@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s poker “tell,” an unintended physical tendency that hints at what lies beneath, is a slight nervous grin when speaking dishonestly in close proximity to others. 

It was on display last Thursday when KCBS’s David Goldstein reported on fraudulent fire inspections at the Los Angeles Fire Department, and asked him whether he ordered the removal of LAFD corruption whistleblower Deputy Chief John Vidovich. “I have never had that conversation. Never will. Never have…Categorically false. Never had a conversation,” Garcetti doth protest. For those keeping score, that’s four nevers and a categorically false. 

But the reason Garcetti may have repeatedly said conversation is because, according to a well-placed insider, the dirty work may have been conveyed by Garcetti to LAFD Chief Ralph Terrazas via Garcetti’s Chief-of-Staff Ana Guerrero. 

Garcetti went on to say, “I love John Vidovich. I love my chief. And I let him (Terrazas) manage the department.” That’s two professings of love and a punt, sports fans. 

The problem is, if Garcetti allows Terrazas to manage the LAFD, why then did Garcetti – in almost perfect proximity to massive union donations to Garcetti’s re-election campaign – create a post for Vidovich to serve in his office for the remaining few months of his career prior to Vidovich’s upcoming retirement? What would putting Vidovich there accomplish in such a short time…other than to get him out of the union’s way? Does Terrazas create positions for people in the Mayor’s office?

Asked by Goldstein what role money played in his decision to move Vidovich, Garcetti said “zero percent.” 

Ahem. 

Garcetti has yet to explain whether the fraud allegations, each instance of which would be a felony given the dollar value of each inspection, have been referred to District Attorney Jackie Lacey, or why, specifically, Vidovich was removed if he was doing such a great job exposing the fraud and inefficiency. 

Returning those funds to the union or, better, donating them to charitable causes like fighting veteran homelessness or my personal favorite, free spay/neuter in the city’s poorest communities, would be a win-win for all except Vidovich, whose reputation was permanently damaged. 

Goldstein’s report was a matter of personal pride for me. CityWatch publisher Ken Draper asked me to look into the story this past summer after the LA Times published what appears to be a now discredited, unbalanced storyline driven by Garcetti’s office. 

My original CityWatch story on the subject, which was the first to challenge Garcetti’s claims, led to one by Hillel Aron at the LA Weekly. 

And my second article on the subject led to Goldstein’s story.

The Times does not appear to be ready to clearly and directly correct its original story. But that might change sometime next year if the City of Los Angeles writes Vidovich a check with six, perhaps seven, figures on it. But doing so will only compensate Vidovich. It will never make the original public narrative disappear. 

If and when that check is cut, Garcetti will say, as politicians always do, “The city denies all wrongdoing, and makes this payment because settling is cheaper than litigating.” 

And when he does, Garcetti will grin.

(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.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

POLITICS--America may have trended toward the GOP, but California seems determined to find its own direction. The only question is, simply, how much more progressive the Golden State will become, even in the face of a far more conservative country beyond the Sierras.

This election confirmed, if it was needed, the death spiral of the state’s Republican Party. Thanks, in part, to Donald Trump — and his magnetic anti-appeal among Latinos, women and the educated — the GOP did even worse here in the presidential race than in 2012, when it couldn’t muster 40 percent support, and has lost several legislative seats, allowing the Democrats to re-establish their coveted two-thirds supermajority in the Assembly — and possibly in the Senate as well.

The progressives also won most of the major propositions — most critically, the extension of a high income tax rate on the state’s affluent population through 2030. We may have more freedom to smoke pot, but it won’t be so easy to start a business, buy a house or build a personal nest egg, if you are anything other than a trustifarian or a Silicon Valley mogul, or are related to one.

Go any direction you want, as long as it’s to the left

Since the late 1990s, California has been moving leftward, with a bit of a bump from the Schwarzenegger recall election. By morphing into a liberal Democrat, the Terminator helped terminate the GOP as a serious force. Add to that the damage done by the residue of Pete Wilson’s Proposition 187, which permanently alienated the rising Latino electorate, and the GOP seems destined to further decline.

