were discount places to purchase a variety of items.   A great time in the City of the Angels. 

Traffic would flow smoothly and you could travel from the San Fernando Valley to Downtown Los Angeles on the 101 Freeway without traffic gridlock most of the day and evening. What happened to all that goodness and happiness and neighborly respect for each other? 

A time when hubcaps were stolen and not cars. A time without vicious gangs and deranged individuals that would shoot and kill police officers just because they wanted to. 

A time when a national election would take place and the will of the people would be respected and not generate into protests including the blocking of freeways. 

It is a long time past and a memory that many readers can relate to. Readers like the sweet couple I recently met at Costco … one of my favorite stores … that mentioned to me that they enjoyed reading my RantZ and RaveZ column. 

I wish each or you a Safe, Merry and Happy Holiday season.   

While I get very sentimental this time of the year, I can assure you that my RantZ will continue following the holidays. 

I welcome your comments, observations and concerns at [email protected].

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

-cw

THE REAL DEAL SPECIAL REPORT-In the first installation of TRD’s series on the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, we explain the underlying problems with LA’s planning process. We take a look at the issues that gave NII fertile ground to build a movement. Stay tuned this week as we explore the implications of the March ballot measure in depth. 

It took 18 months, four public hearings, and at least $100,000 for developer CityView to get a 160-unit student housing complex entitled in University Park, just a mile northeast of the dorm-starved USC.

And this was a lucky one, according to Con Howe, (photo above: right) managing director of the firm’s Los Angeles fund and a former Planning Director. The project had no opponents, he said. If there were protests, the process would’ve dragged on, despite the fact that the site was already zoned for commercial uses. 

As NIMBYs square off against developers over the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative — a measure that would put the brakes on most development in the city for two full years — they can at least all agree on one thing: LA’s zoning is a profound mess. 

But fixing LA’s arduous entitlement process, outdated community plans and antiquated zoning code will not happen overnight. And certainly not through a two-year suspension on developments, opponents of the ballot measure say. 

“There’s just no quick way to do it,” said Christian Redfearn, a professor of real estate and urban policy at USC. In order to “rework the land use process,” he explained, communities need to not only modernize their plans but also put in place guidelines for more by-right opportunities that minimize so-called “spot-zoning,” the process by which the city approves, piecemeal, developers’ requests for exemptions to the zoning code. The subjective nature of the spot-zoning process is one of the NII’s main rallying cries.  

Reworking the system is not easy, considering LA has 35 individual community plans, weighed down by countless specific plans, overlays and other conditions. The county’s zoning code itself has not been updated since 1946. 

“It’s just a dysfunctional process,” said Gail Goldberg, (photo above: left) the executive director of the Urban Land Institute, who was an LA Planning Director between 2006 and 2010. “I don’t know when or where it went wrong.” 

Plans, Overlays, Qs, oh my. 

Under the state-mandated General Plan, there are 35 community plans that lay out the vision for LA’s land use infrastructure. Ideally, these plans should be updated every five years to address changing demographics, according to Howe, who served as the city’s Planning Director for 13 years, from 1992 to 2005. 

Under his tenure, 33 of the 35 community plans were updated. By the time Goldberg took office in 2006, they were due for another round of modernization. At first, she was granted all the resources to start the process. Then, the recession hit. 

“The minute the economy wasn’t great, the first place they cut was planning,” she said. “If they’re going to update the plan now, [the Council] must commit to funding not only this year, but next year and the year after that. It’s a difficult thing to guarantee.” 

According to Goldberg, 29 of LA’s 35 plans are currently more than 15 years old. 

Beyond money, updating the plan would entail heavy input from the community and approval from City Council. This brings up the costliest factor: time. Goldberg worked on 10 plans during her time in the department. By the time she left, only two were adopted. 

Community plans, according to city planner Deborah Kahen, were originally intended to be updated in accordance with the zoning code; the two would go hand-in-hand. A community plan would lay out the vision for a certain region, and the zoning code would record the nitty-gritty logistics. 

But when it was first written after World War II, the very sparse code was oriented toward cars and suburban development, said Kahen, who works for the re: code LA program, which was created by the Comprehensive Zoning Code Revision Ordinance to rewrite the code. 

These old zones, she said, can’t accommodate modern needs such as sidewalks or signage, so areas instead lobby City Hall or the Planning Department to create specific plans and overlay zones.

In other words, instead of amending the code, city planners have added hundreds of pages of site-specific conditions. Two-thirds of the city is now covered in more than just the zoning code.  

“For example, there could be a place that’s zoned R4  -- high-density multifamily. But it could have something called a ‘Q condition,’ which is not easy to find in the books. It’ll say ‘for this region, R4 must have retail,’” Kahen said.  “And it’s kind of mind blowing because it’s obviously zoned for multifamily.” 

It’s re: code’s job, therefore, to reduce the need for such conditions — sometimes referred to as the phantom city code — so that zones alone could keep up with modern community plans. 

