DEATH PENALTY POLITICS--Of the 17 propositions on this year’s California ballot, few are as divisive as the issue of capital punishment. There are actually two separate initiatives targeting the death penalty: Proposition 62, which would abolish the death penalty and replace it with prison without the possibility of parole; and Proposition 66, which would speed up the process to send condemned murderers to the death chamber.

According to campaign finance disclosures compiled by the California Fair Political Practices Commission, much of the pro-death penalty campaign funding is coming directly from police and prison guard unions. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) alone spent $498,304 on Prop. 62, while the Peace Officers Research Association of California spent $455,000 and the California Association of Highway Patrolmen ponied up $250,000 to keep capital punishment.

One recent advertisement, paid for by California’s largest prison guard union, opens with grainy surveillance footage. It shows a terrified young woman squaring off with an attacker. As the woman struggles, a voice-over narrates: “Charles Ng raped, tortured, and killed women. Murdered their babies. Killed their husbands…” Another ad bankrolled by CCPOA features a few members of law enforcement explaining their support of the death penalty — and why voters should support it, too.

“I’ve seen what the worst among us can do,” says Sergeant Dan Cabral of the California Deputy Sheriffs’ Association in one video. “Killings so brutal, families never recover. That’s why we have the death penalty.”

In 2012, another ballot initiative, Proposition 34, also sought (but failed) to eliminate the death penalty. At that time, however, law enforcement unions donated a tiny fraction of what they have spent on the 2016 ballot. It begs the question: Why are law enforcement officers so intent on keeping the death penalty?

The official arguments provided by California law enforcement groups supporting capital punishment claim that the death penalty provides closure to victims’ families, saves taxpayers millions of dollars and that repealing it would jeopardize public safety. Essentially, union officials say the death penalty process in California is broken, but they want legislators to fix it.

Brian Moriguchi, a lieutenant with the LA County Sheriff’s Department and the president of the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association, which represents 8,800 members of law enforcement, says the death penalty should be reserved for the “worst of the worst.”

“Most police officers, by a very large margin, support the death penalty,” he says. “We’ve been to those calls where somebody has raped and mutilated a child, and we’ve seen the type of people that do that. They are a threat to the safety of others as long as they are alive. Even locked down in prison, [they are] still a threat.”

Lt. Moriguchi says there is increased support for the death penalty this year, as opposed to 2012, because of an increase in violence targeted against police officers, not just in California, but around the country. (According to FBI data released in October, 41 officers were killed in the line of duty in 2015. Already in 2016, 46 officers have been killed.)

“What has changed since 2012 is that there is a greater attack on police officers today, where people want to kill police officers,” Lt. Moriguchi says. “ We’re passionate about that this year particularly because we see the assaults on police officers increasing. We want to see justice for those police officers, and we want to see those people on death row.”

(The other top three unions behind the campaign did not return requests for comment.)

Some outside of law enforcement, however, believe the motivations to support the death penalty are far more political than practical.

Bill Zimmerman, a longtime California political campaign manager, says the current wave of law enforcement support for the death penalty is a reaction to increased scrutiny over police and prison officials. The unions, he says, are “feeling threatened by this climate of police reform. They see this as a battle in a long war, and it’s a battle they don’t want to lose. If they can win this battle, they see it as something that gives them more clout, or at least the perception that they’re a powerful political force when it comes to legislative matters.”

Zimmerman believes financial support for the death penalty is a reaction to movements like Black Lives Matter, which some police officials say undermine respect for law enforcement.

“Their support for the death penalty fits into a larger context of criminal justice reform going on in California,” Zimmerman says. “The events in Ferguson, Missouri led to a new wave of public demands for reform — of criminal justice and police behavior. We’ve seen an enormous increase in the fundraising capability of law enforcement [unions]. Organizations that used to give $5,000 to $10,000, in this death penalty fight in 2016 are giving $50,000 or $100,000.”

Both sides agree that the death penalty system is outrageously expensive, costing some $150 million per year for the state because of extra litigation costs and a lengthy appeals process. The entire death penalty system is said to have cost taxpayers $5 billion since 1978. However, rather than just get rid of it, law enforcement groups say the death penalty process should be reformed.

“Death row inmates have murdered over 1,000 victims, including 226 children and 43 police officers; 294 victims were raped and/or tortured,” the campaign explains. “It’s time California reformed our death penalty process so it works.”

