POST ELECTION HIGH-Last Wednesday the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based drug-reform nonprofit, held a media conference call meant to celebrate a successful election night. Voters in eight states had legalized cannabis for recreational purposes; in several more states ballot measures cleared the way for marijuana’s medical use. 

In California, where Proposition 64 passed with 56 percent of the electorate, voters had not only legalized marijuana but, in the words of the organization’s California State Director, Lynne Lyman, “eliminated nearly every marijuana violation on the books.” 

As of midnight election night, everything from transporting to selling pot had been decriminalized, reducing not just future convictions but triggering retroactive sentencing reform. 

“Over a million Californians will have the opportunity to have their record cleared reduced and expunged,” Lyman said. “We won this. And we won it in a big way.” 

An undercurrent of worry, however, ran through the celebratory mood, owing to the ascension of Donald Trump in the presidential race and the Republican lock on both houses of Congress and soon, the U.S. Supreme Court. As recently as August, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency affirmed marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug, prohibited for all purposes, including medical need and most research. And no one knows for sure whether the self-described “law and order candidate” who becomes president in January will tolerate state-by-state legalization. 

“I’m very worried about this,” said the DPA’s executive director, Ethan Nadelmann, noting that only a 2013 Justice Department memo stands between federal law enforcement and state marijuana markets. That document “really helped to provide a qualified light for states to proceed with implementation in the states that legalized,” Nadelmann continued. “I don’t think we’re going to have the same green light with the new administration.” 

Even in states where marijuana has been legal several years running, the marijuana economy still occupies a shadowy place in the law enforcement landscape. Thanks to Treasury Department guidance issued in 2014, banks can legally handle money for businesses that truck in cannabis, but only if they collect intelligence on those businesses and file reports on their activities. (Many banks still don’t trust the law, and a credit union for marijuana sellers has been blocked by the Federal Reserve.) The National Labor Relations Board will intervene in labor disputes and protect organizing efforts within the marijuana industry, but only because an advice memorandum in 2013 declared such involvement was appropriate. 

And while the Justice Department, in that 2013 “Cole Memo,” officially agreed to stand down in the face of robust state regulations that keep cannabis out of the hands of minors and prohibit stoned driving, like all the other advice and guidance from the federal government, such tolerance is by no means binding. If future Justice Department officials want to enforce federal law, they can start raiding cannabis shops on January 21, 2017. 

Whether or not they will however, remains a subject of tortured speculation among legal experts, advocates and academics. “Donald Trump has been totally unpredictable on this issue,” Nadelmann said during the conference call. “There was a moment years ago when he said he wanted to legalize all drugs, but he was also heard using drug-war rhetoric in the debates with Hillary Clinton.” 

Trump has also served up various word salads during his raucous campaign, statements that could be interpreted almost infinitely. “In Colorado,” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly last February, “the book isn’t written on it yet, but there is a lot of difficulty in terms of illness and what’s going on with the brain and the mind and what it’s doing. So, you know, it’s coming out probably over the next year or so. It’s going to come out.” 

It’s also possible that Trump won’t be the one making the decisions. “What’s more important than what Trump says is who the new U.S. Attorney General is, and whether that person will abide by Obama enforcement priorities,” says Hilary Bricken, a cannabis law specialist at Harris Moure in Seattle. Trump’s initial short list did not augur well: New Jersey Governor Christie has promised strict enforcement of federal laws on marijuana; Rudy Giuliani oversaw a tenfold increase in marijuana arrests during his tenure as mayor of New York. 

Another pick, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican, opined at a Senate hearing last April that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”  

Now Christie seems to be out of the running, and Giuliani prefers a position as the nation’s chief diplomat. But if they’re indicators of where Trump’s headed on justice, “we could definitely see a rollback,” Bricken says. “If the Trump administration decides to revive the drug war, we could see increased enforcement in the states that have liberalization. We could start to see more raids and indictments from the DOJ.” 

When that happens, industry momentum will likely stall out. “People will not take the risk. That could stymie all of our democratic experiments.” 

Upending those experiments, however, would no doubt prove to be a recklessly unpopular move. “You now have more than half the states in the country that have some kind of marijuana legalization,” says Sam Kamin, a criminal justice professor at the University of Denver. “That’s a pretty big cadre of states where people have decided that marijuana is not something that should be treated as a criminal matter.” 

There’s also the question of states’ rights, presumably a fundamental conservative tenet. “I’ve written that I don’t believe the federal government can enjoin the states from doing what they’re doing,” Kamin says. “It’s the basic principle of federalism. They can’t make them keep those laws on the books.” 

Nor can the federal government force state law enforcement to go after people for exclusively federal crimes. “The Printz case says that with regard to gun laws,” Kamin says. In Printz v. U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court determined that states were not required to perform background checks on gun buyers on behalf of the federal government. “The federal government can enforce its own laws, but can’t force the states to enforce on its behalf.” 

Where a new administration could cause trouble, however, is in the realm of regulation. “It could take the form of a lawsuit in federal court arguing that state regulatory rules are pre-empted by federal drug laws.” People worried about that happening after Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012, but it didn’t, Kamin says, “because it’s hard to see how that would serve federal goals.” If a substance is going to be freely available, it’s better to have it taxed and regulated. 

