LOS ANGELES

@THE GUSS REPORT-Thomas Sowell nailed it when it comes to politicians: 

VOICES--The South Los Angeles Area Alliance of Neighborhood Councils (SLAAANC) voted to join the Westside Regional Alliance of Neighborhood Councils (WRAC) and dozens of other neighborhood councils and public health and safety organizations in supporting a motion to the Los Angeles City Council to reassert local community control over how alcohol is sold and served at new bars, nightclubs, liquor stores and other prospective alcohol retailers.

The motion calls for the reinstitution of “alcohol-specific conditions” on permits issued by the City, which enable community members to negotiate reasonable standards around how alcohol is sold and served, including hours of alcohol sales, types of products sold, drink specials, marketing to youth and other practices. Utilizing local conditions is the means by which local residents and other stakeholders, including LAPD, neighborhood councils and city council members, can mitigate problems that stem from retail alcohol establishments.

For decades, the City allowed community members to negotiate alcohol-specific conditions with new alcohol businesses, but in recent years reversed this practice, not only disallowing such conditions, but also systematically removing them from all existing alcohol licenses.

“The recent position by the City severely disempowers local communities and undermines public health, safety and quality of life for residents across LA,” stated Jean Frost, West Adams Neighborhood Council and SLAANC board member. “On principle alone, the current practice must be reversed, and the groundswell of votes in favor of this conditions motion is a call to the City Council to step up for neighborhood quality of life by doing just that.”

Cities and counties throughout the state allow and routinely utilize alcohol-specific conditions on local permits to help minimize alcohol-related problems associated with the rapidly growing number of restaurants, bars and other alcohol retailers. Without the ability to negotiate how new businesses sell and serve alcohol at a local level, through the planning and zoning process, community members are forced to do so at the state level through the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, which takes longer and places more burden on community members.  

“For decades, the City of Los Angeles allowed conditions to be placed on the sale of alcohol under its land use and planning authority,” said Sarah Blanch, Venice resident with Westside Impact Project. “There is absolute legal precedent for local control. Asking us to negotiate at the state level is an undue burden and really suppresses community voices.”

 The motion approved last night by SLAANC also calls on the City Council to cease the City’s new practice of removing existing alcohol-specific conditions from local permits. According to the motion’s organizers, these conditions are arrived at by a substantial consensus process between the new business owners and neighboring residents.

“These hard-fought agreements are being actively disregarded and stripped from the permit without any notification from the City whatsoever,” observed Frost. 

Organizers also say that the ability to negotiate conditions at the local level is good for businesses by streamlining the process for developers and allowing community members to say yes to projects they would otherwise oppose. 

“Alcohol-specific conditions negotiated through local planning and zoning departments are a ‘path to yes’ for businesses,” said Dana Sherrod of the Institute for Public Strategies, one of the public health agencies championing the initiative. “Through local conditions, LAPD, Council Offices and community members can negotiate with businesses to reach agreements that allow projects to move forward.”  

So far, a total of 16 neighborhood and community councils have approved the measure. More than a dozen community organizations have also publically endorsed the conditions motion, including Children’s Hospital, Alcohol Justice and Behavioral Health Services.

Advocates for the motion say its recent successes underscore the high level of concern residents across the City have about maintaining quality of life in Los Angeles neighborhoods in the face of the proliferation of bars, restaurants and liquor stores.

A 2016 Los Angeles County Department of Public Health report, “Alcohol Outlet Density & Alcohol-Related Consequences by City and Community in Los Angeles County,” demonstrated a strong link between many public health and safety problems — including violent crime, emergency room admissions and hospitalizations — and alcohol retailers. According to the study, 12 of 15 Los Angeles City Council districts rank in the highest tier for their incidence of three or more different alcohol-related problems: violent crimes, vehicle crashes, deaths, emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

Organizers are confident the support for the initiative from community groups and neighborhood councils, public health agencies and social service agencies citywide will speed the motion’s path to consideration by the City Council.

(Sarah Blanch speaks for The Westside Impact Project. The WIP aims to reduce alcohol problems in Santa Monica, Venice and Westwood at the community level. The Project is funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and directed by the Institute for Public Strategies, a nonprofit organization utilizing evidence-based strategies to help communities make lasting improvements in health, safety and quality of life. Project implementation assistance is provided by CLARE Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides substance abuse prevention, treatment and recovery services. To learn more, please contact the Westside Impact Coalition at 310-215-9924 or by email at [email protected].) 

