POLITICS--When newly-elected Donald Trump took his family to a restaurant for dinner without telling the public recently, the press flipped out. A chorus of complaints swelled across the land and apoplexy ensued among the news media.

“He didn’t tell us!”
“He’d supposed to let us know!”
“That’s not how it’s done!”
“We should have come along and sat outside while he ate steak!”

Journalists and editorial writers pilloried Mr. Trump for leaving home and traveling five blocks to a restaurant. Those same reporters, along with editors and news executives, issued thoughtful pleas about the importance of documenting a chief executive-to-be’s movements.

I’m not here to defend the president-elect’s behavior or suggest that his unwillingness to play by traditional rules of engagement with the press is not a big deal. I’m a newspaper reporter, after all. And as the City Hall reporter for the only newspaper in McComb, Mississippi, I hardly find it remarkable when the mayor travels the three blocks from his office to the Dinner Bell restaurant without first notifying me.

I am here instead to suggest—from deep and unusual personal experience—that the news media and everyone else might do well to prepare for a lot more breaking of protocol.

I was the personal aide, AKA “Body Man,” to a governor of California who at the time of his election was one of the five or six most famous people on earth. Like Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed himself an outsider, a non-politician. His first campaign, like Trump’s, was a circus, with the sheer force of his persona flattening most criticisms and every opponent.

“I’m rich so I’m not beholden to special interests,” he said. “I’ll fix a broken system,” he said. Trump’s “drain the swamp” sounds a lot like Schwarzenegger’s “blow up the boxes.”

There is of course a vast difference of scale between a president and a governor, even a superhuman governor like Arnold Schwarzenegger. A governor isn’t responsible for national defense and doesn’t negotiate treaties with other countries. A governor doesn’t tend to travel in a 50-vehicle motorcade with an ambulance in it. A governor doesn’t have access to nuclear codes.

But I believe there are lessons to be learned from Schwarzenegger’s behavior as governor that will help us understand Trump’s as president, at least based on how he has conducted himself in the first weeks since his election.

Early in the Schwarzenegger era—like Trump, even before he took office—calls of “It’s always been done this way” began to be tossed about.

“You’ll have to be in the Capitol every day to meet staff and legislators. You’ll have to be here to sign bills. That’s how it’s done.”

It took a while, but Arnold chipped away at “It’s always been done this way” until the Sacramento apparatchiks got it through their heads that the governor could do business sitting by his swimming pool 400 miles from the Capitol if he wanted to.

One thing people didn’t press the governor to do was move his family from Los Angeles to Sacramento. California was at the time one of just a handful of states with no governor’s residence. That and Arnold’s four school-age kids gave him a pass on the relocation bit.

Instead he took up part-time residence in a two-bedroom hotel suite across the street from the State Capitol. Several nights a week, he slept in one bedroom, I in the other. Between the manly-man Republican action hero and the 40-something gay Democrat, we were an odd couple if ever there was one.

“What must people think … the two of us living here like this?” he said one night as he switched off the lamp in our living room before heading to his bedroom. But I don’t believe he fretted much about what people thought, about his living arrangements or anything else.

It took a while, but Arnold chipped away at “It’s always been done this way” until the Sacramento apparatchiks got it through their heads that the governor could do business sitting by his swimming pool 400 miles from the Capitol if he wanted to. Staff could fly to Los Angeles, their rolling suitcases, jammed with legislation, in tow. The mountain, it turned out, could indeed come to Mohammad.

In August 2004, less than a year after Arnold took office, he agreed to speak at a high-ticket Bush-Cheney fundraiser in Santa Monica. Our advance people and the California Highway Patrol team warned, “Governor, the Secret Service say you have to be there 30 minutes ahead of the president or they won’t let you in. They’ll shut down access.”

“Relax,” Arnold said, just as I heard him say several times a day for the seven years he held office. “Let’s go to Starbucks.” There were few things Arnold Schwarzenegger liked less than sitting and waiting. “No hanging” was a mantra.