Bricken says she and other lawyers with clients in the marijuana business are paying close attention to the trend in federal law, but they aren’t slowing down in anticipation of a new administration. “If the federal government goes around arresting attorneys, then we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. But for us, it’s business as usual until we get some dramatic turnaround.” And even in that event, she says, “I wouldn’t be afraid to take up the fight.”

(Judith Lewis Mernit writes for CapitalandMain.com … where this piece was first posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS-The results of this election have made me think a lot about the Aeneid – an allegory of self-righteousness, subterfuge, vengeance, and loss. The story of Aeneas provides one of the more iconic metaphors of all time -- the Trojan horse. The Greeks, in their imperious haze, allow a gifted wooden horse to sit inside their fortress gates. During the night, Trojans hasten from within its lumber walls and decimate the city. The moral of the story: flashy can be fatal. Our desire to be right and relevant coupled with our false sense of impenetrability can blind us to the deadly dangers lurking within the horse, across the street or on the ballot.

The current situation in the U.S. is heartbreaking and overwhelming. An unstable and insecure man ran to be President. On Tuesday, he won. Now, wanting to win and wanting to be President are two very different things. He either ran believing all he espoused or he said whatever to win. Regardless, there is now a mandate of hate and cleansing blowing in the wind like a starched confederate flag, and this country must shoulder the responsibility for raising it. 

If the President-Elect believes what he espoused on the campaign trail, then we have a Eugenicist waiting in the wings. If he doesn’t, then he will continue to find affirmation via tweets and ”yuge” adulation-intended events while relinquishing the less flashy, but incisive tasks and responsibilities to the very smart and strategic white supremacists, climate deniers and xenophobes that have now been freed from the sidelines and are jockeying for positions in his inner circle and cabinet.

It took only hours for them to pour from his coattails. The recent position announcements of Stephen Bannon and Reince Preibus, the further elevation of Mike Pence, and rumors of Rudy Guiliani, Harold Hamm (Energy Secretary), Byron Ebell (EPA), Newt Gingrich (State Department), and Michael Flynn (National Security Advisor or Defense Secretary), Jan Brewer (Interior Secretary) and Forrest Lucas (Interior Secretary) should scare the bejesus out of us all. And yet, for some, it doesn’t. His campaign resonated, not in spite of what he said, but because of what he said. This election was a backlash on “othering.” Ultimately, this election was about reminding the world who remains first on the list.

So where do we go from here? 

Progressive Pipelines 

Seeds are planted to bear fruit. It takes time, care, focus and planning, but if tended to correctly, a bounty will produce. That bounty will serve many purposes. Our bounty, as progressives, should be school and community college boards, city councils, tax boards, county supervisors, judges, and district attorneys. Races for mayor, governor and state representatives are flashy, but diligently working at the local level can produce the kinds of progressive pipelines that we need. 

For example, District Attorneys and judicial seats may be the least prominent of state and county government, but they can deliver the most passionate and tangible results for institutional change. Together, they are a deadly combination. 48% of state supreme courts are conservative (strong or leaning). They have been responsible for decisions relating to increased voter suppression, increased executions, and decreased education funding. Conservative groups have been working overtime to keep and turn state supreme, appellate and superior courts as red as possible. Yet, if you take a poll, most folks don’t vote that far down on the ballot, don’t know who the judicial candidates are and do not seem to care. 

A recent study revealed that 95% of all elected prosecutors are white and 83% are men. Prosecutorial discretion has a direct impact on how other systems (criminal justice, and education, especially) work, and hard-liners in the DA’s offices have left many communities under siege. Inmate monitoring, police prosecution and accountability and mandatory minimum sentencing are examples of the one-two punches delivered by these two groups. So, start examining the pipelines of these candidates, and the histories of those currently in office. 

Strategic Obstruction 

It’s time to become obstructionists. It sounds aggressive, but this is survival. Conservatives have been good at mapping out lines of attack, and in investing time and money into figuring out where and how to use law and policy to plug liberal holes. The Heartland Institute, ALEC and the Cato Institute are just a few of the many conservative, neoconservative and libertarian think tanks working to ‘right-set’ the trajectory of our country. 

Progressives are good at funding on-the-ground grassroots efforts, but it takes more than just registering voters to change the tides. It takes those efforts in concert with strategic geo-mapping, constitutional law review and good old-fashioned math (counting your votes and your states) to win. It’s time to call in the product placement gurus, the neuroscientists, the policy researchers and the lawyers and shut the door until some viable strategies are born. Say “No” until you have enough votes and law to say “Yes.” At this stage of the game, lives depend on it. 

Education Still Matters 

Education is the great equalizer and it has been slowly dismantled over the past decades. Discontent with unions, changes in tax distribution, and state deficits have denigrated our public education system to something almost unrecognizable. Just look at the election results. Those without a college degree backed the President-Elect 52% - 44%. This is widest gap since 1980. Two-thirds (67%) of non-college educated whites backed the President-Elect. When we defund civics classes in the schools, we do more harm than we think. 