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URBAN PERSPECTIVE--It has become a ritual with me. On the 10^th, 20^th, and now 25^th anniversary of the LA riots, I do a press tour of several of the same burned out empty lots in South LA. I preface the tour with a finger point at the empty lots, and ask, no challenge, with the question: “Why years after the riots are these empty lots where thriving businesses once stood still empty today?” (See photo above)

I quickly point out that in the years, no decades, since many parts of Los Angeles from the Westside to downtown have been virtually remade and billions have been poured into the construction of glitzy, pricey, showy, and functional office buildings, retail stores, boutiques, restaurants, hi-tech centers, and light industry and manufacturing enterprises.

The building bonanza has resulted in thousands of new construction and entry level and professional jobs. In the process, it’s enriched the tax coffers of the city and surrounding cities. The lame excuse that there’s no economic incentive to build in South L.A won’t fly. Residents spend millions on consumer goods and services, tens of thousands are well-to-do business and professional and trades persons, and they repeatedly clamor for quality retail, restaurant and service business in South LA. But the lots remain empty.

While speaking with the press at the burned-out lots, my mind continually goes back to those two fateful days at the end of April and the first day of May 1992, I ducked around police cordons and barricades, and cringed in fear and anxiety at the cackle of police gunfire and the non-stop roar of police fire engines and siren all around my house in South LA.

I choked, and gagged on and was blinded by the thick, acrid smoke that at times blotted out the sun and gave an eerie surreal Dante’s Hell feel to Los Angeles.

I watched many Los Angeles Police Department officers stand by virtually helpless and disoriented as looters gleefully made mad dashes into countless stores. Their arms bulged with everything from clothes to furniture.

I watched an armada of police from every district throughout California and the nation, National Guard units and federal troops drive past my house with stony, even scared looks on their faces, but their guns at ready.

I watched buildings, stores and malls that I shopped at and frequented, instantly disappear from the landscape in a wall of flames.

Several friends that lived outside LA and were concerned about my safety implored me to leave my home in the middle of the riot area and stay with them until things blew over. I thanked them but I decided to stay put. As a journalist, I felt bound to observe and report first-hand the mass orgy of death and destruction that engulfed my South Los Angeles neighborhood during the two fateful days of the most destructive riot in U.S. history. 

The warning signs that LA was a powder keg were there long before the Simi Valley jury with no blacks acquitted the four LAPD cops that beat Rodney King. There was the crushingly high poverty rate in South LA, a spiraling crime and drug epidemic, neighborhoods that were among the most racially balkanized in the nation, anger over the hand slap sentence for a Korean grocer that murdered a black teenage girl, Latasha Harlins, in an altercation.

Black-Korean tensions that had reached a boiling point.

And above all, there was the bitter feeling toward an LAPD widely branded as the nation’s perennial poster police agency for brutality and racism.

This year, on the 25th anniversary of the King verdict and the LA riots, many still ask the incessant question: Can it happen again? The prophets, astrologers and psychics couldn’t answer a question like that with absolute certainty. But there are two hints that give both a “yes” and “no” answer to the question.

The yes is the repeated questionable killings of young unarmed African Americans by police, such as Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile, nationally and in LA County. This continues to toss the ugly glare on the always fragile, tenuous, and at times openly hostile relations between African Americans and the police. The other cause for wariness is conditions in South LA and other urban communities.

On the fortieth anniversary in 2005 of the other LA riot that ripped the nation, namely the Watts riots in 1965, the LA chapter of the National Urban League and the United Way issued an unprecedented report on the State of Black LA. 

The report called the conditions in South LA dismal, stating that Blacks still had higher school drop-out rates, greater homelessness, died younger and in greater numbers, were more likely to be jailed and serve longer sentences, and were far and away more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than any other group in LA County. The most cursory drive through the old riot areas still shows that for many residents little has changed.

The LA riots are no longer the national and world symbol of American urban racial destruction, neglect and despair. But it’s is still a cautionary tale; a warning that in the Trump era, the poverty, violence and neglect that made the LA riots symbolic may not have totally evaporated twenty-five years after the flames. And, so it will remain … as long as the lots, and what they symbolize, remain empty. 

(Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author, political analyst and a CityWatch contributor. He is the author of In Scalia’s Shadow: The Trump Supreme Court (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One.)