Prison guard unions particularly support the death penalty, largely because their leaders say that convicted murderers would have nothing to fear (and might target prison guards) if the death penalty were not on the table. “Without the death penalty, what’s to stop the killer who’s serving life without parole, from killing inside the prison? asks CCPOA president Chuck Alexander in the latest advertisement. “It’s our last defense.”

Matt Cherry, executive director of Death Penalty Focus of California, disagrees with that notion, and says that even with the death penalty, a convicted murderer could still harm a guard on death row. More broadly, though, Cherry says there’s no statistical evidence to show that states with the death penalty experience fewer attacks on police officers. (In fact, the murder rate is lower in states without the death penalty.) “That’s one of the arguments that police like to use,” Cherry says. “I personally don’t think it’s convincing.”

Cherry believes police and prison guard unions feel they’re under pressure.

“There is a certain sense amongst police that times are changing, that there’s more criticism of police actions and the union leaders are hunkering down and rallying around the traditional causes that they have supported,” Cherry says.

He adds, “I don’t think that’s universal, though. You see a lot of smart police chiefs who don’t take that opinion.”

He’s right — not all police chiefs support the death penalty. A 2009 report from the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research group, polled police chiefs around the country about all the different methods that could be used to reduce crime. Their findings: The use of capital punishment ranked dead last, according to the police chiefs.

So what’s the disconnect? Why do union leaders and police officials continue to support the death penalty if many, at least in the privacy of an anonymous poll, agree it’s ineffective and too expensive? According to Dr. George Kain, a current police commissioner in Ridgefield, Connecticut, it’s because police unions have an “arm-in-arm” mentality.

“It’s so polarized,” says Kain, who began his career as a probation officer. “You can’t be on the fence with this if you’re a cop. The political climate now is forcing people to one side or the other. It’s easier to get pushed towards support of the bully mentality: ‘We’re gonna execute more people, and we’re gonna execute them more quickly.’”

In California, that sort of mentality could have extreme consequences. Right now, there are 741 inmates on death row — more than any other state. However, California has only carried out 13 executions since it reinstated the death penalty in 1978. (Its most recent execution was in 2006.)

As of mid-October, opponents of Prop. 62 (which would keep the death penalty legal) have raised about $4.3 million, compared to $8.9 million raised by groups that want to abolish the death penalty. Supporters of Prop. 66 (which would speed up the death penalty process) have raised $4.9 million, compared to the $10 million collected by its opponents. Put simply, groups supporting the death penalty are being outspent by about 2-to-1 by groups that oppose it.

However, the most recent polls are showing a tight race; there is a slight lead for proponents of abolishing the death penalty, but only by a slim margin. Nationally, support for the death penalty is waning. A September 2016 Pew Research poll found that support is currently the lowest in more than four decades.

Regardless of national sentiment, law enforcement leaders within California, such as Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones, are hoping voters will keep (and reform) capital punishment on November 8. “The public and law enforcement recognize that [capital punishment] makes our communities safer by acting as a deterrent and ensures that the most violent criminals will never be released into our communities again,” Jones, the president of California Peace Officers’ Association, wrote in a recent letter.

But they are facing an increasing amount of opposition, not just from wealthy anti-death penalty advocates — but from crime victims as well.

One of them is Dionne Wilson. Wilson’s husband, Dan Niemi, was a police officer in San Leandro, California who was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2005. Irving Ramirez, 23, was charged and convicted of Niemi’s murder.

At the time of his sentencing, Wilson says, she “begged” the judge for a death penalty sentence. On August 3, 2007, Wilson got her wish. (Ramirez remains alive and on death row.)

But as the years went on, Wilson’s opinion began to change about the death penalty. She no longer supports it — in fact, she’s on a crusade to get the death penalty repealed. Instead of executions, Wilson wants to see legislators use that $150 million go towards victim services, programs to treat mental illness and drug addiction, education and afterschool programs, and other crime reduction initiatives.

“I understand that type of vengeance-based reaction,” she says. “Trust me, I get it. But there seems to be a lack of analysis in that position.”

She adds, “Our criminal justice dollars are misused in this way. It’s frustrating to me. It’s just ‘cop killers deserve to die.’ Well, okay, but is there a better way to hold people accountable than propping up a system that has wasted $5 billion for the past 30 years? I can certainly think of better ways to invest that money.”

