LOS ANGELES

OTHER WORDS-This month’s Golden Globes were the first awards ceremony held since #MeToo went viral. To commemorate it, celebrities brought social justice activists along as their plus-ones, and many more wore black to show support with the Time’s Up movement, a new Hollywood initiative to purge the industry of predators. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-Subways and their above-ground siblings, trolleys and light-rail trains, are Weapons of Mass Financial Destruction (WMFDs). Like subprime mortgages and nuclear power, their lethality arises from the way they are used and not from any inherent characteristic. Angelenos need to understand the serious financial threats that fixed-rail mass transit poses for the area’s financial viability. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--This may be one of my most unpleasant columns to write, because I don't like the way this City, County, and State are shredding the rights, quality of life, and even health of their constituents.  But it does become clear that we have to think differently, as our middle class becomes ever-more attacked, and ever-more stripped of its rights. 

BELL VIEW--F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the very rich: “They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.” Whether or not Donald Trump is a true billionaire, he clearly has “possessed and enjoyed early” a way of living that most of his supporters can barely comprehend. 

INSIDE THE CAPITAL--Patty Lopez came to Sacramento in 2014 as a complete outsider, disconnected from the political machinery that helps most people win election to the California Legislature.

EASTSIDER-As a product of the ‘60s and UC Berkeley (photo above), I am not overly fond of the CIA and the FBI.  Yet I find myself in the odd position of actually defending them. Strange times indeed.

CAL MATTERS-Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and former Republican Congressman Doug Ose are polar opposites politically, but have jointly altered dynamics of this year’s California elections.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Los Angeles is heading toward a perfect storm of gentrification, well-camouflaged behind spurious claims of boosting transit ridership and addressing LA’s housing crisis through zoning and environmental deregulation. 

BCK FILE-Exactly one year after BuzzFeed first published what would become known as the Steele Dossier, our own Senator Dianne Feinstein released the Senate Judiciary Committee’s interview with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson. 

CAL MATTERS--It should be said that California’s resistance began before there was a resistance.

VIEW FROM HERE--Remember the good old days when elections were stolen by political bosses? They followed the time-honored tradition of stuffing ballot boxes with the votes of cemeteries full of people whose political influence extended beyond the grave. In some cases, machine loyalists voted multiplied times. At the end of election day, counting ballots offered opportunities for padding the totals. 

DEEGAN ON LA-The iconic Sunset Strip is irrevocably associated with Los Angeles, even though located in, and stewarded by, the City of West Hollywood. Big (Los Angeles) or small (West Hollywood), our cities share the same growth dilemmas: what gets sacrificed in the name of progress and who are the winners? Is it residents of our communities or the politicos in the city halls who authorize the changes? Join the conversation and take the pop poll at the end of this article. 

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Barring some wild technological advance, all Californians eventually will die.

@THE GUSS REPORT-The only thing that presently stands between Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti running for president and his actually doing that is his failure to state that he wants to be president and, also, to answer this question: What is it about your past 17 years (during which you were an LA City Councilmember and its president) that shows you capable of winning the job and doing it well? 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Inasmuch as many of us love a good fantasy/science fiction novel or movie, it's also incumbent upon us all to distinguish the humanistic/utopian issues raised from hard fact.  The late Isaac Asimov and others of his genre created wonderful novels but also emphasized the need to learn science, and to embrace both the emotional and the rational aspects of the human brain. 

TRANSIT WATCH-An obvious nature of riding transit in Los Angeles is that riders must walk to bus stops and rail stations, wait, then board the bus or train. After reaching the end of their rides, they depart and walk directly to their destinations or make a transfer to another train or bus.  

EDUCATION WATCH-The mood was festive at the annual Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner in Los Angeles. About 600 Democrats gathered in a hotel ballroom on an October evening to begin wrapping up the year. Community activists and party worker-bees mingled with political luminaries to celebrate top volunteers. Anybody with a (D) after their name and $135 for a ticket was welcome at this event in blue, blue California. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-Like other addicts, the City would sooner die than give up its dependence on excessive construction. In fact, it might try to justify its abusive economic behavior by calling upon John Maynard Keynes. 

CAL MATTERS--State legislators are floating some creative schemes to blunt the impact of the new federal tax law on California taxpayers.