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GELFAND’S WORLD--The April 22 March for Science brought out at least a hundred thousand people on the west coast alone. If we count the demonstrations in other American cities including Washington D.C. -- and the marches in dozens of other countries around the world -- the world wide attendance was likely in the millions. 

The importance of the event is summarized in the speech by noted seismologist Lucy Jones, which communicated the theme that reality matters. More of that below. 

Unfortunately, what I saw of local television news ignored the Jones speech. The few seconds of coverage available on the 11 o'clock news involved brief comments from marchers, shown as if this were the Rose Parade. The efforts of tens of thousands of serious minded people can't compete with car chases. So much for the myth of liberal media bias. 

Luckily, the Los Angeles Times ran Lucy Jones' speech (linked above). Please read it if you haven't done so already. 

Reality matters. The idea seems obvious. Why must we have to recite it out loud? And why is doing this so urgent? The answer is sadly obvious: It is the underlying political environment that made this speech and the march necessary. 

Reality matters in the sense that we can't continue to ignore global warming without enduring serious consequences not only on a global level, but also in our own communities. To borrow from an earlier Zocalo discussion, if the San Fernando valley were to suffer a heat wave that went to 127 degrees for several days in a row, how would our people deal with it? What would the death toll be? What would happen if this were to become the normal state of affairs in most summers yet to come? 

That would obviously be a reality that matters. The only question is whether it will happen, and how soon. 

Jones (photo) pointed out, "No one who understands how climate works thinks we can continue to pollute our atmosphere without catastrophic cost." 

That message, repeated by other speakers and by many scientists over the past few years, leads us to the central point that television avoided and public radio kind of dodged. The March for Science was in fact totally political, but not because science itself either is or is not political. Science has tried to be science rather than politics for most of its existence. But the march was necessary and it was necessarily political because a war against science has emerged out of the political right wing as a cynical and utterly dishonest political technique. 

The motives for this attack on science are presumably economic rather than philosophical, but whatever the ultimate origin, the result has been an assault on facts, reason, and rationality. It started as a political attack against governmental regulations, and has gradually expanded, by now including direct attacks on the actions and budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and other critical departments. The situation has now become so serious that rational people feel that they have to respond. To put it a little more bluntly, the new administration has ramped up the war on science so aggressively that a determined response became necessary. 

Public radio did get one thing right. The Republican war on science is a war on environmental protection. Attacks on the functioning of the Environmental Protection Agency serve a remarkably cynical economic purpose. But in order to rationalize those attacks, the congress relies on two strategies -- (1) attack the science that has already become publicly known, and (2) forbid the agency to fund new science. 

The careful observer might notice one little subtlety in all of this. If climate change brought on by human action is a myth, then further research will eventually reveal that as a fact. On the other hand, if climate change is ongoing and is the result of human actions, then continued research will continue to be consistent with that result. Working theories that are based on solid natural events continue to give positive results no matter how you study them -- we will continue to find that DNA determines heredity using whatever methods happen to be at hand, because DNA is the hereditary chemical. Such theories are robust in the sense that experiments based on them continue to give positive results. So far, anthropogenic global warming is looking to be a robust theory. 

In championing the denial of climate change as the result of human economic activity, the Republicans have profoundly endangered the future not only of countless species but also of the human race. 

Consider the sum total of the following: the scientific method, the results of using that method, and the sum total of scientific findings (ranging over climate science, medical science, geology, biology, and more). For this collection of techniques and results, we used the word science as the defining symbol on April 22. In a sense, the word science is being used here to represent both reality and our best methods for discovering what that reality is. Reality matters. 

It's relevant to insert a few words from the famous Richard Feynman speech titled Cargo Cult Science, talking about the scientific method:

That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation.  It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly.  It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.

Feynman was a strong exponent of another principle which I will paraphrase as follows: The one test for whether a scientific idea is valid is experiment.

Suffice it to say that in science, it's the facts and the theoretical analysis of the facts that matter. Unfortunately, some politicians and corporate hacks have adopted a different approach, in which attacks on the scientists themselves have become the norm. For years now, the core right wing attack on climate scientists is that they tailor their work to what funding sources demand. When you look at the attacks on climate science by the politically motivated, you come to realize that the attackers are simply projecting their own worst quality -- slavish obedience to dogma -- onto scientists. Instead, those who attack climate science should be looking in the mirror.