(Eric Markowitz has written for the New Yorker, GQ, Newsweek, the Atlantic and other publications. In 2016 he received two awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his coverage of the United States prison system. This perspective was posted originally at Capital and Main.) 

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PLANET WATCH--Despite living in the Arctic in a time of unprecedented climate change, the bearded seal is doing okay: the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists it as species of least concern, its population size remains fairly robust, and there have been no clear signs of a decline. But climate projections show that by mid-century, the Arctic sea ice the bearded seal depends on for survival will decline by at least 40 percent, meaning odds are high that, if climate change continues apace and models hold true, the bearded seal won’t be okay for long.

And that, according to a landmark decision handed down Monday by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is enough to warrant listing the species as endangered, even though it’s not endangered right now — a decision that could have implications for future conservation cases around the country.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which first petitioned for the bearded seal to be listed as endangered eight years ago, applauded the court’s decision, noting that it would help protect the species from the threat of climate change.

“This is a huge victory for bearded seals and shows the vital importance of the Endangered Species Act in protecting species threatened by climate change,” Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center of Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “This decision will give bearded seals a fighting chance while we work to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions melting their sea-ice habitat and keep dirty fossil fuels in the ground.”

In 2008, citing studies which showed that the bearded seal’s habitat would rapidly decline in the face of climate change, the Center for Biological Diversity asked asked the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to list the bearded seal as as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Receding sea ice, the Center argued, would force bearded seals to nurse their pups closer to the shore — exposing them to land-based predators like polar bears — and search for food in deeper, less productive waters.

In 2012, NMFS agreed with the Center for Biological Diversity’s petition, and listed the bearded seal as threatened. Two years later, fossil fuel interests like the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and the American Petroleum Institute, joined by the state of Alaska and several native Alaskan groups, filed a lawsuit disputing the listing. In 2014, a lower court vacated NMFS’ initial listing, stating it was “based upon speculation” and calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”

On Monday, a three-judge panel overturned that decision, concluding that the NMFS acted reasonably, based on “substantial evidence,” when it found that climate change would endanger the bearded seal population in the foreseeable future.

“There is no debate that temperatures will continue to increase over the remainder of the century and that the effects will be particularly acute in the Arctic,” the decision, written by Circuit Judge Richard Paez, read. “The current scientific consensus is that Arctic sea ice will continue to recede through 2100, and NMFS considered the best available research to reach that conclusion.”

But perhaps more importantly, the court found that the NMFS’ definition of “foreseeable future” as 500 to 100 years was not too broad, even if climate models can be volatile that far out.

“The fact that climate projections for 2050 through 2100 may be volatile does not deprive those projections of value in the rulemaking process,” the decision read. “The ESA does not require NMFS to make listing decisions only if underlying research is ironclad and absolute.”

That decision, according to Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau, makes this particular finding uncommon.

“‘Reasonably foreseeable,’ we’ve been wondering what that meant, and I guess the answer is that it depends on the species and the circumstance,” Parenteau said. “Pushing it out 50 to 100 years is certainly pushing the envelope on ‘foreseeable.’ I can see where other courts would disagree with that and think it is speculative.”

But it’s not completely without precedent. In 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior listed the polar bear as threatened because of lessening sea ice due to climate change; it was the first time that a species had been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act due to climate projections. And in April, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service must take climate change and project declines in snowpack into account when considering whether or not to list the wolverine as as threatened.

It’s possible that future courts could take this decision into account when making rulings related to the Endangered Species Act, Parenteau said, but that would be up to the discretion of that particular court. Some conservative courts might balk at the idea of interpreting “foreseeable future” to mean such a wide stretch of time, while others might view the 9th Circuit’s decision as well-reasoned precedence.

Parenteau said he expects the decision to be appealed to the Supreme Court, though it’s possible that the court might not choose to hear the case, especially if the vacancy left by Justice Scalia’s death remains unfilled. In that case, the 9th Circuit’s decision would stand.

But even if more species eventually are listed as “threatened” or “endangered” under the ESA, Parenteau warned that such a designation does little to stem the global warming-fueled loss of habitat that threatens those species in the first place.

“All we’re doing is listing them,” he said. “Until we get serious about reducing emissions and stopping fossil fuel infrastructure, it won’t matter. We’re just keeping track of the ones that are going.”

