‘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.) 

-cw

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.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING- The last time Los Angeles tackled mansionization, speculators called the shots. Now amendments to the citywide mansionization ordinances are about to go before the City Council’s PLUM (Planning & Land Use Management) Committee, tentatively on November 22, 2016, and we cannot make the same mistakes again. 

By a very wide margin, Los Angeles residents and homeowners have called for amendments to the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance that reflect the original City Council Motion, not the watered down version drafted and circulated by the Department of City Planning and recently supported by the City Planning Commission.  Councilmembers Paul Koretz and David Ryu, the Los Angeles Conservancy, and dozens of neighborhood councils and homeowner and resident associations have also stressed the need for strong, simple, easily enforceable ordinances. They know that complexity leads to mansionizers dodging the City’s laws and gaming the Department of Building and Safety to flout the law. 

The most recent draft amendments make big improvements from an earlier version, especially in the R1 zones that regulate most of the city’s single-family homes. But the draft amendments that the PLUM Committee will consider have three major flaws:

• Attached garages. The City Planning Commission’s compromises go too far, counting none of the square footage of garages attached at the back of a house and only half of the square footage of garages attached at the front. All attached garages add bulk to a house. But garages attached to the front of a house also clash with the look and feel of many Los Angeles neighborhoods, and they eliminate the buffer that driveway provide between houses. Square footage is square footage, and it should all count when it is part of a house. At an absolute minimum, the final amendments should fully count all front-facing attached garage space. 

• Grading and hauling. Proposed allowances are excessive. The Canyon and Hillside Federation recommendations would cut them down to a tolerable size. 

• Bonuses. In RA, RS, and RE residential zones, The Department of City Planning caved to real estate lobbyists and retained bonuses that add 20% more bulk to house. The City Council should follow the example of the R-1 zone and get rid of these bonuses, as called for in the original Council motion. At best, these bonuses are a flawed architectural gimmick to camouflage extra mass in a house. At worst, they are just another lobbying scam to cram more house onto a lot. 

Above all, do not try to split the difference between reasonable and ridiculous. 

The original Council Motion was fair and reasonable to start with, but the current draft amendments make unwarranted concessions to the lobbyists. It’s time to hold the line and stick to the City Council’s original intent.

You will hear that “one size does not fit all.” True. That is why the City Planning Department is developing detailed zoning options for individual neighborhoods to soon replace Interim Control Ordinances and to later be implemented through Community Plan Updates.

This process should proceed, and the City Council’s PLUM Committee should not undermine it by giving veto power to a vocal minority. Objections to the original Council Motion are concentrated in a few pockets of resistance, where those objecting to the amendments can get the more permissive zoning they want through re:code LA. 

The new baseline must set meaningful limits on mansionization, not find the lowest common denominator to appease a small minority. Houses, after all, should not just be another form of real speculation. They are homes where people raise their families, and they form the fabric of irreplaceable neighborhoods. 

We also need to remember that mansionization decreases the supply of affordable housing, and it reduces the long-term sustainability of Los Angeles.

• McMansions replace affordable homes with pricey showplaces, and they put short-term speculation ahead of stable long-term property values.
• McMansions destroy mature street trees, increase runoff, and turn houses into rubble for landfills.
• McMansions guzzle energy and overload local utilities.
• McMansions degrade livability and violate neighborhood character.
• McMansions increase house cost and size without increasing supply or housing affordability. 
• Through one phony ordinance after another, mansionization has gone on far too long.

It’s time to serve the needs of LA’s communities, not the interests of real estate speculators. 

Angelenos who want to finally stop McMansions need to share their views with the Department of City Planning, the PLUM Committee, and their Councilmembers. When you do, please reference BMO/BHO Amendments, Council File 14-0656. Ideally, your comments should be submitted. 

(Addresses and model letters can be found at www.nomoremcmansionsinlosangeles.org)

(Dick Platkin reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for City Watch. He welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected]. Shelley Wagers lives in the Beverly Grove neighborhood and has been involved in anti-mansionization campaigns in Los Angeles for over a decade.)

VOX POP--On Thursday, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission gave billionaire Rick Caruso special spot-zoning approvals for his 20-story luxury high-rise known as “333 La Cienega.”  Proposed for the gridlocked intersection of La Cienega and San Vicente boulevards, the residential skyscraper will loom over its neighbors and open the door to more tall development in the area. 

Caruso, a longtime City Hall insider, is the super wealthy developer of high-end shopping malls The Grove and Americana. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the city’s Ethics Commission, Caruso and his associates at Caruso Affiliated Holdings have shelled out $123,600 in campaign contributions to 42 LA political candidates. 

Caruso (at City Hall, photo left) has personally written checks totaling $65,750 to LA. elected officials such as ex-City Council member Tom LaBonge ($4,500), Mayor Eric Garcetti ($2,900) and Council members Jose Huizar ($2,200) and Paul Koretz ($2,200). The developer also gave $100,000 to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles,” a non-profit that helps Garcetti finance his pet projects. 

Such generous giving from deep-pocketed developers seeking favors from LA elected officials is all too common. 

