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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-cw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-cw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-CW

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning From Abroad

So, what kind of immigration is best for America?

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

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

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

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

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

Citizenship and National Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Economic Growth: The Secret Sauce of Immigration Policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

-cw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The statistics bear out Garcetti’s uninspiring tenure. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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