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

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

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

Why is Corruptionism Bad for the Citizenry? 

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

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

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

Like Politics, Corruptionism is Local 

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

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

Mediaeval Feudalism is Alive in Well in Los Angeles 

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

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

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

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

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

Play Ostrich and Sick Your Head in the Sand 

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

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

The City is Above the Law 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resistance strategies 

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

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

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

Letter of the law

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

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

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

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

-cw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Los Angeles deserves an answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Thanksgiving!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-cw