ALPERN AT LARGE--We just had one of the most important elections that no one paid much attention to, and which moved the LAUSD towards reform...and moved Angeleno parents and their children towards self-sufficiency. So here's a Nota Bene for you Millennials and post-Millennials (and even pre-Millennials!):  learn to take care of yourselves!

BELL VIEW--Yesterday morning LAPD took a homeless man from the front seat of my neighbor's car. My neighbor noticed him as he loaded his kid's into their car seats. The man was asleep, oblivious, he did not stir. My neighbor waited for LAPD on his front lawn, with a baseball bat in his hand. Just in case. 

RIDERS HAVE RIGHTS TOO-Ridership on Metro Buses is declining rapidly and in large percentages. Metro is in a tailspin. To reverse this decline, the mindset of Metro and the cities the buses pass through must change. Some of the changes must be directed to the routes, how often the buses run, how early and how late. Thinking must also shift to what occurs outside the bus when riders are approaching or leaving a bus stop, how well placed the stop is, how comfortable the stop is for the rider, and the experiences riders have when boarding and exiting a bus.  

POLITICS--California Democrats on Friday kicked off their three-day convention with a "raucous start" in Sacramento, where a wave of single-payer advocates demanded the party work towards a system that makes healthcare a human right. 

The gathering comes amid growing momentum nationwide for a single-payer, or Medicare-for-All, healthcare system, and as the Republican's widely scorned American Healthcare Act (AHCA) is days away from receiving its potentially problematic Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assessment.

In a evening rally and march that went from the capitol to the Sacramento Convention Center, a crowd of nurses and other healthcare activists urged support for SB562—the advancing Healthy California Act—which would create a universal health system for Californians, and could "send a message" and "be a catalyst for the nation."

Here’s the CalBuzz version of what happened. 

Of the fight for single payer, RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, which organized the action, thinks California Democrats "cannot be in denial anymore that this is a movement that can primary them."

DeMoro, who is also executive director of National Nurses United (NNU), took to Twitter to capture speeches at the rally and images of the sign-carrying marchers:

Their message, however, was not warmly received by California Democratic Party chairman John Burton.

In fact, he "had nothing but F-bombs and sarcasm for the protesters who disrupted the welcome reception of the California Democratic Convention Friday, calling for universal healthcare and chanting 'Hey hey, ho ho, corporate Dems have got to go,'" Bay Area News Group reported.

Video captured and posted to Twitter by Politico reporter David Siders shows Burton telling them to "shut the fuck up or go outside."

"Parade all you want, but unless we put it on the ballot or elect new Democrats you can walk up and down the street and people still aren't going to have decent healthcare. So let's get with it," the LA Times reports Burton as also saying.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, who this year beat the NNU-backed Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) for the post, also spoke at the podium. He tried to inject some levity into the situation, comparing it to Thanksgiving dinner with extended family. He appealed to party members to seek unity, saying: "Donald Trump has to go. And that is why we must work together as Democrats."

The Sacramento Bee writes that "the throng advocating for a statewide publicly funded, universal health care system snaked down a staircase behind Perez, shouting down his calls for unity."

As for the outcome of the convention, Politico reports that it will "reverberate" nationwide:

With President Donald Trump in a tailspin and the Republican House majority appearing increasingly vulnerable, what happens here at the California Democratic Party state convention this weekend will reverberate across the map.

Featuring as many as seven vulnerable GOP-controlled House seats, this solidly blue state is key to flipping the House in 2018. But when more than 3,000 activists in the nation's largest Democratic Party gather this weekend in Sacramento to forge opposition strategy and choose new party leadership, the state party's internal squabbles will also be closely watched.

Iowans were also hoping to underscore the importance of a universal healthcare system over the weekend, with rallies in seven cities.

"It just shows how important it is for us to be putting out an alternate vision for what our future should be rather than just saying no all the time," said Chris Schwartz, a community organizer with Americans for Democratic Action Iowa.

(Andrea Germanos writes for Common Dreams … where this report was first posted.)

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CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--We have reached the high holy days of California’s budget season, as our governor and legislative leaders decide which programs will gain new life, and which will be sacrificed. And so our state government’s ministers have begun their ritual sermons on the dangers of overspending. (Photo: California’s Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest.)

They are preaching nonsense. California’s real problem is underspending.

Go ahead and dismiss my claim as blasphemy. After so many years of budget crises and big deficits, Californians have adopted a budget theology grounded in self-flagellation, even though our recent budgets contain small surpluses. You can probably recite the catechism yourself: We’re still sinners who spend too much on state services! Far more than we take in! So save us, Non-Denominational Higher Power, from our profligate selves! Punish us with budget cuts or spending limits or a rainy day fund!