“But Governor, the Secret Service …”

“Starbucks. Do you really think they’ll keep me out?” And he was right. He knew the power of his celebrity. Starbucks was a frequent tool for the killing of time, and the California Highway Patrol protective detail learned quickly to research Starbucks locations when plotting routes between events.

There is shorthand for a politician’s unplanned events or stops on a tour. An OTR, or Off The Record, is an unscheduled stop. There was the OTR at an H&M store in Philadelphia, where Arnold had seen interesting scarves in the window when driving past.

“What are you doing here?” the lady behind him in the checkout line asked.

“Buying scarves.”

“Makes sense,” she said.

OTRs are easier when you have your own airplane that won’t take off without you, as the governor did.

“Do you really think they’ll keep me out?” And he was right. He knew the power of his celebrity.

Then there was the jet ski OTR in Miami Beach. We were there for a conference on climate change but, as at most conferences, Arnold didn’t attend every panel, plenary, and roundtable.

“Let’s get some jet skis.”

“Uh, you’re supposed to be in the reception at 3.”

“Relax.”

Several staff members had to make quick trips to the hotel gift shop for swim trunks; others of us knew enough to have packed apparel for every Florida eventuality. It had to be an odd picture, Schwarzenegger and his posse traipsing across the sand to the surf, flanked by a team of plainclothes highway patrolmen in dark suits. It happened that we were crossing a topless beach but if the rest of the posse was titillated, I was not.

More times than I can count, the governor visited construction sites or industrial facilities where hardhats were required.

“Not gonna happen,” he would say, not breaking stride, to the man waving a hardhat in front of him.

“But it’s required!” By then it was too late.

He acquiesced only once in the headwear department, though it wasn’t with a hardhat. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance center in Jerusalem, a yarmulke is required when you enter the Hall of Remembrance to view the Eternal Flame. That time, the governor knew better than to quarrel.

Arnold’s reluctance to commit to schedules or events until the last minute sometimes meant squads of CHP officers sitting and waiting to cover every possible scenario. Teams gamely stationed themselves everywhere he was scheduled to go, or where he might go when he made up his mind. And if he decided not to go, the team drove or flew home, depending on how far away they were.

I made a wasted trip once myself. I had been dispatched to Idaho to set up a retreat for the governor’s senior staff in his vacation home. But as soon as I landed in Boise I received an email telling me to come back to California. The retreat was off. I hustled across the airport and made it onto a plane leaving just a few minutes later, but that was a $700 ticket on the state’s dime.

Despite Donald Trump’s thumb-your-nose approach to the traditional ways of doing things, I don’t think we’ll see him in H&M buying five-dollar scarves. But he could if he wanted to. And like the H&M visit, I don’t expect to see President Trump sea-doo-ing anytime soon. But one never knows.

One thing we can expect from President Trump is that “it’s always been done that way” won’t get us very far. We won’t like everything he does but we shouldn’t be surprised when he defies protocol. After all, breaking the rules of presidential campaigns is what got him elected.

(Clay Russell is a reporter for the McComb (Miss.) Enterprise-Journal and prides himself on his non-linear life path. A former professional chef, he lives with his husband and two cats in America’s Deep South. This piece was posted first at Zocalo Public Square.)

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-This weekend’s deadly inferno in an Oakland warehouse that was used as, but not permitted as, a living space and concert venue is a warning shot for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the LA City Council and especially its first-term District 4 representative David Ryu. The message it delivers to them is this: if you ignore repeated community warnings about dangerous conditions, someone, perhaps many people, may die on your watch. (As of Monday afternoon, the Oakland death toll stands at 36 and is expected to go higher.) 

In the communities surrounding LA’s world famous Hollywood sign, a major tourist attraction, members of its surrounding homeowners’ associations are furious with Ryu for what they say are broken campaign promises, and his becoming unreachable, regarding the ever worsening, dangerous conditions created by City Hall giving riskier and illegal access to the sign through extremely narrow and winding hillside streets. 