In October, LA City Hall was rocked by the infamous “Sea Breeze Scandal,” in which the Los Angeles Times revealed that a developer and his associates spent hundreds of thousands in campaign donations that benefitted City Council members and Mayor Eric Garcetti, who ultimately approved a residential mega-project that the City Planning Commission had rejected. 

With 333 La Cienega, Caruso seeks profitable spot-zoning favors to build a 20-story luxury high-rise in a neighborhood that’s not zoned for a tall, dense mega-project -- the billionaire wants a zone change, a General Plan amendment and a height district change. 

At City Hall on Thursday, Caruso appeared before the City Planning Commission, whose members are appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. The billionaire described his mega-project as “iconic,” a “palace” and “luxurious.” The developer, who lives far from San Vicente and La Cienega boulevards, also said with an odd sense of entitlement, “We have been tolerant of the community, and inclusive.”  City Council member Paul Koretz of District 5 stated in a letter that he supports the mega-project. Many neighborhood activists, however, testified in opposition. 

Robert Sherman noted that the height of the luxury project will “set a precedent” in which other developers will seek to build even more skyscrapers in the residential and commercial area.

“We don’t want that to happen,” Sherman told the planning commissioners. 

Dick Platkin, a member of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association and a supporter of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, said his group has “strong objections” to the “enormity” of Caruso’s skyscraper. He added that Caruso and his supporters also misrepresented 333 La Cienega as a “transit-oriented” project, a selling point that developers often use to win favor with the public and City Hall officials. 

“It is a transit-adjacent development,” Platkin said. 

Toby Horn, another member of Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, said 333 La Cienega was one more example of developer greed in LA. 

“How much more money does a billionaire need?” she asked emphatically. 

Several planning commissioners breezily dismissed the community’s concerns about the height and size of Caruso’s luxury high-rise. 

“The height doesn’t bother me, quick frankly,” said Commissioner John Mack. 

“I don’t have an issue with the height,” added Commissioner Veronica Padilla-Campos. 

“I’m not bothered by the height,” said Planning Commission President David Ambroz, who’s widely known for his patronizing comments to the public. 

Although the mega-project will dramatically alter neighborhood character, impact an already congested intersection and open the door to more tall development, the City Planning Commission took less than 20 minutes to deliberate and then unanimously approve the profitable spot-zoning favors Caruso sought. It now moves to our City Council’s powerful Planning and Land-Use Management Committee. 

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

CALIFORNIA VALUES VOTE-Donald John Trump, a racist and sexist obsessive liar, pathological narcissist and vicious bully, early Wednesday was elected the 45^th President of the United States. 

But he struggled to win barely one-third of the vote in California. 

Although Trump won an astonishing and appalling victory that confounded every pollster, pro and political journalist in America, California triumphed by earning anew its iconic designation as the Great Exception. 

While the ferret-headed, orange-stained demon rallied millions of resentful whites railing about “taking our country back,” Californians voted in huge numbers for policies and values that challenge and reject the fear and hatred mouthed by Trump – and that embrace and embody the diversity of what America is becoming. 

He vs. We 

Trump blood libeled minorities and immigrants while espousing disgusting attitudes about women; California for the first time elected an African-American woman to represent us in the U.S. Senate – in a campaign that matched her against a Latina congresswoman who is the daughter of Mexican immigrants — in a state where citizens strongly favor a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. 

Trump licked the boots of NRA leaders, called for more and more guns, and even suggested Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should be shot; California voters with Proposition 63 overwhelmingly approved some of the toughest gun control measures in the country, determined to stop the insanity of violence abetted by the easy availability of weapons and ammunition made for war. 

Trump called for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, most of all for himself, so that the huge and relentlessly growing gap between the richest and the rest of us can increase further; Californians in a landslide vote passed Proposition 55, imposing higher taxes on those best able to pay them, in the name of funding public schools and health care for the poor, the sick and the elderly. 

Trump said women should be “punished” for having an abortion; California long has had the strongest pro-choice constitutional and legal guarantees in the nation, going back to 1967, when Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act. 

Trump personifies a brutish, all-against-all view of a rapaciously capitalistic society; Californian voters across the state looked favorably on hundreds of fiscal measures for education, communitarian expressions that acknowledge we’re all in this together. 

Boy did we blow it 

We were wrong, completely wrong, about this election, for one basic reason: we simply did not believe so many white, non-urban Americans were capable of electing someone who a large majority of voters described as unfit to be president. 

Trump will take office with fellow Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and, potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court, as Democrats find themselves in the weakest political position in memory.

World markets already are plunging and roiling with panic that a New York real estate thug and reality TV charlatan, who exhibits not a whit of awareness that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, has been elected. 

That’s not to mention his authoritarianism, his virulent nationalism, his ignorance of the Constitution, his climate change denial, his hatred of a free press, his “bromance” with Vladimir Putin, disdain for U.S. military alliances, and the unhinged personal volatility he brings to his authority over the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. 

His presidency is a nightmarish prospect that fills us with dread, regardless of our good fortune of living in California.

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