(Natasha Geiling is a reporter at ThinkProgress … where this report originated.)

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CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Gov. Jerry Brown’s best choice for attorney general – an appointment he must make after Kamala Harris’ election to the U.S. Senate -- is obvious: his wife, Anne Gust Brown. 

Call it nepotism if you want. But Anne Gust Brown is highly qualified. She not only had a distinguished career as a lawyer, but she helped run the attorney general’s office during her husband’s four-year stint there before becoming governor. 

And while there are many other qualified candidates interested in the post, the first lady is the only one who can redefine the job in the way it needs to be redefined. As teammate of the governor.

Among California’s many democratic deficiencies, there’s this: we are fools to have voters elect attorneys general, and all the other statewide executive positions. The reasons for this are many.

First, California is hard enough to govern without dividing up executive power among several elected politicians. The attorney general needs to work with the governor -- and should work for the governor. 

Second, while electing people to a.g. and other offices is supposed to make them independent, the reality is quite the opposite. The attorney general’s race, and other races for statewide executive positions, draw little public or media scrutiny. So the successful candidate isn’t really vetted. Instead, the races really serve as fundraising opportunities for ambitious younger politicians. Much of the money to support them comes from interests and industries that are deeply affected by the decisions of that particular statewide executive. These are pay-to-play elections. 

There’d be more accountability in an appointed a.g. That person wouldn’t be compromised by political donations. And it’d be far easier to remove an appointed a.g. who behaved badly than an elected one. 

Appointing Anne Gust Brown, thus, could be a first step to changing how we choose attorneys general -- and insurance commissioners, controllers, treasurers and state superintendents of public instruction.

(Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010). This piece first appeared in foxandhoundsdaily.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LA’S NEIGHBORHOODS--Once again, the City Attorney’s office and the Planning Department have played the City Council for fools. This time around, the City’s legal advisors and planning bureaucrats blatantly lied on the Council floor, spinning a fabricated tale that, if the Council would approve Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell’s September 13 motion to open a window for 5 days at the end of September for new second unit applications to be filed under very permissive state “default” standards (rather than the City’s stricter adopted standards), only a handful of new applications would be filed -- probably only about seventeen. 

O’Farrell stated that initially he had drafted his September 13 motion to “grandfather” only a handful of specific “stranded” second unit developers in his district who had been previously turned away by LADBS when they had sought to file their applications. 

These additional grandfathered developers would be added to the hundred or more second unit applicants and permittees who had sought and/or obtained permits under the very permissive state “default” standards that the City had been illegally using since May 2010. In early 2016, the Superior Court had declared that the planning and building departments’ dubious policy of following permissive “default” standards, rather than the City’s own adopted, much stricter standards -- based on the City Attorney’s mistaken legal advice -- was unlawful, and it ordered those departments to stop following those “default” standards. 

O’Farrell explained that, as he was drafting his September 13 motion, the City Attorney’s office persuaded him to expand it so it would open to one and all a 5-day end of September filing window for new applications under the permissive “default” standards. 

Councilmember Paul Koretz vigorously objected, saying that, whenever the Council announces that loose zoning restrictions are about to be tightened up, very substantial increases in permit application filings (seeking to take advantage of those looser restrictions) are very common. Accordingly, the number of new second unit applicants filed during the 5-day window would probably be closer to a hundred, not a mere handful. LA Neighbors in Action also protested that LADBS’s second unit application forms are so simplistic that they present no practical difficulties at all to anyone seeking to take advantage of the 5-day window. 

But Planning Department and City Attorney representatives repeatedly testified on the Council floor that the practical difficulties of filing a second unit application would limit the number of applications to a “very small” number. The 5-day window would be “fair” to the “very small” number of developers who would be in a position to take advantage of it, so it would not be overly disruptive to the surrounding single family residential neighborhoods throughout the City. 

Specifically relying on their advice, Council members Krekorian, Blumenfield and Ryu expressed their support for O’Farrell’s motion, and the Council overwhelmingly approved O’Farrell’s proposed end of September 5-day window. 

Now the results are in. The City Attorney recently reported to the Superior Court that, during the 5-day window, second unit developers filed fully 140 new applications -- almost ten times the City’s planning and legal advisors’ disingenuous projection, and, in one week, more than double the average annual number of second unit applications filed in the past dozen years! 