Fearing the “D” 

In LA, density is a political matter. 

Up until 1960, LA had a residential capacity of 10 million people, planning expert Greg Morrow said in Slate. But as real estate politics shifted toward the stronghold of homeowners associations, capacity diminished. Between the 60s and the early 2000s, LA was effectively “downzoned” by 60 percent, his findings show. 

Satisfying the dominant single-family interests of the time, height restrictions were enacted and commercial zones were made less flexible. The heaviest blow, however, came in 1986. Proposition U, which failed in the City Council but passed on the ballot, reduced the floor-area ratio of 85 percent of L.A.’s commercial zones by half. 

Los Angeles has yet to rebound from its downzoning in the latter half of the 20th century. Findings from a recent study by C. J. Gabbe, a recent PhD graduate of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, show that between 2002 and 2014, only about 1.1 percent of LA’s total land area had been upzoned. 

“The upzoning that occurred since 2002 to present day was a relative blip compared to the massive downzoning in the decades prior to that,” he told TRD. 

Experts project that modern-day zoning in LA can house up to 4.2 million people -- this means that LA is already at 95 percent capacity, considering its current population of more than 4 million, according to a January report published by the city. 

“Disingenuous” motives 

The NII’s Coalition to Preserve LA, which did not respond to requests to comment for this article, believe a two-year moratorium on all developments seeking a zone change will light a fire under the Council.

But some of NII’s biggest players have been instrumental in stalling planning progress in the past, detractors say. NII’s benefactor, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, hired the attorney who single-handedly defeated the Hollywood Plan update to spearhead its latest litigation against Crescent Heights, the Miami-based developer behind the Palladium Towers (photo, left) project on Sunset Boulevard. The attorney, Robert Silverstein, is known, unofficially, as LA’s most formidable NIMBY crusader. 

Sources said the AHF’s Michael Weinstein was also involved in some capacity in the fight against the Hollywood community plan update, but this could not be confirmed, and AHF and the Coalition to Preserve LA did not respond to requests for comment. 

In any case, the neighborhood associations that sued with Silverstein against the Hollywood plan were successful. In late 2013, LA County Superior Court Judge Allan Goodman ruled that city leaders did not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act when they approved the plan, which addressed the area’s projected population growth and aimed to increase density in transit zones, such as the intersection of Sunset and Vine. 

Now, Hollywood is back to using its 1988 community plan, after the city spent more than a dozen years trying to revamp it, according to Goldberg. 

“It’s just disingenuous,” said Howe, the former Planning Director. “The [planning] department spent years on the update. There were over 60 public workshops and hearings and meetings and it was approved through a legal process, and then City Council, and then these people sued.” 

Slow progress 

In addition to curbing “luxury mega-projects that cause traffic gridlock,” the controversial March ballot measure would “make the City Council do its job, by creating a rational citywide plan for Los Angeles,” the Coalition to Preserve LA’s reads. 

The reality is that the city has already taken steps toward a gradual overhaul of the current system. It just may not be happening as fast as the NII — or as developers — would like it to. 

There’s the Comprehensive Zoning Code Revision Ordinance, signed by the Council in 2012. The policy assures funding for five years of Planning Department activity to update the 70-year-old zoning code. Then there’s the updates to the he city’s 35 community plans, as well as the broader General Plan, for which Mayor Eric Garcetti will hire 28 new planners. The new staff members will cost the city about $4.2 million a year. 

Still, critics say these changes fall short of immediately addressing the city’s dire affordable housing shortage. 

Looking out for the little guy  

While developers may be gung-ho for higher building capacities, density alone will not heal LA It takes community discussions, which are easier when the rules are clear. The real need, planners say, is just a little bit of certainty, from which both community members — yes, even NIMBYs — and builders can benefit. 

“We’re not saying every project should be by-right,” Howe said. “No one should be able to drop an application on the desk of the planning department and say, ‘Here it is.’ You’re supposed to talk about it.” 

Right now, only the developers with the resources and money to hire the most clever land use consultants can get their projects through. The dubious Sea Breeze development is a prime example of this flaw. In pursuing approval for the 352-unit development, developer Samuel Leung funneled $600,000 in campaign contributions to local politicians through his employees, friends and relatives, according to an October investigation by the LA Times. If the rules are clearer, Goldberg said, smaller builders will also be able to present their visions for the city. 

“It’s hard to build trust,” Goldberg said. “But I believe you can build consensus around the plan if you bring all the right people to the table.” 

Updating community plans does not mean resident input will be deemed obsolete. It is embedded in not only the zoning process but also the very ethos of the city, she said.  

“There’s never going to be a situation where some can just open up their plans and say ‘alright, I’m gonna set up shop and build right here’ — despite what development opponents may fear.” 

(Cathaleen Chen is a national web reporter for The Real Deal, where this piece was first posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.