Civic participation happens because of educated engagement and a connection to the outcome. Public education has always been ground zero for civic engagement. I support the arts because I took music in the 5^th grade. It’s really as simple as that. It’s time to rethink Proposition 13, streamline the passage from K-12 into the community colleges and address the lack of compatibility between current student curriculum and the trending job markets. We need to get real about the inter-complexities of globalization (automation vs. union jobs), our inherent consumer tendencies (will we pay higher prices?) and how and who we educate. 

After listening to President Obama’s latest press conference, I was infuriated and depressed all over again. Listening to all of the progress that has happened, his unwavering intelligence on the issues, and his cues to Democrats to gear up for 2018 gave me some fire. It also reminded me that the system is bigger, smarter, and more complex than one person. Pernicious self-preservation is the foundation of its design. Obama suffered from being too smart and thoughtful (and black). The President-Elect will suffer from being an outsider and unfocused. Pawns they both are in a weird way – Obama was red meat for the conservative right, and the President-Elect was their Trojan horse. 

And now, the fights for equity, equality and existence are on the line more than ever before.

(Sydney Kamlager is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TRANSIT TALK--After years of calculating and planning and outreach, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, Westside LA Councilmember Mike Bonin and former Santa Monica Denny Zane reached high with the advocacy of Measure M. And after decades of being told it would "never happen", the Westside/Valley rail line--the Holy Grail of Transit--can become a reality.

Of course, it's remembered by so many how the Expo Line--arguably the seminal effort that made LA County's elected leaders recognize that all of LA County wanted rail alternatives to car commuting and mobility, and not just the San Gabriel Valley with their Gold Line--would "never happen".

So why is the Westside/Valley rail line (call it the Valley/Westside rail line if you live in the San Fernando Valley) the "Holy Grail" of Transit?

Three reasons:  the geographic distance from other connecting rail lines, the cost and the previous lack of political support and cohesion for this project.

1) With Measure M, we can fast-track the Wilshire Subway to reach the 405 freeway and the West Los Angeles VA a decade or more earlier, and upgrade the Orange Line to a rail line, so that the connection between the two east-west lines will occur in a more planned, comprehensive fashion.

The location of this far-west line is what also vexes the Southeast LA County Cities and the South Bay Cities with their own rail lines--they're far away from the central core of Downtown LA, but their regional traffic requires the presence of rail alternatives.

Of interest, though, is that a huge portion of those voting for the measure were from the Westside and Valley. 

One can only hope that the north-south Westside-Valley Subway will be planned and constructed in coordination with the Wilshire/Purple Line Subway.  And for those keeping score on other transit projects, ditto for a Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail Line northern extension that will be a subway between the Expo and Purple Lines. 

2) The cost is prohibitive, but that was true for the Wilshire Subway.  After virtually 100 years of talking about it, the subway under Wilshire Blvd. is being built, with political and financial support that is now universal. 

Demands to both Sacramento and Washington for matching funds will almost certainly be ramped up, and a dogfight between Republican Congressional budget hawks and President-Elect Trump will occur over how to pay for $1 trillion in national infrastructure projects. 

For now, it should be remembered that $1 billion in Measure R's plan (the forerunner of Measure M) was dedicated for a Westside/Valley transit project, and it's not hard to conclude that paying for buses and Rapid Bus stations will occur between the Orange Line Busway and the Expo Line, with stops on Sunset and the Getty Center. 

Perhaps a Busway will be built, but that may be too expensive and inflexible--would that reside in the middle of the 405 freeway, and take over the carpool lanes?  Perhaps...but the stations need to be at the destinations residing off the freeway, so that a Rapid Bus line with many new buses (paid for by Measures R and M) might be what we see in the immediate future. 

At this time, however, the concerns of $5-7 billion for a north-south Westside/Valley Subway appear to have gone the direction of the Wilshire Subway: "Yes, it's expensive.  And?" 

3) The political will of a given region overrides all obstacles, or places a given rail project at the back of the line. 

There was never a counterpart to the "Friends4Expo Transit" for a north-south Valley/Westside (Westside/Valley?) transit project.  Of course, there was also no equivalent or counterpart to an Exposition Rail Line Right of Way.  And there was certainly no cohesion between San Fernando Valley and Westside political leaders, or even political cohesion within the Valley. 

And San Fernando Valley leaders are paying the price for not showing courage and vision when they let a rail right of way become a second-rate Orange Line Busway which could have been a first-rate light rail line like what occurred with the Exposition Light Rail Line. 

What to do, what to do?  The conversion of the Orange Line Busway to a light rail, or doing the big dig with a Valley/Westside rail tunnel?  Which should come first?  Can they both be worked on together? 

Similarly, the South Bay Cities, which did not vote in as high numbers for Measure M, are paying the price for not advocating for a South Bay Green Line Extension earlier (they've got their own roadblocks, and hence that region will have to suffer until the right leaders can expedite that project and confront those among them who are blocking it. 

And ditto for the Southeast LA County Cities (Gateway Cities) who still have major freeway projects and a lower priority for any rail projects.   

The regions without the political will suffer the most, but with Latinos and Millennials overwhelmingly voting for Measure M, it's likely the chorus for more rail projects will grow ever louder. 