I’m sorry, but what our spending religion really needs is reformation.

And that requires genuine revelation. Our state’s tendency to produce big deficits is not caused by big spending. We have had big deficits because our state budget is based on volatile formulas that tend to expand deficits in unpredictable ways. In fact, California has long been on par with other states in expenditures per capita and in spending as a percentage of state GDP. Still, we cling to our budget religion and, fearing overspending, we take the cheaper path—which often costs the state more money in the long run.

The problems of underspending are most obvious when it comes to pension obligations. California governments and employees have long spent too little money on contributions to pension funds, which are underfunded. So, to try to catch up to our pension obligations, California taxpayers are having to make much bigger contributions now. And those catch-up contributions are leading to even more underspending on critical services, as money that should go to schools or health care or infrastructure is used to cover pensions.

The costliness of underspending is also the story behind rising public higher education costs in California. Over generations, the state has cut back its relative contribution to the University of California and California State University systems. This underspending has been made up for in part with ever-higher tuition fees for students. And, despite what you may read, the latest UC scandal is also about underspending; a state audit’s central allegation is that UC’s office of the president accumulated more than $100 million in funds that it wasn’t spending.

That scandal reveals a hypocrisy in our budget religion; overspending may be the stated enemy, but underspending gets you into far more trouble. The state parks department kept a secret reserve of unspent funds that became a major scandal in 2012. In California’s prisons, underspending led to an intervention by the federal courts, which ordered the state to spend more on its unconstitutionally overcrowded prisons and reduce its prison population.

Our state’s leaders understand the problem with underspending, but they haven’t been successful at explaining the problem, credibly, to the public. It also hasn’t helped that when state officials do need to spend big, they haven’t been very good at it.

Underspending also explains problems with our basic services. Studies have found that the state spends tens of billions less on schools than would be necessary to provide all Californians with an adequate education. And that underspending has real costs: California is not producing enough college graduates and skilled workers.

The state has made bold promises on child care and early childhood education that it hasn’t adequately funded, leaving citizens to pay for the rest. Child care now costs more than college tuition here. And housing costs more than just about anything, in part because we’ve spent so little on housing that we have a massive shortage, which forces Californians to pay housing prices more than twice the national average.

That the state has failed for generations to spend enough to build and maintain infrastructure is obvious in the degraded condition of roads, bridges, and waterways. The state’s failure to create strong enough spillways at Oroville Dam is forcing California to make hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of repairs and upgrades before the next rainy season.

Our state’s leaders understand the problem with underspending, but they haven’t been successful at explaining the problem, credibly, to the public. It also hasn’t helped that when state officials do need to spend big, they haven’t been very good at it. Examples include the new Bay Bridge, with its delays, cost overruns, and questions about the integrity of its steel rods, and the high-speed rail project, where spending and construction has been so slow that many people think the project will die.

In recent budgets, Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature have sought to counter the state’s tendency to underspend now and pay later. They’ve made a great show of efforts to pay down debt. In his current budget proposal, Brown suggests making a large advance contribution to pensions now, in order to reduce liabilities later.

But that payment, unfortunately, is achieved in a questionable manner: by borrowing billions from a state special fund. As Stanford lecturer and former Schwarzenegger advisor David Crane wrote recently, since pension contributions get invested, that payment amounts to a “leveraged bet” on a stock market that Governor Brown himself has warned is overdue for a correction.

Brown has grown popular as a proselytizer of the credo that California can be managed on the cheap. That’s appealing dogma for a state whose people struggle with a very high cost of living.

But the realities of our state should remind us that successfully running California on the cheap is a fantasy that has curdled into a costly article of faith. And we parishioners are being stuck with the tab.

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010)

-cw

SKID ROW POLITICS- In a stunning turn of events the City of Los Angeles’ Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) issued a shocking “final determination” in the highly controversial Skid Row Neighborhood Council subdivision election which led to three election challenges that were each upheld by an Election Challenge Review Panel convened by DONE itself.

(Photo above: General Jeff Page.) 

DONE completely threw out each of the Review Panel’s recommendations, which included initiating a 60-day investigation (to possibly uncover more evidence) followed by the possibility of an entirely new election, and instead decided to certify the election results as they stood on election day, with Skid Row’s hopes of creating a much-needed neighborhood council crushed by a mere 60 votes, 826-766. 

The election challenges arose from evidence of illegal online campaign propaganda which connected to the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC) which, if found in violation, could have resulted in an overturned election. 