Locals primarily blame the conditions on two things. One is Ryu’s predecessor, Tom Labonge, the seemingly attention deficit challenged, termed-out City Hall lifer who ignored common sense. Locals say California’s environmental CEQA rules were ignored by Labonge in 2011 when he illegally used his own office staff to clear a perilous cliffside vista for tourists to view the sign, rather than going through city departments that have engineers, public safety and park experts. The other cause, they say, is technology like Google Maps, Yelp and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft that allow tourists to share with one another closer, riskier access points to the sign. 

In the Spring 2015 primary for Labonge’s City Council seat, Ryu defeated outsider activists, as well as crusty City Hall heir-apparents, to face off against Labonge’s Chief of Staff, Carolyn Ramsay. In doing so, he sought and received help from Tony Fisch, a Hollywood Hills consultant and 12 other activists who met with Ryu to discuss well-documented dangers ranging from huge brushfires believed to be caused by tourists’ cigarettes, tourists driving off cliffs, and tourists seeking selfies -- sometimes with children in strollers – inches away from 200-foot plunges. 

According to Fisch, “Thirteen of us activists sat with (Ryu) in my living room at the beginning of the runoff. He said he’d assure our public safety and we were specific about the Vista.  After the election he asked us for residential consensus to close the Vista along with other safeguards. (We) hand-delivered 75% of residential signatures to him in his office. He said he would get back to us with a timeline, but we never heard from him again.” But now that Ryu is nearing the half-way point of his first term, Fisch says of Ryu, “He is a corrupt liar.” 

At Friday’s City Council meeting, when asked to comment on the subject, Ryu declined to answer “due to a lengthy Council meeting today.” But the meeting had only an eight-item agenda, much of which was ceremonial, and took only half as much time as Wednesday’s marathon four-hour meeting. He referred me instead to his Communications Director who talked about their conducting 50+ meetings about the subject, but could not provide any specific plans for dealing with the problems or meeting with Fisch and his activist neighbors again. 

On Saturday morning, I ventured high into Beachwood Canyon to speak with locals and to see first-hand what was going on. 

What I saw was nothing short of a cavalcade of chaos. I met Guy, a local house restorer who has lived in the area for four years. He estimated that, at the top of his extremely narrow road, which ends in a cul-de-sac, there are upward of 1200 to 1500 daily vehicle “turnarounds.” 

I witnessed tourist vehicles and Uber and Lyft drivers parking their cars in (and in front of) driveways and in the middle of the street. This is not only a back-breaking nuisance for residents, but a tremendous danger should first responders need to access the gated, dirt access road at the top of the street in the event of another brushfire. Sometimes, the ride share drivers drop off their fares and drive away, only to come back minutes later, doubling the traffic nuisance. 

Local parking enforcement officials expressed frustration that they have to patrol a large area, but that when they respond to calls for illegal driveway and street blocking, the tourists and ride share drivers jump back in their cars and drive away. 

Residents, it should be noted, welcome hikers and cyclists enjoying the scenery, although they say the city has done nothing to enforce limited hours of access to those trails, leading to drug and alcohol consumption, used condom disposal on their streets and late night bike riders. 

Bad as the conditions I witnessed were, this pales in comparison to something else I discovered…..coming soon.

(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.)

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Remember this past July when we were sure Trump’s run for presidency would be toppled by the leaked Access Hollywood Bus Tapes? Months later, we’re trying to avert our eyes from early morning tweets, the Apprentice-scale Cabinet competition and buddy to buddy calls with foreign dignitaries. 

Back in 2013, two years after Anthony Weiner had resigned from Congress over a sexting scandal, the politician had risen from the ashes as a reformed family man and hero of the middle class but his NYC mayoral campaign came to a halt mid-primary season after another online relationship was revealed. Weiner revealed two days after dropping out of the Democratic primary that he had engaged in online sexually charged relationships with between six and ten women after leaving Congress. 