On a final note, there is yet ANOTHER "holy grail" that has been ignored, and will remain ignored until LAX is connected to Metro's countywide transit system: a direct LAX to Downtown rail line.  

There almost certainly WILL be more individuals noting how Metro spent money and effort to create a cute Bikeway along the Harbor Subdivision rail right of way between Inglewood and the Blue Line and Southeast Downtown LA and Union Station. 

But that, too, is an issue of geography, cost, and (especially!) political will.   

Because the dilemma of HOW, and not IF, we're going to get to these "holy grails" is one we can now enjoy with the passage of Measure M. 

Which is a dilemma that transportation experts have sought for years to confront.  And that is one dilemma that will bring cheers and smiles (and jobs!) for decades to come. 

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Kids say the Darndest Things is long gone from television, but based on the rib-tickling comments from the planning and environmental consultants who Caruso Affiliated hired to support its high-rise luxury apartment project at 333 S. LaCienega, a revival in now warranted. Instead of kids, though, I suggest Art Linkletter’s and Bill Cosby’s successor can interview the various officials, architects, lawyers, planning expediters, outreach specialists, environmental specialists, and hoodwinked neighbors on the payroll to sing the praises of one unplanned mega-project after another. 

Based on their performance in promoting Caruso Affiliated’s 333 S. LaCienega project at the City Planning Commission, I think the new show might even deny Julia Louis Dreyfuss her ninth Emmy. We also may need to move quickly because if the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative passes in March 2017, developers will no longer be able to select their own environmental consultants, and all their reality-defying performances will be lost forever. 

To scope out the revival of Kids Say the Darndest Things, let us examine how these Santa’s little helpers deflected an obvious criticism: a 240 foot high-rise apartment tower constructed on a lot with a 45 feet height limit and facing one of the most congested intersections in Los Angeles does not meets the General Plan’s policy that new high density residential must match the character and scale of surrounding residences. 

Then let us move on to their equally droll defense against the public comment that some of this planet’s wealthiest tenants are not going to travel around Los Angeles on METRO busses or hoof a half-mile to the future Purple Line station at LaCienega and Wilshire for forays to LACMA, the Wiltern, Little Tokyo, or Universal Studios. 

The consultants replied that any claims of a clash in scale and character were purely conjecture, and they then asserted the opposite, that the proposed structure is visually consistent with nearby residences because they spotted some mid-rise buildings in the vicinity. Then Little Sir Echo from the Department of City Planning repeated these consultant claims to an obliging City Planning Commission (CPC). While that is obviously sufficient for a CPC whose members are insiders handpicked by the Developer-in-Chief, Eric Garcetti, it is not likely to pass muster with less enlightened outsiders. 

To begin, the Wilshire Community Plan, which governs 333 S. LaCienega Boulevard, presents two clear policies: 

Policies

1-1.1

Protect existing stable single family and low density residential neightborhoods from encroachment by higher density residential uses and other uses that are incompatible as to scale and character, or would otherwise diminish quality of life.

1-3.1

Promote architectural compatibility and landscaping for new Multiple Family residential development to protect the character and scale of existing residential neighborhoods.

New high-density residential buildings should be consistent with the character and scale of nearby low-density and single family residential areas. 

At this location the highest surrounding buildings, at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and the Beverly Center Shopping Center, are about 8 stories tall, while 240 feet translates into approximately 19-21 stories. As a result, the 333 S. LaCienega tower is at least twice the height of the tallest surrounding buildings. Furthermore, most buildings on LaCienega Boulevard, to the north, between Beverly Boulevard and West Hollywood, conform to the corridor’s 45-foot height limit, as prescribed by the General Plan and its C2-1VL zone. To the south, nearly all buildings between this site and Wilshire Boulevard also conform to the General Plan designation and to existing zoning. 

Improving the visual character of the area? 

In hopes that the pilot will become a comedy hit, the consultants also claimed that the proposed project would improve the visual character of the immediate area, even though a 240-foot tall building would tower everything else in this part of Los Angeles. To find other buildings this tall, one needs to drive west to Century City, south to some parts of Wilshire Boulevard, or north to West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. But, the planning and zoning in these three areas permits such high rise structures, and these legal buildings are not two (2) to eight (8) times taller than everything else. While the project’s renderings are designed to shrink the building’s height, it can still be observed in the following. Despite architectural trickery and traffic-free streets at one of LA’s and Beverly Hill’s most congested corners, the high-rise still towers over the Beverly Center, which is one block to the north and Cedars Sinai, which is to its immediate northwest. 

Auto-centric high-rise structures, like this, are transit adjacent, not transit oriented. 

In response to public comments that it is highly farfetched to re-package a luxury high-rise tower as a transit-oriented development whose super-wealthy tenants will ride METRO busses, the consultant’s rejoinder was so ingenious that Larry David must be cribbing the lines. Any claims about high rents and low transit use are purely speculative. But, this complaint about the proposed project was not speculative. It is based on data that the high-rollers shelling out $12,000 to $40,000 per month for rent will NOT take METRO busses or the future subway. 