Perhaps some of the more thoughtful conservatives should reconsider being anti-science

It's curious that the leaders of a couple of coal companies have recently asked the Trump administration to hold off on pulling out of the Paris agreement to limit global warming. It's not so much that they've suddenly gotten religion over scientific facts. It's that they would like to be included in international negotiations over the use of coal because they want to be able to export their coal overseas. This is the utilitarian motive for being part of the discussion. You can't go into an international discussion babbling like a fool and expect to be taken seriously.

There is another reason. As the facts accumulate and as global warming becomes more and more apparent, the denial group looks more and more irrational. At some point, those who deny the reality of scientific findings will be seen to be idiotic. It's not a happy position for those who want votes from the more thoughtful members of the electorate.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

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THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Signatures of the post-Inaugural Women’s Marches in Los Angeles and around the globe were the peacefulness and inclusion, features Women’s March LA Foundation aims to bring to LA’s annual May Day March. This year, Los Angeles March organizers are lending their muscle to May Day 5.1.17 My Voice, My Vote. I sat down with Emiliana Guereca, Co-Executive Founder of Women’s March LA Foundation to talk about the organization’s role in the upcoming event. 

The organization will lend support to the May 1 California-based SEIU USWW-sponsored General Workers’ Strike. The SEIU, the country’s largest service union, has called for a general workers’ strike on the historically important May 1. Women’s March LA Foundation was created to focus on the struggles faced by marginalized communities, as well as assaults on human rights and civil liberties. 

Emiliana Guereca says, “In the past, May Day has not been very peaceful and the Women’s March was peaceful. When they asked us to participate, we said ‘Yes.’”

The Women’s March LA Foundation brings a new, crucial angle to the annual protest -- getting out the vote. “Our big thing was voter education and registration. We can have as many marches as we want but if we don’t turn out to vote, we won’t turn the needle,” says Guereca. The Foundation has partnered with Rock the Vote for the roll-out of a Voter Registration Initiative in Los Angeles and throughout California. 

“We want to empower people to let their legislators know what is important to them on Election Day. Voter registration and education are key to social change and we are excited to partner with Rock the Vote in Los Angeles, across the state of California, and we hope nationally as well,” adds Guereca. 

“We have a few schools in LAUSD and some private schools, different charter schools, two groups coming from UTLA and USC, as well,” says Guereca. “We have lots of volunteers from USC to help with voter registration. Across the board, our pledge is voter turnout. Those already registered can check where they are registered, which has been an issue.” 

Guereca adds that an additional goal is to educate about the power in voting. She says many Millennials and Latinos say their votes don’t count. “If your vote doesn’t count, I tell them, why are so many trying to switch things around or take it away? It’s obvious it counts,” she explains. “By reaching parents, we can get to kids at a young age. We cannot walk into the space at voting age when they might not be going to vote if they believe it won’t matter if they are active.” 

Aware of recent events in Berkeley, Guereca notes that there’s a possibility of resistance on the other side. “Our core is to be peaceful and our core messaging is not to engage in the negative,” she notes. “We have different opinions but we must be respectful of the space and the city around us. We aren’t going to get anywhere unless we respect each other.” As numerous fights seem to pop up almost daily, Guereca says we need to focus on Flipping the House in 2018. 

Guereca encourages anyone interested in participating in the day’s events to pre-register in advance for logistical purposes through Event Brite or at the foundation website.  Organizers have been coordinating with Metro and LAPD, as well as the Fire Department and have partnered with groups to bus people in. “We’ve been working with city officials. We will have music all day at Pershing Square, as well as speakers and interactive booths. The City has definitely been very helpful with resistance,” she says. 

About May Day: May 1 has been recognized as International Workers Day since 1886 when on that day, 35,000 workers went on strike for an 8-hour workday. California-based SEIU-USWW, whose members include janitors, bank security officers, baggage handlers, hospital staff, hotel workers, and stadium and amusement park workers is calling for a General Strike on Monday, May 1. 

About Rock the Vote: The largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization in the country has a mission of driving the youth vote to the polls. Since 1990, Rock the Vote has fused pop culture, music, art and technology to build long-term youth political power and in the past six Presidential elections, the organization ran the largest voter registration drives for young people, working with over 25,000 partners through its online multilingual voter registration tool. Rock The Vote is committed to mobilizing the vote, protecting voting rights and advocating for an electoral process, as well as a voting system that works for the Millennial generation.