The only hope for sanity has been an alliance of the Republican rump with moderate Democrats, many of them backed by what’s left of traditional California business. But, increasingly, inside the party, it’s been the furthest Left candidates that win. In the Democrat-only Sanchez vs. Harris race for the U.S. Senate, the more progressive candidate triumphed easily, with a more moderate Latina from Southern California decimated by the better funded lock-step, glamorous tool of the San Francisco gentry Left.

Gradually, the key swing group — the “business Democrats” — are being decimated, hounded by ultra-green San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer and his minions. No restraint is being imposed on Gov. Brown’s increasingly obsessive climate change agenda, or on the public employee unions, whose pensions could sink the state’s finances, particularly in a downturn.

Interior California votes to slit its own throat

The interior parts of California already rank near the bottom, along with Los Angeles, in terms of standard of living — by incomes, as opposed to costs — in the nation. Compared to the Bay Area, which now rules the state, the more blue-collar, Latino and African American interior, as well as much of Los Angeles, account for six of the 15 worst areas in terms of living standard out of 106 metropolitan areas, according to a recent report by Center for Opportunity Urbanism demographer Wendell Cox.

Given the political trends here, it’s hard to see how things could get much better. The fact that most new jobs in Southern California are in lower-paying occupations is hardly promising. In contrast, generally better-paying jobs in manufacturing, home-building and warehousing face ever-growing regulatory strangulation.

Sadly, the ascendant Latino political leadership seems determined to accelerate this process. In both Riverside and San Bernardino, pro-business candidates, including San Bernardino Democrat Cheryl Brown, lost to green-backed Latino progressives.

For whatever reason, Latino voters and their elected officials fail to recognize that the increasingly harsh climate change agenda represents a mortal threat to their own prospects for upward mobility. Before this week’s election, California policy makers could look forward to Washington imposing such policies on the rest of the country; now our competitor regions — including Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Texas — can double down on growth. Expect to see more migration of ambitious Californians, particularly Latinos, to these areas.

California’s increasingly bifurcated future

California is on the road to a bifurcated, almost feudal, society, divided by geography, race and class. As is clear from the most recent Internal Revenue Service data, it’s not just the poor and ill-educated, as Brown apologists suggest, but, rather, primarily young families and the middle-aged, who are leaving. What will be left is a state dominated by a growing, but relatively small, upper class, many of them boomers; young singles and a massive, growing, increasingly marginalized “precariat” of low wage, often occasional, workers.

The interior, starting in eastern Los Angeles and Orange County, will increasingly resemble the East L.A. district of Tom Steyer’s sock puppet, state Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León: deindustrialized, impoverished and generally falling apart. Rather than move up into the middle class, interior Democrats are consigning their own people to dependence on government largesse — for jobs, for housing, for relief from artificially inflated energy costs and, if some of the tech barons like Elon Musk get their way, for their basic sustenance.

This social structure can only work as long as stock and asset prices continue to stay high, allowing the ultra-rich to remain beneficent. Once the inevitable corrections take place, the whole game will be exposed for what it is: a gigantic, phony system that benefits primarily the ruling oligarchs, along with their union and green allies. Only when this becomes clear to the voters, particularly the emerging Latino electorate, can things change. Only a dose of realism can restore competition, both between the parties and within them.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. … where this piece was most recently 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. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate.)

-cw

DEEGAN ON LA —The “invisibles”--those that cannot be missed but are easily ignored--are everywhere as they shelter in place on the streets throughout the city. They are the homeless, who learned they were not friendless after they won a victory at the ballot box on election day. 

When the votes were counted, the good news for the city’s huge homeless population, and people that care about them, was that housing is on the way. While it will not materialize overnight--some estimates are that a two year wait may be realistic--this is still good news for anyone that has been urging the city to come to grips with the growing social and civic problem of how to house the homeless. 

The politicos’ plight of finding some success with what seems an intractable problem has been met with a resounding call to action by selfless voters that had nothing material to gain or future benefit, but simply compassion for people less fortunate than them. The size of the city’s heart can be measured by the 76% vote margin for approval of Prop HHH, that was significantly higher than the two-thirds needed to pass the measure. 