PERSPECTIVE--Over the past year or so our legislators in Sacramento have let it be known that they aren't happy with the pace of development in California's cities. As housing prices continue to rise, traffic continues to worsen, and the reality of climate change becomes ever more apparent, the Senate and Assembly have decided that local jurisdictions aren't doing their job and that the State needs to intervene.

EASTSIDER-In a move worthy of Tom Perez’ recent purge of the DNC Unity Committee, Eric Bauman is trying to lean on candidates for the 2018 Elections to forgo their rights to be voted on at the State Convention next month. 

So, let’s see what is truly being proposed. One of the really big deals in being a delegate is that you get to go to the convention and vote to endorse candidates for the various elected offices in California. It is, in fact, a right embedded in the CA Dems Bylaws. 

To circumvent those pesky little Bylaws, Eric Bauman has written a letter to potential candidates for office, asking them to waive their rights to be voted on by the delegates. He portrays his request as some kind of horsepuckey party loyalty gesture, but that doesn’t square with what it’s really all about -- control of endorsements.  

Even Bauman must admit in his letter, “I recognize that the choice is yours to seek the CDP’s endorsement consideration...” Well, thanks a bunch, Eric. You are truly a mensch for pointing out that you can’t legally do anything about it. 

Talk about anti-democratic. As the LA Times pointed out, what this boils down to is Bauman’s recognition that he tore the Party apart with his crooked vote counting decisions so he could beat Kimberly Ellis to be head of the party. Now he’s trying to keep the lid on. 

This kind of mentality is not going to switch a bunch of seats from Red to Blue in the Golden State, and his bush-league rhetoric is only going to make divisions widen. 

There are a couple of other reasons why this is a stupid attempt to control votes. First, the party faithful that cared enough to run for party office and become delegates are mostly viewed as food sources by the CDP: they simply want their money with a dollop of “vote how you are told.” 

Yet the best thing about being a delegate and going through all the arcane, backbiting, boring stuff at a convention is that you actually get to vote on endorsements. And early endorsements are a big deal. Potential candidates seek you out, pay attention to your opinion, and vie for your convention vote. 

Local clubs, like the East Area Progressives, have been doing early endorsements for some time. In their case, a recent early endorsement of Luis Lopez ultimately brought him within 1000 votes of the big bucks party establishment carpetbagger Wendy Carrillo in a runoff for the 51^st AD. Clear proof that the early endorsement system works. 

Further, what Bauman is really trying to do -- and I think he underestimates the intelligence of today’s delegates -- is to get to have his people, aka Executive Board of the CDP, decide who gets endorsed.  The fact that this means endorsements wouldn’t be made until after the Primary elections, sometime in the summer of 2018, evidently bothers him not. Let’s be clear. Eric Bauman wants for himself and the Executive Board to decide the endorsements.  

Remember, all these machinations are a desperate attempt to get around the CDP bylaws he is pledged as Chair to honor. The state party bylaws are pretty clear that “This Committee’s endorsement process shall be broadly and fairly representative of the various components of the Party.” (Article 8, Section 1, part d: yes, for democratic!) 

So, we will lose the ability to get people excited about candidates, to have a vigorous primary system that gives the occasional grassroots candidate a shot at getting elected to office; we will also lose the momentum that would make ordinary people kick in a Bernie $27 to help out the outsiders. 

The Takeaway 

It’s time for Bauman to retire on his lobbying dollars and allow a younger, more intellectually honest person to step in and run the CDP. Gee, like maybe Kimberly Ellis? Hmm... 

This attempt stinks so bad that even the Sacramento Bee ran an opinion piece by former state party controller Hilary Crosby called, “Don’t silence Democratic delegates on endorsements.”   

Bauman’s exercise is simply a California version of DNC’s distrust of grassroots small ‘d’ democratic candidates, and an attempt to maintain control of the party at any cost. As I wrote recently on the national DNC, “I just don’t understand how their politically correct and morally bankrupt pandering is supposed to gain them election victories.”    

Makes me wonder if that shoe doesn’t fit on the California Democratic Party as well. 

So, come on down, everyone. Ignore Eric Bauman’s latest suppression technique, have a great convention, and give us a good field of candidates who are grassroots locals and actually stand for something!

(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.

-cw