It would seem personal scandals can either stick like Velcro or bounce off a candidate’s back, depending upon the scenario or perhaps, depending upon the candidate. Closer to home, we wonder if LA Councilmember Jose Huizar’s “illustrious” past will place an obstacle before his possible Congressional run to fill the 34^th Congressional District seat expected to be vacated by Rep. Xavier Becerra’s appointment to fill the final two years of Kamala Harris’s State Attorney General post. 

According to Huizar’s campaign aide, Rick Coca, the Chair of the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee has been reported to be considering an election bid to represent the central and northeast areas of Los Angeles. Despite a past that includes a settled sexual harassment suit, an extramarital relationship, and a city-settled lawsuit over a fender-bender, he managed to get reelected to his third and final full council term last year. 

Just a year earlier, in 2014, Huizar was in the center of not one but two lawsuits. In March, the LA City Council voted unanimously to approve a $185,000 settlement to David Ceja, a former Huntington Park police officer. Ceja’s 2002 Saturn was hit by Huizar’s city-owned SUV in October 2011. Ceja’s attorney had filed an initial claim against the city for over $500,000 in December, questioning whether the council member had received special treatment from LAPD since, according to the attorney, the investigators had waited 2 ½ hours to administer a breathalyzer test, which came out clean. A few weeks prior to the settlement, Ceja’s attorney stated he had no concerns about the police treatment. 

Just months later, Huizar agreed to settle a 2013 sexual harassment case brought by his former deputy chief of staff, Francine Godoy (photo left), who did not obtain a payout from the city, though the city did have to pony up tax dollars for Huizar’s legal fees. In April, the council had voted to approve up to $200,000 to the firm representing Huizar, though it was unclear whether the limit had been reached. 

Godoy alleged in her suit that her former boss had retaliated against her for refusing to submit to his request for sexual favors, a charge Huizar denied, although he did admit to an extramarital relationship with Godoy, who had worked for Huizar from 2006-2013. During her employment, her salary had grown from about $47,000 to over $132,000, according to personnel department officials. Godoy alleged that Huizar denied her promotions, forced her transfer and pressured her to quit her job. She also alleged he had sabotaged her attempted run for Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees in 2012. 

A panel that investigated her complaints concluded a lack of evidence to support her allegations of discrimination and retaliation but did find that she had received pay raises multiple times at a “faster rate” than other staffers in Huizar’s office. 

As reported in City Watch, last week, the LA City Planning Commission (and Huizar) gave a billionaire developer a green light for special spot-zoning for his 20-story luxe high-rise known as “333 La Cienega,” proposed for the intersection of La Cienega and San Vicente, “opening the door to more tall development in the area.” CityWatch reported that Rick Caruso and his associates at Caruso Affiliated Holdings had contributed over $120,000 in campaign contributions to 42 candidates in LA. Caruso has contributed $65,750 to elected officials, including $2,200 to Huizar. 

Do you think Huizar’s past will catch up with him if he decides to run for Becerra’s congressional seat? We’ll have to wait to see.

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

GUEST COMMENTARY--The Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) has expressed deep concern and outrage at President-Elect Donald Trump's announcement today of the selection of Ben Carson to be the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). CES does not believe Carson has the knowledge, experience, ability, compassion or commitment to the goals of HUD to lead the nation's housing agency. 

Over the last 4 decades, CES has been the leading organization in the Los Angeles area that has provided outreach, education and organizing assistance to tenants living in HUD subsidized housing in an effort to preserve this important and significant number of affordable housing units. 

HUD oversees federal rental assistance programs that serve over 5 million of the country's lowest income households, as well as administers tens of billions of dollars in community development, disaster recovery, and homeless assistance funding, enforces fair housing laws and acts as one of the largest mortgage insurers in the world. HUD plays a critical role in alleviating poverty, stabilizing and revitalizing communities, increasing the educational attainment and incomes of low-income families, and providing safe, affordable homes to deeply poor elderly or disabled families. 