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

CAPITAL & MAIN-A nationwide movement that began 53 years ago to reform the pretrial incarceration and money bail process has finally reached the legislative committees and political bargaining tables in Washington and Sacramento. Reform advocates – including legislators, prosecutors, attorneys, judges and grassroots organizations – contend that the use of a money bail system for pretrial release is unfair to the poor and unsafe for the public. 

In 1964, then-U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy told the Senate: “Every year in this country, thousands of persons are kept in jail for weeks and even months following arrest. They are not yet proven guilty. They may be no more likely to flee than you or I. But nonetheless, most of them must stay in jail because to be blunt, they cannot afford to pay for their freedom.” 

Kennedy’s efforts helped pass the Criminal Justice Act of 1964 and the Bail Reform Act of 1966, which created a presumption of release before trial for most federal defendants, and mostly did away with the money bail system in federal proceedings. But not for local and state jurisdictions, which account for most of the country’s jail population and in which the money-bail system still controls the release of defendants, dangerous or not. Only two countries, the U.S. and the Philippines, currently use the money bail system, according to California legislators. 

Four months ago California State Senator Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) and Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) introduced the California Money Bail Reform Act of 2017 — identical pieces of legislation (Senate Bill 10 and Assembly Bill 42) that would phase out excessive money bail systems statewide for most misdemeanors and some nonviolent felonies. And this past March, Los Angeles-area Congressman Ted Lieu introduced the No Money Bail Act of 2017 in Washington. 

Median bail in California is $50,000. If an arrestee uses a bail bond agent, he or she has to pay the agent a nonrefundable 10 percent for release – in the case of the median bond, that’s $5,000. Even bail for many misdemeanors can run over $1,000 – still beyond the reach of many indigent defendants. This results in poor defendants spending weeks or months in jail awaiting trial, causing the loss of jobs, homes, cars and in many cases, the family’s primary breadwinner. 

According to a report issued by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), more than 62 percent of county jail inmates are awaiting trials or sentencing, translating into about 46,000 Californians on a daily basis, say Hertzberg and Bonta. Most remain in jail because they can’t afford bail. 

“The current cash bail system is the modern equivalent of a debtor’s prison — it criminalizes poverty, pure and simple,” Hertzberg told a December news conference when he and Bonta introduced their legislation.

“In many cases,” added Bonta, “if you have enough money to pay your bail, you can get out of jail regardless of whether you are a danger to the public or a flight risk. But if you’re poor and not a flight risk or a danger to the public, you are forced to stay in jail, even when the charge is a misdemeanor. That’s not justice.” 

Ato Walker of San Jose shared his own story at that same press conference. 

“I was falsely accused of something and went to jail for five days,” Walker told reporters. 

“My bail was $165,000 initially and through the arraignment my bail got to be down to $85,000,” he said. “And that’s after I had hundreds of letters of support from people in my community saying I was a decent human being…but still inside the courtroom the district attorney said it seems like he’s a threat to society and the judge went with that.” 

Walker was released, he said, when his mother, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker, came up with the 10 percent he needed to pay a bail agent. 

A choked-up Walker, who was there with his young son, said he recognized he would have had to stay in jail. “If my mother had not stepped up and taken money out of her retirement account … [she did] that so I could be there to support my family.” 

When Walker eventually went to his pretrial proceeding, he said, the charges against him were dropped. But his mother lost the money she had to give a bail agent to get him out of lockup.

Walker said he appreciated the support that he got from his family and the community, but that he knew that many poor detainees don’t have that support and he wanted to publicly thank the politicians who are trying to change the current bail system. 

Bonta and Hertzberg are heading a coalition of support that includes Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, the American Civil Liberties Union, Californians for Safety and Justice, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Essie Justice Group, Western Center on Law and Poverty, Service Employees Union International, California, and others. 

Instead of relying exclusively on a money bail system that forces people to pay nonrefundable deposits to private companies, Bonta and Hertzberg are seeking a system that follows the lead of the federal government, the District of Columbia’s local courts and a number of other states that have already reformed their systems. 

Those systems rely mainly on pretrial services and assessment examinations to cut down on the pretrial jail population, thereby saving tax money, increasing rates of court appearances by detainees who have been bailed out and protecting the public by refusing bail to inmates deemed a danger to society or a flight risk, no matter how much money they have. 

Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) a coauthor of AB 42, said at the December news conference that research has shown that “prisoners held two or three days are 22 percent more likely to fail to come to court.” 