What to do to resolve homelessness has been an embarrassment to city leaders that have issued statement after statement for the past eighteen months suggesting how they may help resolve the issue. Finally, they have found a start to a solution. Let’s hope they keep on this path. 

Tuesday’s voter approval of Prop HHH, the Homeless Reduction and Prevention, Housing, and Facilities Bond Measure 

Those with real property will be financing housing for those with nothing to their name, in a neat act of symmetry between the haves and the have-nots. A tax base will be created by an average annual assessment of $32.87 on property owners for the next 29 years. 

But, this is just step one. What must come next is financing for social services that includes mental health treatment, health care, drug and alcohol treatment, education and job training. Some of this may already be provided by non-profits or private entities and the city, but lots more social services financing is required. Experts, like the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, and the city’s Homeless Services Authority, claim that housing the homeless first, and then providing services, is the most effective model. 

Exactly who is affected by the implementation of Prop HHH? Four groups stand out: the homeless themselves, who will benefit from the new housing, property owners who will finance the housing through a tax assessment, the residents of the city who demonstrated the civic lesson that, in a collective society, we really are our brother’s keepers, and our political leaders who finally have something solid to point to in their quest for helping the homeless in a meaningful way. 

But, that's only half of it. A second financing mechanism, likely some form of an additional tax, will be needed to provide for services for the newly-to-be-housed homeless. That measure may wind up on the March 2017 ballot. That’s the catch—Prop HHH is just the beginning. 

What’s next? Understanding that housing is not the full solution, but that support systems through social services must be tied in, the county supervisors have an opportunity, in the March 2017 elections, to put a measure on the ballot for this purpose, and most likely will. Said Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a relentless advocate of finding solutions to the homeless issue, “With the passage of HHH, it's now time for the County to step up to provide critical supportive services for the homeless."

(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].)

-cw

‘HARMLESS GROPINGS’--An open letter of apology to my daughters and all the women coming up after me:

I want to start by saying I’m sorry. I have failed you in a way that only now do I shamefully and truly understand.

I am a 48-year-old woman. A mother. A boss. But because of actions I didn’t take, you’re still getting sexually harassed. You’re still getting belittled. You still have to wrestle away from body-hugs that no male colleague would tolerate. You still have to endure comments about your appearance that make you cringe inside. You still are fending off dinner meetings that end up feeling like first dates. You still are expected to put up with someone’s version of a joke about your sexuality in front of others because you don’t want to damage your standing in your career.

You see, I had to do all those things too. It starts young, when you’re walking down the street at 14, with catcalls from passing cars. This is when you realize that your body is “fair game” for any man who feels like taking aim. You face dress codes at school that presume men can’t be controlled if they see you in spaghetti straps or shorts.

Then there’s the workplace, where anyone from the delivery guy to the mucky-mucks you’re meeting with size you up. I will never forget an opportunity I had to meet one-on-one with the politically-connected director of the organization where I volunteered during my ambitious early 20s. What started as a late afternoon meeting was switched to dinner at a location that I didn’t realize was his penthouse. When he pushed me against the wall to be groped and kissed, I felt stupid and naïve. I ran out with an excuse of having somewhere else to be.

A couple more from a list far too long to recount in its entirety here: As an assistant being told I had nice breasts by a well-respected person in the media I worked with. On another occasion in an entirely different setting, being asked by a board member—jokingly of course—if I’d like to stroke his gun to see if he was happy to see me.

All of those instances had the same effect. They were belittling. They made me feel self-conscious, embarrassed, ashamed. They led me to see—in that moment—that no matter how smart or capable I was, I was still to these men just a piece of ass.

I’m not blaming myself or any woman for being the victim of sexual harassment. But I am blaming myself for not finding the courage to stand up for myself.

This is where I failed you. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t stand up for myself. I colluded with all of this by letting it slide. I smiled, evaded the hugs, endured the humiliating comments, rolled my eyes at the sexual jokes, and believed that eventually my intelligence and skills would be regarded first and foremost, not my physical appearance.