These are not idle numbers. LADBS must now process and approve “by right” 140 newly filed second unit applications with no discretion to impose any mitigation measures. The proposed second units need merely meet very weak “default” standards allowing construction of oversized 1,200 SF second units -- the size of many primary residences and almost double the 640 SF that the City’s existing standards allow. 

These oversized second units can be squeezed into backyards in single family neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles -- and sometimes into front yards! And, even though the City’s adopted standards would otherwise forbid it, the 140 second unit applications filed during the 5-day end of September “window” can be built in designated “hillside” areas and on “substandard” streets. (Ugly, severely impacting second units of the kind allowed under the default standards during the 5-day window can be seen in the attached photos.) 

Notably, shortly after the Superior Court’s ruling earlier this year, the Planning Department strongly (but inaccurately) urged the Council that it had only one “feasible” option: repealing the City’s adopted strict second unit standards so that the state’s permissive standards would thereafter apply by “default.” This extreme proposal -- which the Department put on a fast-track approval process -- generated a storm of controversy. 

Neighborhood Councils and homeowner associations throughout the City strongly objected, demanding that the City’s adopted protective second unit standards be maintained. Meanwhile, “stranded” developers demanded that their second units be grandfathered, since they had relied on the City’s unlawful second unit policies before the Superior Court declared them illegal. 

Finally, on August 31, the Council approved a compromise motion addressing both side’s principal objectives. On one hand, “stranded” developers and applicants would be “grandfathered” so their proposed second units can be completed -- even if they exceed the adopted standards and negatively impact the surrounding neighborhoods. On the other hand, going forward, the Council would retain the existing adopted protective standards until, based on a transparent process with robust public outreach and study, it decided to change them while customizing them to the City’s diverse neighborhoods. 

Matters appeared heading toward the Council’s approving an ordinance that would implement this compromise, until O’Farrell’s September 13 motion suddenly proposed the new 5-day late September open window allowing second units under the permissive default standards. To that point, the planning and legal bureaucrats had always argued that the proposed grandfathering could be justified, because, despite the negative “spillover” impacts of these oversized, improperly located second units, the financial impacts on the “stranded” developers arguably offset these neighborhood impacts. They emphasized that the stranded developers had “relied to their detriment” on the City’s unlawful second unit policies and practices, and, if they were stopped in mid-process, they might sue the City for substantial financial compensation. 

But for the first time, O’Farrell’s September 13 motion proposed that during this late September 5-day window, second unit developers would not need to establish any “reliance interest” at all and yet would still be allowed to take advantage of the permissive default standards and inflict adverse impacts on their neighbors. Under O’Farrell’s motion, it was sufficient simply to submit an application and pay the required fee. 

Since reliance would not be necessary, the Council members who backed O’Farrell’s motion stressed the Planning Department’s and City Attorney’s representations that only a “very small” number of applications -- about 17 -- could likely be filed during the 5-day window. 

• Council member Krekorian, for example, was particularly fooled. Although he was led to expect only about 17 applications citywide, the recent City Attorney report to the court revealed that fully 23 applications were filed in his district alone. Krekorian will have some serious explaining to do to the 23 neighborhoods that will be disrupted and potentially devastated by oversized, poorly located second units. 
• Similarly, a dozen second units in Council member Blumenfield’s district will now get away with conforming merely to the permissive “default” standards. Not exactly the “very small” number Blumenfield anticipated citywide.
• Some 19 new second units will be built in Council member Englander’s district under the permissive default standards. Did Englander realize that those 19 neighborhoods would be adversely impacted even though none of the developers in question needed to show they ever relied on the City’s prior unlawful conduct? What explanation will Englander give to homeowners who will have to live with new oversized second units peering into their backyards and bedrooms? 

Notably, as with second unit permits issued throughout the past decade and a half, by far the most applications filed during the 5-day window (more than 100 of the 140 applications) will be located in the North and South San Fernando Valley. Twenty-two of the new second units will be sited on lots that City planners concede are “environmentally sensitive.” 

Ironically, the City Attorney’s recent report to the Court related that only five of the new second unit applications filed during the 5-day window are located in O’Farrell’s district. If O’Farrell had ignored the City Attorney’s spurious advice to expand the scope of his motion, those five applicants -- the mere handful that he attested were his specific concern -- could have obtained their second unit applications without baselessly wreaking havoc on some 135 additional single family neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles.   