The proposed legislation, as currently written, will require counties to set up a “pretrial services agency that would be responsible for gathering information about newly arrested persons, conducting pretrial risk assessments, preparing individually tailored recommendations to the court and providing pretrial services and supervision to persons on pretrial release.” It also: 

• Provides for the use of “unsecured appearance bonds,” by which defendants agree to pay a specific amount if he or she fails to appear in court. 

• Gives reminders to defendants about upcoming court dates, and helps with transportation, if needed. Money bail options are included in these bills, provided the bail is the “least restrictive necessary to assure the appearance” in court, and the court must conduct an inquiry to determine the defendant’s ability to pay the bail. 

• Enables prosecutors to file a motion for pretrial detention and precludes people from being eligible for pretrial release if they are charged with a capital crime, a felony involving violence or sexual assault, or if the person’s release would likely result in harm to others, or if the person had threatened harm to others. 

Hertzberg’s bill passed through the Senate Public Safety Committee by a 5 to 1 vote in early April and is headed to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Bonta’s version of the bill receives a hearing Tuesday in the State Assembly’s Committee on Public Safety. 

The cost to house California inmates averages about $114 per day, according to the PPIC. In Los Angeles the average cost for Fiscal Year 2015-2016 was slightly more than $178 per day, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which reports that about $797 million – or 24 percent of the department’s total budget – goes to operate the county’s jail system. 

There’s been no study done in LA County regarding how many inmates remain in its jail system because they are too poor to post a money bail, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida.

Based on the experience of other locales, Bonta said, he’s learned that most nonviolent offenders will show up for their court appearances and not commit additional crimes after they’ve been released from jail without posting a money bond. “I also learned that over 50 percent of the jail cells were being taken up by people who couldn’t pay bail,” Bonta said, noting that the current money bail system is “clearly discriminatory against the poor and people of color.” 

In addition to a mandatory pretrial risk assessment examination, Bonta told Capital & Main, he’s also open to using ankle monitoring systems and even small bail amounts — for example, $100 — as a very last resort. 

Beth Chapman, (photo left) the wife and business partner of the reality TV bounty hunter, Duane “Dog” Chapman, has testified before a federal Court of Appeals panel that “people are not in jail because they’re poor. They are trying to paint a picture that all poor people are languishing in jail, and it just isn’t true.” She has also appeared in Breitbart News interviews on the subject of bail reform, which the right-wing site has connected to plots allegedly hatched by billionaire George Soros and others.  

Capital & Main’s repeated phone calls for comment to the Professional Bail Agents of the United States, a trade group Beth Chapman heads, were not returned. The organization’s website, though, warns in red letters that “the bail industry is under attack!” Capital & Main’s calls to another bail-bonds trade organization, the California Bail Agents Association, were also not returned. 

Jeff Clayton is the executive director of the Lakewood, Colorado-based American Bail Coalition, a 10-year-old trade association representing insurance underwriters of bail bonds across the country. In California, he said, all bail bonds must be underwritten by an insurance company. 

Clayton told Capital & Main that nationwide, the bail bond industry is a multibillion dollar business and that lobbying efforts against the California and House versions of bail reform are in full swing. He insisted the vast majority of bonds issued help guarantee that defendants would show up for court. 

Clayton acknowledged that there were problems related to the top 10 percent of bonds issued to defendants who could be dangerous or flight risks, and to the bottom 10 percent of indigent defendants. 

He said that the industry would be open to working with legislatures to fix those problems, especially regarding misdemeanor defendants. 

Clayton also said there were discussions underway with Hertzberg and Bonta’s offices on their proposed bills and that he felt confident that a “viable compromise,” which would maintain the money bail process in California, could be worked out. 

Ted Lieu’s previous No Money Bail Act died in the House last year. His 2017 version is short and straightforward. It would prohibit the payment of money as a condition of pretrial release in any federal case. (Federal judges can still order property bonds as a condition of release.) It would also amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to make any state that did not reform its bail system within three years of passage and signing of this law, ineligible for funding under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program. 

In Fiscal Year 2016 California received more than $28.9 million in JAG awards, with more than $10.7 million going to counties and cities, and more than $18.2 million going to the California Board of State and Community Corrections, according to Lieu’s office. 

“Some conservatives and libertarians have shown interest because reform will save tax money and the bill is flexible on how states can handle the reform process,” Lieu said. “Kentucky is a very red state and yet they have instituted reform measures in their bail system.” 