The information comes straight from the project’s developer, Rick Caruso, as corroborated by the Los Angeles Times. At several meetings with the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, Mr. Caruso stated that his project will be a unique luxury apartment building, and about half of its tenants would be occasional visitors from other countries. It would offer the up-scale amenities of a five star hotel, including a concierge service that shops for tenants and provides on-call chauffeur-driven luxury cars for all their mobility needs. 

Apparently, the meeting did not last long enough for the developer to mention that there were nearby METRO bus stops and his future tenants would quickly grow tired of their chauffeur-driven luxury cars. At that point, they would switch to METRO busses, and beginning in 2023, stroll a half-mile to LaCienega and Wilshire to venture forth on the Purple Line Subway. 

At these meetings Mr. Caruso also emphasized that his tenants expected lavish amenities, including semi-private elevators that allowed them to avoid other tenants. This was, in fact, his primary reason for not building a shorter building with more luxury units on each expanded floor. 

While it not possible to know the exact rent structure of the proposed project, according to the real estate site, Curbed LA, it is intended to match the luxury Caruso building one block to the south, at 8500 Burton Way, where the penthouse rents for $40,000 per month. 

Furthermore, according to the March 9, 2015, Los Angeles Times, the typical rent there is $12,000 per month, which is at least four times the average rent in Los Angeles, and comparable to the highest rents in New York City. This press report also quotes the developer directly: 

"It's very eclectic," he said of the tenant mix, "sort of the rich and famous of all categories….About half of them have a primary home outside Los Angeles, in many cases overseas, he said, "It's a second home to many." 

A key factor in the building's appeal is hotel-like service, Caruso said. There is a driver and car to help tenants run errands or get to the airport. A concierge will secure concert tickets or see to it that tenants' grocery lists are fulfilled and the food is stocked in their pantries. 

"We shop everywhere," Caruso said. "If you want a salad from the Polo Lounge, we'll bring you a salad from the Polo Lounge. People want to be pampered." 

While the environmental and planning consultants might contend that these rich and famous tenants will take METRO busses and the future Purple Line subway, their sole evidence is proximity to several bus stops. But, a transit adjacent apartment building is hardly the same as a transit-oriented one. In the latter, the tenant mix is transit-oriented, and programs to generate transit ridership are front and center, not an after-thought slipped into an Environmental Impact Report. 

Had the consultant team looked further, though, they could have easily obtained a demographic profile of METRO passengers derived from on-board surveys. Eighty percent of the bus passengers are Latino, Black, and American Indian. Their average income is $16,377 per year, which means they are not likely to rent luxury apartments at 333 S. LaCienega. In fact, with such low incomes, it is doubtful they could even afford the 13 low income and affordable apartments that Caruso Affiliated pledges to build to qualify for on and off-menu Density Bonus incentives.  

While I realize that some readers may struggle to find the humor in this column, can’t we at least agree that the creativity of the consultants and their abettors at City Hall ought to be recognized? If not through a new comedy series, then perhaps we should consider something else, perhaps the next Doublespeak Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

(Dick Platkin reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch. He is also serves on the Board of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, which opposes the requested zone change, height district change and General Plan Amendment for the proposed luxury apartment tower at 333. S. LaCienega. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

IT’S THE ECONMOMY, STUPID (PART 2)-In Part I, we explored how Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was Obama’s “Promise of Hope” and both plagiarize Bill Clinton’s, “It’s the economy, stupid.” But no one cares as long as they deliver. 

“We have a mandate” is a pathological delusion in which politicians believe that because they won, they have a mandate to do whatever they want. Trump has no mandate, just as Obama had no mandate to do Health Care before fixing the economy. 

It turns out that not fixing the economy is the true third rail of American politicians, but I guess it’s the great talent of politicians to deceive and mislead, which then causes them to deceive and mislead themselves into thinking that they personally have some mandate. No. They do not. 

How will Trump fix the economy? 

If Trump has any idea, he is as secretive about it as he is about his plans to defeat ISIS. In fact, if I were a betting person, I’d bet he has better ideas how to decimate ISIS than he does how to manage the economy. 

The Basic Flaw in Managing the Economy 

The worst people in the world to manage a national economy are businessmen -- including people with a Wall Street mentality. That was Geithner’s fatal flaw that paved the way for Trump. 

The government’s responsibility for the economy has nothing to do with how one runs a business or how a family manages its finances. While sometimes an analogy can helped illustrate an aspect of macro-economics, it is dangerous to use examples from business or personal finances because they are based in micro-economics. Asking a businessman about macro-economics is like asking a person who only speaks German to teach you French. 

Managing the Economy Is the Function of Macro-economics 

Businessmen run businesses and people run their family finances, but the government has an entire different responsibility. Its main domestic function is to set the parameters for the economy itself. It sets the rules of the system. 

The Price System 

Adam Smith, writing in 1776, John Maynard Keynes, writing in 1936, both placed protection of the Price System at the core of the economic system – much in the same way as the Right to Privacy is at the core of Liberty. Without a right to privacy, there is no liberty. Both the price system and the right to privacy are so intrinsic to the economy and our constitution that we seldom enunciate them. 