Let me be clear. I’m not blaming myself or any woman for being the victim of sexual harassment. But I am blaming myself for not finding the courage to stand up for myself. I know it’s not just young women who deserve my apology. All of us, regardless of age, are vulnerable to this kind of debasement.

So even though we watched a woman make a serious run for the presidency, we see who won and what did and didn’t matter in people’s choice for leadership. All around us women face daily humiliations that aren’t enough to make news or merit a call to the police. But, over time, the damage done by “minor” verbal offenses and by seemingly “harmless” gropings is sinister. It chips away at women’s confidence. It causes us to second-guess ourselves, to keep our voices soft, our hands down, to lean back.

I have two teenage daughters and I worry for them. Not just for the comments and the insults they may face, but because I so greatly fear they will lose their voices, just as I lost mine. I want to show them how to speak up for their dignity and how to have self-respect. I want to show them that speaking up for yourself takes practice. Calling attention to yourself takes courage. Just accepting things when you’ve been wronged or made to feel insignificant is simply not okay.

Today, I’m taking responsibility for my role in all of this. For all the times I lied to escape boorish behavior. For all the times I nervously laughed off inappropriate comments that I am certain the perpetrator would never have uttered in front of his own wife or daughter. For the times I didn’t “educate” my offender by standing up for my own dignity, and for yours.

I am sorry.

The results of this election left many women feeling like they don’t matter. Today I’m making a change. Starting now, I pledge to do what I should have been doing for the past two decades. When someone says to me, “Turn around so I can get a good look at you,” I’ll say “No thanks. You can hear what I have to say better when you’re looking at my face.” And then I’ll tell them what I should have been saying all along.

(Jennifer Ferro is president of Southern California public radio station KCRW and a member of the Zócalo Public Square board of directors. This column was posted originally at Zocalo Public Square.) 

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THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--On many accounts, this was supposed to be the election where we broke the ultimate glass ceiling, the office of the presidency of the United States, the leader of the free world. I had written a column here late last month on this election as a Referendum on Feminism. 

Many of us, women and men, were terribly disappointed, starting around the time when we realized we might be losing the Swing States. I’ve been actively engaged in elections since I was 13 years old – and consider myself to be a political junkie. I’ve won some, lost some but I don’t remember ever feeling as despondent as I have been since Tuesday. Many of us feel we have lost much more than the electoral vote, including the chance for the first woman president.

Still, California did see some offices captured by women. On the national front, State Attorney General Kamala Harris will replace Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in the Capitol. The Howard University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law alumna worked as a Deputy District Attorney in Alameda County from 1990-1998 before serving as Managing Attorney of the Career Criminal Unit in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office (1998-2000.) She was defeated incumbent Terence Hallinan to be elected District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003 and was re-elected in 2007, serving from 2004 to 2011 before winning the CA Attorney General office in 2010, the first female, African-American, Indian-American and Asian-American Attorney General in the state. She was reelected to that seat in 2014. Harris defeated Loretta Sanchez on Election Day to become the first Indian-American and second African-American woman elected to serve in the U.S. Senate. Harris’s name is being mentioned in the media as a possible presidential candidate in 2020.

Closer to home, voters elected two women to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, Janice Hahn and Kathyrn Barger who will join current supervisors Sheila Kuehl, Hilda Solis and Mark Ridley-Thomas. Women will form the majority in the country’s largest local government agency. However, the 15-member LA City Council will only have one woman. A 2014 report concluded women held fewer than one-third of elected city, county and state posts.

The addition of Hahn and Barger to the Board is an exception to an election year that actually brought fewer female elected officials in the state Legislature. According to California Women Lead  (November 8), the State Senate and Assembly lost two seats each that were occupied by women, bringing the total of female-occupied seats to 27 of 120. The Congressional Delegation also lost two seats occupied by women, bringing the total to seventeen.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

ABRAMS ANALYSIS—1. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Although Hillary ignored Bill’s central truth in American politics, “It’s the economy, Stupid,” Trump made it his raison d'être. Meanwhile, the economic follies of Obama-Geithner, which cost Hillary the White House, were wildly successful in Los Angeles. What are the implications of our overwhelmingly embracing Measures JJJ, HHH, and M?