Instead, O’Farrell allowed himself to get sucker punched by the City Attorney, while the Council again foolishly placed its trust in the Planning Department and City Attorney staffs’ testimony. Will this misplaced confidence just keep on going and going? Will they ever learn? 

(Carlyle Hall is an environmental and land use lawyer in Los Angeles who founded the Center for Law in the Public Interest and litigated the well-known AB 283 litigation, in which the Superior Court ordered the City to rezone about one third of the properties within its territorial boundaries (an area the size of Chicago) to bring them into consistency with its 35 community plans. He also co-founded LA Neighbors in Action, which has recently been litigating with the City over its second dwelling unit policies and practices.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--There's something to be said for supporting a winning argument, and recognizing losing arguments when you see them.  In theory, we should not NEED Measure M (half-cent sales tax for transportation funding) to be passed. In theory, Sacramento should have kept its priorities of pensions for past employees balanced with funding for current employees and services. 

But Sacramento didn't, and despite the fact that state taxpayers throughout the economic and political spectrum are tapped out, we'll need to save ourselves in the City and County of Los Angeles. 

Which means that all the money that taxpayers are on the hook to pay for an unsustainable pension plan at the City, County and State levels (you can be BOTH pro-government AND recognize unsustainable financial/budget plans!) was, is, and will very much kill our ability to rely on Sacramento to do its job for schools, public safety, transportation, etc. 

So here's the WINNING argument in a nutshell … 

1. The overwhelming success of the Expo Line, with trains every six minutes; 
2. Public/private partnerships funding rail throughout the County; 
3. County transportation measures throughout the state;  

… show that Measure M is both timely and necessary for our county's economic future. 

Yet all the siphoning of state budgeting and other economic resources to public sector workers retiring in their 50's, and being paid for 30 or more years at a level we just CANNOT afford (not all retirees, but too many and without sufficient limit-setting) has led to: 

1) K-12 and community college taxes and bonds that have proven inefficient, and which are proof-positive that enrichment of certain small special interests, and not outcomes, is the ultimate goal of the "cottage industry" of the public education lobbies who (purportedly for the children) are driving this state into the economic ditch. 

2) A City, County and State bureaucracy that is anything but transparent, and which is milking small businesses dry and driving "good jobs" (solid pay and benefits) out of this state. 

3) A City of L.A. and State that has given the cold shoulder (or perhaps a more rude gesture or two) to law enforcement, and is more focused on bending the law, or ignoring the law altogether, rather than valuing law enforcement and those pleading for our society to adhere to laws.   

(For those who still give a rip about laws, and who still value law enforcement recommendations, please review my last CityWatch article) 

So the desire to pay for transportation/traffic measures has been thrown to the beleaguered cities and counties of our state, and woe be unto those of us who dare decry this violation of the budgetary and other rules of law and economics! 

Maybe the pessimists are right, and maybe they're not, when they proclaim that California is inevitably on its way to an economic crash (particularly when the inevitable next stock market downturn occurs and we discover there really are NOT enough rich millionaires to keep bailing us out), but: 

1) If the money is vague and probably will not be spent well, then vote NO. 

2) If we're already spending gobs of money on a given priority, and the past funding has been spent poorly, then vote NO. 

Hence it's clear that County Measure M is the only tax initiative that merits approval because it's transparent and defined, and has as its greatest opposing argument that it doesn't go far enough. 

Meanwhile, the City, County and State needs to perform a long-overdue clean up of their economic houses and spend more efficiently and sustainably rather than vomiting out another slew of tax, bond, or other fiscally-related measures and propositions. 

Vote YES on County Measure M, and vote NO on all other financial measures.

(Ken Alpern is 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.)

-cw

Tags: Ken Alpern, election 2016, ballot measures, Measure M

CALBUZZ--Despite Nate Silver’s argument that we should leave the LA Times/USC Dornsife “Daybreak Poll” alone, this poor excuse for a survey has been so wrong so persistently – and has been so constantly cited by Donald Trump as evidence of his campaign success – that it’s time for the Calbuzz Green Eye Shade Division to call them to task.