The Price System is the mechanism by which everyone knows what something is worth from moment to moment. It is sometimes called the law of supply and demand. In totalitarian systems like Communism, they try to have a central authority set prices. There is nothing better to establish the value of any commodity than what a willing buyer will pay to a willing seller. These decisions are made billions of times a day. 

The Price System needs to be protected. The biggest threat is fraud, such as when people send out false information about the cost of wheat and deceive people into selling it far below market value. The fraudsters buy up huge quantities and when the market corrects itself, they sell their wheat for a huge profit. Not only are the people who sold their wheat for below market value harmed, but others who depend upon them to purchase merchandise are harmed. The fraudsters have nothing of value to wheat and they have provided no value by their transactions. 

Wall Street has been allowed to run wild with fraud since the end of the Clinton Administration and neither Bush nor Obama did anything to stop that from being the modus operandus. People were deceived into investing in housing, based upon the fraudulent idea that there was a huge market of buyers for single family homes; in fact, the market was already greatly over-built. Many people chose to invest in home construction, but what about all the places where they did not invest their money? We will never know what medical advances could have been made if those billions of dollars had gone into genetic research. No one knows how much farther along science would be if those billions of dollars had gone into space exploration. 

Thus, the first domestic job of the Trump Presidency is to “Protect the Price System.” 

That will require beefing up the old Glass-Steagall law and outlawing credit default swaps. Dodd-Frank is a poor platform from which to begin. We need to separate the investment banks from the commercial banks and make certain there are no loop holes allowing them to indirectly coordinate. 

Raise the cap on incomes which pay Social Security, Increase Unemployment Insurance, and Insure Residential Mortgages 

The government needs to follow the basic principle that Joseph explained to Pharaoh. During the fat years, you need to save so that during the lean years you can spend. 

There is no rational reason to cap the income for making Social Security contributions at only $118,500. The wealthier a person becomes, the less burden it is to pay Social Security taxes on higher income. It is the government’s duty to explain that Social Security payments have a benefit for businesses as well as for the individual who collects them. 

When the economy turns down, and it always does, the government can ward off recession by adding money to the economy. The higher the social security payments to seniors, the more disposable income they have and the better that is for business. The entire society benefits when seniors have more money to spend. 

Social Security was devised when people thought individuals would all have private pensions, but as we have seen, private pensions have become a fiction for everyone except the extremely wealthy.   Thus, Social Security has to be the main source of income for the elderly. To this end, it is the duty of the Trump Administration to increase Social Security payments. 

There are two basic ways to do this: 

(1) Starting in 2018, and each year thereafter Social Security payments will by at least 5% more than any increase in the Consumer Price Index. 

(2) An alternative would be to keep the current rate of increase at the CPI, but set an automatic “sur-increase” if there is a decrease in the economy. That way, as the economy becomes weak and moves towards recession, seniors and the disabled with have more money to spend and that extra money will help businesses weather the downturn. Since this increase would allow the country to head off a crisis, the amount of increase would have to be significant. 

Either way, Trump needs to lift the cap on Social Security contributions. 

For the same reason, we also need to start increasing the deductions for Unemployment Insurance. We need to set aside more funds to handle increased unemployment insurance payments because an economic downturn always increases unemployment.   

Similarly, we need to insure all residential mortgages with a type of insurance that is similar to life insurance and fire insurance. An economic downturn is similar to a fire that only burns down the den and the master bedroom. A family may lose part of its income due to a layoff. Thus, the mortgage insurance would kick in to pay that portion of the mortgage that has become out of reach. An automatic program like insurance with pre-set criteria is required; a time consuming and complicated refinancing system would only harm the banks at the time when everyone needs help. 

Thus, two things which we need to hear from Trump are his vigorous protection of the Price System and the institution of more programs to remove money from the economy while it is doing well in order to have the funds to add to the economy when it becomes weak. 

A Word about Los Angeles and Macro-Economics 

Measure HHH, Affordable Housing for the poor, is a horrible idea and is pseudo-macro-economics. It is a relic from the soviet-style CRA type of government in which Garcetti bureaucrats decide where poor people will live. Garcetti and the other central planners of the world suffer from the delusion that somehow GOD imbued them with the right to make these personal decisions for other people just because they are poor. The only thing that Measure HHH does is give the corrupt city council $1.2 billion to dole out to their buddies. 

Late Breaking News Article about LA’s Decline 

Although we’ve been writing for a couple of years about Family Millennials’ leaving Los Angeles, LA Weekly has presented some additional confirming data in its November 15, 2016 piece by David Romero, “Millennials Are Leaving Los Angeles.” 

Here is the underlying study in the November 4, 2016 issue of Apartment LIST, “Where are Millennials Moving to?” by Andrew Woo. Note that the article’s focus on 18 to 35 year olds tends to conceal that the exodus is among the older Millennials, i.e. the Family Millennials. The City’s investment in high rise Transit Oriented Districts is a local form of mismanagement of macro-economics. The diversion of billions of dollars into DTLA high rises and into Hollywood InFill Projects, along with Garcetti’s war on the single-family home, have driven out the replacement generation for Los Angeles’ Middle Class. 