• The Politics of Revenge. 

The Politics of Revenge arose because the American people had already suffered the economic follies of Obama-Geithner. While the “deplorables” lacked the sophistication to understand what had happened, they had a predatory buffoon to supply a host of bogus answers. “It’s the illegals. It’s ObamaCare. It’s crooked Hillary.” 

As a demagogue, Trump was brilliant since he took Obama’s Hope Campaign from 2008, dusted it off, proclaiming that he’d make America Great Again. “Hope” and “Make America Great” are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. In brief, Trump ran on the concept, “It’s the economy, Stupid,” while Hillary ran on, “Keep the status quo.” 

• Measures JJJ, HHH, Measure M Are More Obama-Geithner Economic Foolishness. 

The essence of Obama-Geithner’s economy policy was to let the working class go bankrupt while giving trillions of dollars to Wall Street. With Measures JJJ, HHH and M, Garcetti adopted the same destructive policies. He will continue the eradication of rent-controlled housing which continues to swell the ranks of the homeless, while diverting hundreds of billions of tax dollars to a handful of wealthy land owners and international construction companies. In other words, in Los Angeles the systematic transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% will continue unabated. 

• Measures JJJ, HHH and M Are Based Ignorance and Hubris. 

When any business or any society spends money, those expenses need to increase the overall wealth of that society or business. A major consideration is whether that business or city is incurring significant future liabilities that will gobble up all the benefits. Let’s look at the subway beneath the Sepulveda Pass. 

Leaving aside its construction costs, inherent in any subway or light rail system are never ending maintenance and operational (personnel) costs. When a business sells a product, it does not want to have to spend more money 5, 10, 20, 20 or 50 years from now as a result of that product. Once the bottle of ketchup is sold, Heinz wants to pocket the profit and never, ever spend another penny on that bottle. 

As of this writing, Takata, the manufacturer of the lethal air bags, is preparing to file for bankruptcy. Defective air bags, like defective mass transit, contain the poison pill of economic disaster. Subways and fixed rail systems, unlike products such as ketchup and air bags, are guaranteed to have horrendously huge ongoing liabilities which will mount as time passes. Thus, we could have averted the evil decree had we voted down JJJ, HHH and Measure M. 

• The Forces are Set in Motion and the Clock is Ticking. 

NYC runs an $8 billion deficit each year for its subway-light rail system despite its being the best run system in the nation. In addition, the NYC system grew logically from the nature of NYC’s century old housing pattern and immutable geography. Extraordinarily dense Manhattan, which is the only reason that the system functions, is only 2.5 miles wide with the Hudson River on one side and the East River on the other. That’s the width of Franklin Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. Density along the Hollywood-Sunset corridor, in order to reduce the subway deficit, will create a congestion barrier the length of Hollywood. As the nation’s largest circular urban area, it is mathematically impossible for LA to ever have a functional fixed-rail system. 

The bottom line is that a subway-fixed rail system will provide no long-term benefit to the Los Angeles economy, and its future deficits will swallow future city budgets, leaving Los Angeles broke. 

We could try Washington D.C.’s approach and not spend money on maintenance, which will result in the closure of the system. By the time that Angelenos realize that the maintenance and personnel costs exceed the City’s capacity to pay, it will not only have to close significant portions of the system, but it will still have to pay the overbearing Union pensions. While Angelenos are currently screaming that the City’s pension deficit is too high, they have just voted to increase the future deficit by tens of billions of dollars. 

We have not scratched the surface of the economic disaster that Angelenos have brought upon themselves with Measures JJJ, HHH and M. 

• Suppliers Do Not Set Demand. 

Garcetti’s own economic adviser, Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics, told Garcetti back in 2013 that he should stop trying to pick winners and looser in business. Garcetti ignored this sound advice. He is completely wedded to the notion that a centralized, politburo style planning agency can make better decisions than a regulated Supply and Demand economy. Garcetti is dedicated to eradicating rent-controlled housing and to dictating to poor people where they shall live. 