How did DONE come to this seemingly out-of-nowhere decision? Let’s examine the facts. 

On April 6, the Skid Row subdivision election took place. Any challenges had to be filed within 5 days. Skid Row representatives filed 5 official election challenges, of which two were dismissed in DONE’s initial review, leaving three valid challenges. 

On April 14, a letter was issued to Skid Row NC- Formation Committee leaders and in paragraph 7 it states “The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment reviewed the election challenges, and will be convening an Election Challenge Review Panel to resolve the pending challenges”. 

Just as two of the other challenges were dismissed rather quickly by DONE, if there wasn’t sufficient evidence in the remaining three challenges, why didn’t DONE dismiss those challenges also? 

In DONE’s “final determination” letter it states, “Per Section XII of the Subdivision Election Manual, the supporting documentation for election challenges MUST prove that the alleged challenges are not only valid, but would also have made a difference in the election results for the Election Challenge Panel to have the factual basis to uphold the challenges”. 

What DONE failed to include is the very next sentence- “Challenges without such supporting documentation will AUTOMATICALLY be rejected.” 

So, again, if DONE (who in their own words) stated they reviewed each of Skid Row’s challenges, why didn’t they AUTOMATICALLY dismiss all 5 Skid Row challenges from the beginning? Instead they wasted everyone’s time, money and energy only to ultimately toss out both the Review Panel’s recommendations and subsequently Skid Row’s challenges, then at the end of the process point to reasons that were already in their control when they first reviewed the documentation but also completely contradict DONE’s logic in their final determination. Were they hoping a “negative to Skid Row” Review Panel decision would’ve been to blame so DONE wouldn’t look like the bad guys? ...Oops! 

Further, during Skid Row’s presentation before the Review Panel on May 3rd, their Formation Committee Chair revealed that DONE’s metrics used to reach an “inconclusive” determination in their initial report to the Review Panel was flawed, thus causing an incorrect determination which DONE again mistakenly referred to in it’s “final determination” letter. 

To be specific, DONE compared a “Unite DTLA” e-mail to what they wrongfully claimed was a “second” Unite DTLA e-mail. But, in fact, the second e-mail was from “DTLA United”, which thereby automatically created different outcomes in DONE’s in-house investigation. 

Their inconclusive determination was strongly based on inaccurate metrics. And instead of getting it right the second time (for their “final determination”), they, again, somehow drew the very same conclusion based on the very same metrics. 

This suggests that either DONE didn’t bother to correct it’s previous mistakes or was simply too lazy to perform the necessary due diligence. This, then, suggests severe negligence and/or dereliction of duty. 

Even further, in DONE’s “final determination” letter, in the Inappropriate Remedy section, they stated the Review Panel’s “remedy of redoing the election is not appropriate for these challenges even if they were deemed to be valid”. 

The problem with this is DONE was at the hearing (General Manager and other high-ranking staff) as was the City Attorney’s office (highest-ranking neighborhood council division staff member), yet no City officials with extensive knowledge of this process stepped in to make sure that the Review Panel, who publicly deliberated right in front of the entire audience, reached at least one qualifying remedy for each of the three upheld challenges. 

This is even more evidence of negligence and/or dereliction of duty. Either said City officials simply stood by quietly (already knowing the preferred outcome they desired and anticipating it’s arrival soon thereafter) or were stunned “like deer caught in the headlights” at what the Review Panel was in the process of concluding as a result of their determined commitment to get this right to the best of their abilities. 

Throughout all of this, it should be noted that the Review Panel, selected individually by DONE, stayed focused and engaged for the entire 5-hour hearing, including listening to public comments from over 60 “concerned citizens”, the majority of which were pro-Skid Row NC- including members of other NC’s, Skid Row residents and volunteer supporters with professional expertise. 

While there are still “tons” more reasons to marvel at DONE’s position, this article closes with this- In DONE’s Subdivision Election Manual in the Challenge Remedy section, the first sentence states “If a challenge is found to be valid, remedies will be narrowly interpreted to affect ONLY the voters, candidates or seats affected.”

Not only did Skid Row have “a challenge which was found to be valid”, they had THREE of them! Then, DONE’s own language implies that there is a NARROW INTERPRETATION of the wideness of the scope and range for any and all remedies which are thereby limited to affect only the voters, candidates or seats affected. 

… And DONE went away from it’s own rules, regulations and procedures and hid behind their flawed findings and improper determinations. 

No surprise that the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee is now seeking legal representation.

(General Jeff … Jeff Page … is a homelessness activist and leader in Downtown Los Angeles. Jeff’s views are his own.)