Part III will discuss the political evil which allowed this disaster to befall the City.

(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.

EASTSIDER-I guess I have a very different view of our recent Presidential election. Truth is, Donald Trump won, Hillary Clinton lost. Period. Donald Trump will be President of the United States come January, and no amount of protests or whining is going to change that outcome. 

For me, the more useful analysis has to do with what in the heck we do with our Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party here in California. After all, the Republican National Committee and the Republicans have already given us their version of change -- President Trump. 

My point of view is framed by having been a lifetime Democrat, and my dad was one of a handful of dentists in Orange County who was a Democrat. But the Democratic Party I belonged to and fought for back in the day is not the Democratic Party of 2016. 

Nobody wants to admit that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were responses to two national private clubs, the DNC and the RNC, that are absolutely rigged against ordinary Americans. Trump won, and we will have to see how he copes with the reality that the nation also re-elected most of the same old same old Senators and Congress Critters that he argued against. And they are mostly still charter members of the one dollar one vote brand of politics in America. 

As for the Democrats, I see no real movement to get back in touch with that 90 percent of the electorate that does not represent the 1/2 of 1% of the rich and powerful. Face it, the DNC is a slush fund that sets its own rules to keep its current members in power, and those folk’s skill set is doing whatever it takes to grab as much corporate and billionaire money as they can. I think we all know the price for that trade. 

As long as television networks like MSNBC are a subdivision of the DNC, paying ridiculous sums of money to DNC agents like Donna Brazile and other talking heads, you and I are in a world of hurt if we actually believe they represent us beyond the sound bites heard during the national elections, even as they look for gigs in a new administration. 

Hillary Clinton Did Not Happen In a Vacuum  

I remember when Bill Clinton got elected. He talked so good, and I gave him my hard earned money and thought how grand life would be. Sure. Then we got GATT & NAFTA & Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. 

Bill Clinton was a “better” Republican than most in the Republican Party. I was crushed. And then we got Bush’d. Holy Moly, war without end, amen, and militarization of our police departments. Maybe Clinton wasn’t so bad after all. Except for the fact that most of my friends didn’t have jobs, and none of us had laws protecting us from the financial elites. 

Then came my final disappointment: Barack Obama. Again, he talked so good that I gave him a bunch of money and bought into the “audacity of hope.” Boy did we hope and pray it was true. Maybe we could all get along and remove ourselves from the endless wars that were economically destroying our way of life. More on his legacy in a bit, but first, why don’t we try and put all of these relatively recent happenings and disappointments in historical context? A context I should have remembered. 

A Fine History of Political Corruption 

Most folks don’t realize it, but we in the United States have a fine history of political corruption. For those mildly interested in American history, Mark Wahlgren Summers wrote a couple of great books, The Plundering Generation about the Civil War Period, and the even more revealing, The Era of Good Stealings about the post Civil War Reconstruction period. 

In his Preface to The Era of Good Stealings, Summers wrote, “From the bribery of lawmakers to ballot-box stuffing to administrative officers on the take, corruption had less important consequences than the corruption issue.” 

That issue has never really gone away. We had muckrakers like Lincoln Steffens (The Shame of the Cities) at the Turn of the Century into the progressive era, proving again that political corruption has always gone hand in hand with financial corruption.

When the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) was just laying around, President Teddy Roosevelt dusted it off and made it his vehicle for “trust busting” the Wall Street financial class. I find it fascinating that his first target was J. Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s. Under the heading, “you can’t make this stuff up,” I cannot resist noting that old J.P.’s current incarnation, J.P. Morgan Chase, was at the heart of our 2007/08 financial services industry meltdown.

To jet ahead to now, we had the Great Depression and the establishment of the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to reign in the financial services industry. And then we had President Bill Clinton who repealed it. Good move. 

Now we have been given, in order, the almost great depression of 2007/08, Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Ain’t progress grand? All the same political and financial corruption issues that Summers and Steffens wrote about over a hundred years ago. 

Back to the Obama Presidency 

Presidential candidate Obama did something that hadn’t happened for quite a while: he articulated a vision of hope and working together for a better America, and did it well. A lot of us bought into this vision because we wanted to believe that it was possible, even in the face of the meltdown of our financial services industry and permanent war around the globe. 

I won’t go into the details of his presidency, other than to say “so sad too bad,” and to point out a few things that we now know were actually going on within the campaign even as we all stood in line to attend Obama rallies. 

As a quick popular read, you might check out a book by Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. 

The book is not without its critics or faults, but most of the criticisms are inside baseball kind of stuff. Frankly I could care less about Larry Summers or Timothy Geithner or Ben Bernanke. What they and their cronies did and who they took money from is a matter of public record. 

My interest in the book is simple: It shows that while Barrack Obama was running for the White House on a platform of populism and togetherness, he was, in fact, in bed with and subsidized by the very financial services industry he was promising to fix. As for targeting blocks of voters, Suskind’s electoral math at the beginning of the book shows that Obama was targeting the “ten million low to moderately skilled white workers,” under the banner of restoring our infrastructure. Sounds right to me. Of course it didn’t happen, and oh gee, I wonder what current president-elect echoed those refrains? Hint: it wasn’t the Democratic nominee. 