But by his own admission, Carson has stated that he "feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency," when his name was suggest to head the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Carson's aide, Armstrong Williams, has stated recently, "He's never run an agency and it's a lot to ask. He's a neophyte and that's not his strength," 

Carson has been deeply critical of social welfare programs. He has characterized the country's safety net of cash assistance, housing allowances and social services as a failure that perpetuates dependence on government. 

He is known for offering provocative commentary on a wide range of issues, including comparing the modern American government to Nazi Germany in a March 2014 interview with Breitbart, and saying at the Voter Values Summit in 2013 that Obamacare is "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." 

In a 2015 opinion for The Washington Times, Carson compared an Obama administration's "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" regulation to "the failure of school busing" because it would place affordable housing "primarily in wealthier neighborhoods with few current minority residents." 

The regulation is designed to end decades-old segregation by offering affluent areas incentives to build affordable housing. Critics, including Carson, called it government overreach. 

Ben Carson is totally unqualified to be HUD Secretary. HUD is among the most important federal agencies tasked with ensuring compliance with the Fair Housing Act, and creating affordable, preventing housing discrimination and ensuring inclusive communities. Ben Carson has shown a complete disregard and open hostility to government efforts to confront racist and discriminatory practices in the housing industry. 

The appointment of Ben Carson indicates that Donald Trump and his admiration has a complete disregard for tenants' rights and an absolute lack of commitment to ensuring America's poor will have a roof over their heads that is decent and that is one they can afford. This clearly is not a holiday present low-income HUD tenants wanted."\

(Larry Gross is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival and an occasional CityWatch contributor.)

-cw

LAPD WATCH--We’re not against the police. We’re not against the police department, but we are against police who commit misconduct (and those who help cover it up.) 

A Los Angeles Police Department internal email shows that the department has misclassified up to 80% of aggravated assaults as simple assaults. That’s important because if they can label a crime as belonging to the Part II family of crimes it doesn’t get counted in the overall violence crime statistics reported publicly -- the only numbers that really matter to the LAPD and City Hall. 

A November 3, 2016 email from the Commanding Officer of COMPSTAT Division John Neuman, shows that between January 1, 2015 and October 29, 2016 an inspection of simple assault crimes that included a dangerous weapon were classified by the department as a less serious Part II crime when they should have been classified as a more serious Part I crime like an aggravated assault or robbery. 

According to Neuman’s email: 

“The inspection is looking at a total of 1,792 Simple Assaults Citywide from the past 22 months. A very quick sampling of such showed that up to 80% of these were misclassified.” 

Neuman’s email also indicated that the department was taking steps internally to fix the numbers but made no mention of alerting the public. If the department doesn’t fix and release the adjusted actual and real violent crime statistics for 2015 they’ll never be able to get an accurate account of the increase or decrease in crime from 2014. The same goes for 2015 and 2016. 

Neuman’s emails seems to indicate that this was a random sampling so I am sure the number is much higher. 

This isn’t the first time the LAPD has been caught cooking the books, though. 

In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that 14,000 serious assaults had been misclassified as minor offenses during an eight-year period, thus lowering the city’s crime levels. An internal audit by the department’s inspector general said that number was 25,000. The Times reported that, “More than a quarter of the errors were due to the LAPD failing to count cases in which suspects brandished weapons as aggravated assaults.” 

At the time, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said they were taking steps to correct the problem. We’re now headed into 2017 and apparently the problem still isn’t fixed. 

Here’s the email from John Neuman: 

It looks like not only will the department have to adjust its numbers but also so will Chief Beck. If these numbers are off, then his weekly report of crime statistics is off too.

And finally, while we don’t blame the LAPD for the increase or decrease in crime–quite frankly that’s all on the public they police–we do expect Chief Beck and co. to be forthcoming and honest about what the numbers really are.

(Jasmyne A. Cannick lives in Los Angeles and is a frequent commentator on local and national politics, social and race issues. Cannick is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for City Watch by Linda Abrams.

‘NO ONE SHOULD DIE THIS WAY’-The deadly warehouse fire in Oakland, California that claimed the lives of at least 36 people at a Friday night dance party was a symptom of the Bay Area's massive housing crisis, artists and advocates are saying. 