We saw this folly in the 1950s and 1960s with Cabrini-Green in Chicago and Pruit-Igoe and Joseph Darst Apartments in St. Louis. (Disclosure: the author lived in Joseph Darst Apartments in the 1960s.) While the great welfare state can shove around poor people as if they had no minds of their own, such hubris results in social degradation, more poverty and high crime. Poor families want to live in nice homes in safe neighborhoods with decent schools. Garcetti, like Chicago and St. Louis, mandates Black Lung Projects near freeways with terrible schools and high crime. 

We know that many poor people accept their fate, but we also know that the smarter and the more enterprising move away. Los Angeles is already experiencing the exodus of the educated, middle class Family Millennials. We also know that significant portions of the poorer Black and Mexican communities have already moved to the Inland Empire. 

Nationally, removing any significant numbers of the undocumented families will further harm the economy. In their haze of racist ignorance, the anti-immigrant yahoos fail to understand that if we could remove even 5% of the population as “illegal,” we will have removed 5% of the consumers. No matter why a consumer base falls, the economic impact is the same. A store that operates on a 5% or less profit margin becomes economically imperiled. It has to cut back its purchases by 5%, but a 5% cut back by retailers can devastate the wholesalers. That touches off a downward spiral, affecting everyone. 

• Population Decrease Results in The Reverse Multiplier Effect. 

Since the City of LA is experiencing the flight of the middle class with its small population increase coming only from the birth rate, LA will suffer from the harmful impacts of the Reverse Multiplier Effect. This threat will be temporarily disguised by increased spending on high rises and subways. However, the mass transit and high rises which will be built are the main factors causing the exodus from Los Angeles. Within a few years, Los Angeles will find that the temporary spending that buoyed the economy also created the conditions which trash our tax base – at the very time we will need a stronger tax base to pay all of our debts. Some people may feel good while incurring heavy debt to live lavishly in Las Vegas for a few weeks, but when they return to Woodland Hills and have no money to pay the mortgage or to keep their SUVs, they won’t be so happy. 

The short-term spending will benefit union workers, but at the same time, the added density will continue to drive the educated middle class away from the Los Angeles. Other workers who do not indirectly benefit from the construction will similarly look for parts of the nation which have more diversified economic bases. Garcetti seems to have selected high rise and mass transit construction to be Los Angeles’ salvation businesses. As shown above, a few years of this type of construction comes with unbearable taxes for maintenance and operations (union payments) in addition to our having to repay the hundreds of dollars we just spent passing JJJ, HHH and M. 

• Why Subways Benefit NYC but Harm LA. 

People ignore why the subway and light rail systems in NYC, Boston and Chicago reduce commute times. When the subways first came to NYC, walking or riding in a carriage were the main means of locomotion. Even today, the subways can be efficient compared to alternatives. No one may walk in LA, but no one drives themselves in Manhattan.

In Los Angeles, the subway or light rail are far slower for the citizens. The subway-light-rail stations are few and far between which means using them requires a significant walk. They are slow, especially the above ground light rail systems, which have to slow for so many street crossings. Generally, taking LA mass transit requires 170% more time than driving. 

Thus, the NYC subway makes people more productive than alternative modes of transportation, while using LA’s subway-light rail system makes people far less productive. In fact, the Urban Institute found that subways and buses do not reduce the poverty rate, but on the contrary, giving the poor cars does reduce the poverty rate. Cars are far superior due to their flexibility, and hence, poor people with cars can actually get to the exact places where the jobs are located. 

As noted in “Driving to Opportunity: Understanding the Links among Transportation Access, Residential Outcome,” published in March 2014 by Urban Institute (p ii), “Over time, households with automobiles experience less exposure to poverty and are less likely to return to high-poverty neighborhoods than those without car access.”

In other words, reliance on subways, fixed rail and buses in Los Angeles traps people into poverty, while owning a car allows them to drive away to better neighborhoods and jobs. A massive system of subways-and fixed-rail light lines will make Angelenos less productive and poorer, but in the meantime it will continue to shift the wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

(Part II will focus on the interplay between “corruptionism” and economic folly.)

(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.