It is a fact that, under the Obama administration, not one of those crooks in the financial services industry has been indicted or gone to jail. Instead, they got private meetings with the Attorney General of the United States and cut deals to have their shareholders pay fines without any admission of personal liability. And their lobbyists in Congress got to turn the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 into a 2300 page giant telephone directory of mishmash. 

Ultimately, as a result of endless litigation, stalling, and an army of lobbyists buying both houses of congress, the bill is still getting (re)written. Further, between the legislative budget manipulation, fiddling with the regulatory agencies, and the Administration’s own lame appointments (read industry shills,) Niccolo Machiavelli would have to update The Prince to be current. 

I was especially amused by Morrison & Forerster’s Cheat Sheet from 2010. If you take a look, it will give you a taste of what I’m referring to in Dodd-Frank. 

As an A-List San Francisco behemoth, I just had to give some credit to MoFo as a relatively “local,” front for corporate America. Not to mention they produce a spiffy pdf. 

So What the Heck Do We Do Now? 

Ok, ok, even if what I say is true, what now? The real question after the 2016 Presidential election is what can we do to change this mess? Trump or no, the fact is that the vast majority of both houses of congress represent politicians totally beholden to the DNC, the RNC, and the billionaire class that owns the financial services industry. Groovy. 

Bernie was right on. You and I have about as much influence with these people as the serfs of Imperial Russia.

Here in California, there are also warning signs that the relative stability and economic success of my generation is now gone forever, for both us and our children. Factor out the uber-rich from Silicon Valley and the Entertainment Industry moguls, mix in the incestuous California Democratic Party, and I think you will find a state that’s not that different from the rest of the nation underneath; just more diverse. And our budget is largely dependent on the “temporary tax” on those rich folks that was just extended by the voters on November 8th. 

When I talk to my neighbors and people who actually live in Northeast LA, it’s about jobs and economic survival. Something like nine million jobs disappeared between 2007 and 2010, and by and large, they haven’t come back. A lot of those jobs were good paying jobs that let people have a home and send their children to school and plan for retirement. 

Don’t They Get that It’s All about Jobs? 

The jobs that have been generated lately have been either at the bottom end of the wage scale or the high-end tech and professional occupations. CityLab’s Laura Bliss has a good article on this reality here.  

Notwithstanding all the statistical modifications and revisions, simply disappearing the long-term jobless from the rolls of our state and federal employment statistics doesn’t do a heck of a lot towards getting them work. Just because the Democratic elites joined with the Republican elites in ignoring any pretense of providing full-time decent jobs with benefits, doesn’t say much for either one of them. William Black has a telling article about the phenomenon.  

Further, our younger workers, categorized as “Millennial’s,” are very nervous about their own employment prospects and for cause. The “shared economy,” “gig” employment, student debt and low wages do not make for anything other than anxiety and pessimism about the future. See the recent study results on the Millennial Economy. 

Millennials are leaving LA in droves, and our young people can’t get jobs at all. 

Back to the Roots - Re-Forming the Democrats 

It used to be that the Democratic Party represented working people, their hopes and aspirations. Those days went bye bye with Bill Clinton and have never returned. Bernie Sanders has it 100% right about politicians needing to represent the 99% of people instead of toadying up to the 1%. 

This not about “left” or “right.” Those are simply stupid and divisive labels used by professional political elites to brand their version of two party HORSE PUCKEY. My name is Tony, not “white college educated.” My wife is Paula, not “multi-racial API with PhD.” My friend Edwin is named Ed, not “African-American professional,” and my pal Raul is named Raul, not “high-school educated Latino.” 

I think that we all have an absolute moral imperative to either hang up or lie through our teeth to any political pollster. Let them rot, instead of making money in trying to manipulate us. 

We need to get rid of fear and get the Democrats moving on -- worrying about how to create and maintain decent jobs for Angelenos, jobs where they can get and stay out of poverty. As the Brookings Institute noted, “poverty crosses party lines.”  Duh. 

On the Local Level 

We do not need our essentially all Democrat LA City Council and Mayor to continue to run around and spend money we don’t have on new tax initiatives, even as they sell their souls to big developers. They will not be around when the bill comes due and you and I need a job or help. We need to elect Democrats who will generate decent jobs that are more than a gig or a project. 

We need to elect Democrats who will actually represent the men and women of their political boundaries, not just cater to and manipulate a fraction of the less than 10% of people who even bother to vote in municipal elections. And stop blaming us that only 10% of the City votes. Look instead at our choices of candidates and their performances. 

I know you will not be surprised that I am a great fan of Bernie Sanders and OurRevolution.  

Bernie is joined by other people across the country, like Tim Canova in Florida, who recently lost to Debbie “PayDay Loan” Wasserman Schultz. He also has set up a grass roots movement called Progress For Now. Other real Democrats throughout the country are doing the same. 

It’s time for real people to get together, organize, and elect people who will take care of the 99% for a change. Otherwise, these idiots in both parties are going to take us down in another crash they can’t fix. 

Let’s go for it. As The Donald said, “What have we got to lose?”

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.