The Fruitvale-area warehouse, known as Ghost Ship, was a live-work space that supported underground artists and provided makeshift residences for people priced out of rapidly gentrifying Bay Area cities. It lacked basic fire safety mechanisms, which came into play on Friday as the blaze broke out at the electronic music party and engulfed the building, blocking the main escape path—a rickety staircase—and quickly becoming what may be the deadliest structural fire in Oakland's history.

As cadaver searches continue on the property, tenants' rights activists and Bay Area residents say the tragedy happened because of a lack of access to affordable housing fueled in large part by the technology boom that has transformed San Francisco into one of the most expensive cities in the world. They say housing policies have continually failed to protect marginalized communities and force low-income people to take up increasingly unsafe residences.

Ghost Ship housed some two dozen people who lived together as an artist collective. According to officials, the death toll is expected to rise. Local PBS affiliate KQED compiled a list of ways people can support relief efforts. 

"No one should die this way. No one should have to live without proper fire safety measures in their home just to try to make ends meet, just to try to make art, just to be in the city," the Oakland-based tenants' rights organization Causa Justa (Just Cause) wrote on Facebook on Saturday. "Black and Latino working class Oaklanders are pushing for habitability and affordability solutions for our city, for this very reason." 

"If you can't afford to buy a million-dollar home, then you can't afford to live in this city unless you're willing to risk your safety. And that's unconscionable," Causa Justa director María Poblet told the Guardian.

Gabe Meline, online arts editor for KQED, wrote in an op-ed on Sunday titled "It Could Have Been Any One of Us" that the warehouse spaces sought out by these communities "are what have kept us alive." 

"For the tormented queer, the bullied punk, the beaten trans, the spat-upon white trash, the disenfranchised immigrants, and young people of color, these spaces are a haven of understanding in a world that doesn't understand—or can't, or doesn't seem to want to try," he wrote, continuing:

They don't understand why we don't just live in a $3,000/mo. apartment where everything is safe and sterile and clean; why we live in a warehouse, or a garage, or an attic or shed or laundry room; why there is a mattress on the floor with a space heater where there normally would be a Queen size bed with a duvet and a nightstand and central heating.

[....] They don't understand that we do not fit into the boxes the world tries to sell us. That their world is unacceptable, and that even for all the ragged edges, we need our own world on our own terms.

Nihar Bhatt, a DJ and record label owner who survived the fire, told the Guardian, "Warehouse parties have been a central part of Oakland for decades. There's a movement in Oakland of experimental black and brown and queer people who don't necessarily want to be in a bar or a club."

Many of the underground venues that provide space for these communities operate without license in buildings that are not up to code. Yet when tenants do raise concerns about unsafe conditions, they may find themselves simply being evicted by city managers who deem the buildings too dangerous to live in, as happened earlier this year with another Oakland warehouse.

Such an eviction often allows real estate developers to buy up the property and transform it into luxury housing or other profitable venue.

As Oakland musician Tarik Kazaleh told the Guardian, "That's a slumlord landlord's best-case scenario. They'll just get a tech firm and get more money."

Jonah Strauss, a record engineer, added, "Lack of affordable living spaces is the single greatest threat to Oakland arts and music."

Musician Kimya Dawson wrote on Facebook, "It's hard to find words. I have played in so many spaces with precarious floors and beams and stairs and not enough exits and certainly no sprinklers. Warehouses, squats, basements, rooftops, barns. Playing music saves my life. People tell me listening to music saves their lives. People telling me that my music saved their life saves my life even more. And we take the risks. Playing and listening in unsafe spaces. Because when we feel like we are dying anyway the risks don't seem as risky as the risks we already face every day."

Oakland District Attorney Nancy O'Malley on Sunday announced she had opened a criminal probe into the fire. As always seems to be the case, it comes too late to matter to 30-plus lives.

(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams  … where this piece was first posted.)

-cw