We’d be tempted to accept Silver’s admonition that all you have to do is add 6 percentage points to Hillary Clinton’s standing in the survey to accommodate for its “house effect,” except for the fact that the survey continues to arrogantly insist that “This chart tracks our best estimate, over time, of how America plans to vote in November.”

World class flapdoodle So we’re sorry to say that our old friends David Lauter of the LA Times and Dan Schnur of USC will forever have to take responsibility* for the single most reckless name-brand survey of the 2016 election season. Even if they succumb to pressure from the polling world and re-weight their flawed sample in the coming weeks so that they end up in the ballpark (like Survey USA usually does), they will have overseen an entire season of faulty, misleading polling that has misinformed the public and given Trump false bragging rights and his allies false hope.

As of Wednesday, when most national polls by reputable organizations were showing Clinton leading Trump by 4 to 11 percentage points, the screwball LA Times/ USC Dornsife “daybreak” survey showed Clinton and Trump tied at 44% — after weeks of showing Trump leading Clinton by significant margins.

Garbage in... Why? Because they started with a faulty, pro-Trump panel of internet respondents, weighted their reported 2012 vote for president and then stuck with that panel as part of their methodology. Garbage at the start; garbage all throughout.

“What’s the source of the LA Times poll’s Trump lean?” Silver wrote. “There are good ‘explainers’ from The New York Times’s Nate Cohn and Huffington Post Pollster’s David Rothschild.   Long story short: The poll’s results are weighted based on how people said they voted in 2012. That’s probably a mistake, because people often misstate or misremember their vote from previous elections.^”

Here’s their graph:

Interestingly, the LA Times so did not believe its survey that coverage, by most of its fine political writers, have paid it no mind.

On Wednesday, Lauter himself tried to hide his paper’s miserable poll’s findings – a tied race — with a front-page story that focused on survey respondents’ expectations of who will win the race instead of their stated voter preference.

“More and more, his own supporters no longer think he can win, the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll has found,” Lauter wrote.

Hide the turkey. Except that this was not a new finding at all. The survey’s respondents had consistently said they thought Clinton would win the race – with even larger proportions predicting her victory back in August. The story gave the Times an opportunity to use its miserable survey as a way to convey to readers the paper’s conviction that Clinton is actually leading Trump.

“The Daybreak poll asks people whom they plan to vote for and which candidate they expect will win,” Lauter wrote. “The question of voter expectations has often, although not always, proved to be a more reliable forecaster of election outcomes than asking voters their candidate preference.”

This is, on its face, an absurd argument. First of all, how would the Times know that asking voter expectations is “a more reliable forecaster of election outcomes” until they know what the outcome is? By comparing this question in their survey to other national polls? Second, why are they asking voter preference if they think it’s an inferior measure of election outcomes – which their own statement on the survey about their “best estimate” flatly contradicts?

This is a sneaky way to mask the findings of their flawed survey.

Piling it on. Then, on Thursday, Lauter wrote about how the poll stands up if it is re-weighted to discount USC’s original weighting for who candidates said they had voted for in 2012 — which was a dumb idea from the get-go. This is exactly the kind of legerdemain that Survey USA and other sleazy operations use to make their final polls look legit.

The re-weighting, by Ernie Tedeschi, an economist formerly with the Treasury Department “provides reassurance that although the poll differs from other surveys, its data about the trends in the election — the ups and downs in support for the two candidates — are consistent with what others have found,” Lauter wrote.

Oy. It was a bad poll design. USC and the LA Times are stuck with it.

* Lauter and Schnur get responsibility, but here’s how Lauter (LA Times Washington Bureau Chief) explained the origin of the survey in an email to us:

“The researchers at USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research https://cesr.usc.edu/, led by Prof. Arie Kapteyn, developed the poll. They based it on a very similar survey they did four years ago when they were at the RAND Corp. (That 2012 poll was one of the most accurate of the election year and the only major survey not to underestimate Obama’s margin). Dan introduced Arie’s team to those of us at The Times, and we were (and are) very happy to partner with them to publish the results.”

When we asked Schnur (director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, USC Dornsife College) if he is responsible for his organization’s survey, he replied: “Jill Darling is the Survey Director for the Center for Economic and Social Research. I’m sure she’ll be happy to answer your questions. She can be reached at: [email protected]“

(Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine … long time journalists … publish the award-winning CalBuzz.com) 

-cw