The U.S. Justice Department, under former President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, also weighed into the debate over bail reform, filing friend-of-the-court briefs in several cases in Georgia and Alabama in 2015 and 2016 — calling money bail systems that continue to jail defendants because they are poor unconstitutional. Civil rights division attorneys filed court papers stating categorically that “bail practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay for their release violate the Fourteenth Amendment.” Justice Department attorneys also stated, “Fixed bail schedules that allow for the pretrial release of only those who can pay, without accounting for the ability to pay unlawfully discriminate based on indigence.” 

Washington, DC’s local courts have the most experience using a pretrial release system that is based on inmate assessments rather than money bail. Cliff Keenan is the director of DC’s Pretrial Services Agency, a federally funded, independent entity within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency charged with formulating release recommendations and providing supervision and services to defendants awaiting trial. His office handles some 22,000 cases a year, including 4,000 felonies and 17,000 misdemeanors. 

Keenan told Capital & Main that the District stopped using any money as a condition of pretrial release in 1992, when a new Bail Reform Act mandated that defendants would receive a hearing with 24 hours of their detention to determine their release status. The act’s reforms have also enabled judges to hold defendants without bail, Keenan said, “if they were determined to be a flight risk or a danger to the community or to witnesses in their case.” 

While there have been failures, Keenan pointed to his office’s latest published figures showing that “91 percent of released defendants remained arrest-free while their cases were adjudicated; 98 percent of released defendants were not rearrested for a crime of violence while in the community pending trial; 90 percent of released defendants made all scheduled court appearances and 88 percent of released defendants remained on release at the conclusion of their pretrial status.” 

New Jersey, the most recent state to reform its former money bail release system, began its new system in January. Elie Honig, New Jersey’s Director of the Division of Criminal Justice, told Capital & Main the bail reform process began in 2014 and first required a vote to change the state’s constitution so that dangerous criminals charged with non-capital crimes could be held without bail after their arrest. 

“The reforms have focused more of our attention on dangerous cases – and in those cases prosecutors are fighting hard for detention without bail,” Honig said. The first report on the impact of the state’s reforms is due by the end of June. 

New Jersey’s new system uses a computerized Public Safety Assessment (PSA), six-point tool to quickly issue a score for each defendant based on various risk factors, including the seriousness of the alleged crime, and the defendant’s criminal and court history. The PSA tool, Honig said, was not the endpoint but a starting line for determining whether a defendant could be safely released. The state’s pretrial services agency is then charged with providing a full assessment of a defendant’s risk forrelease before a judge determines the final outcome. 

The new law also mandates a speedy trial system for defendants, Honig continued, requiring that a detained defendant must be arraigned within 90 days of his or her arrest and the case brought to trial within 180 days. 

Neither LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey nor the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles would comment on any of the pending bail reform legislation offered by Lieu, Hertzberg or Bonta. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Nicole Nishida told Capital & Main it was “too early [for the sheriff] to comment on this [California legislation] since the language is still being finalized by Senator Hertzberg and Assemblyman Bonta.” 

So far, law enforcement opposition includes the Association for Deputy District Attorneys, the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association several uniformed-officer unions. 

“I don’t expect Lieu’s legislation to go anywhere,” said the American Bail Coalition’s Jeff Clayton. “States make more money off [taxing] the bail bond industry than they would lose in JAG grants, so I don’t think you can coerce them into making reforms.” Besides, he said, “Cash bonds are tools that judges can use to insure that justice is done. You want to give judges more tools, not take them away.” 

Despite a Republican-controlled House and Senate, and the election of Donald Trump as president and a Justice Department now overseen by a hardline conservative, former Alabama U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, Congressman Lieu remains optimistic about his bill’s prospects.t a money bail system was patently discriminatory against the poor and people of color, Lieu noted that there are more than 450,000 people nationwide now sitting in jail — many if not most of whom are there just because they can’t afford to post bail. “America’s criminal justice system isn’t just broken,” Lieu said, “it violates our nation’s core values.”

(Jim Crogan is a writer for Capital & Main, where this piece was first posted.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDUCATION POLITICS--Elections have a way of setting up false choices. In the runoff for the LA School Board’s 4^th District seat, voters are told to line up behind either pro-union or pro-charter candidates.

Progress for our schools, however, lies beyond the campaigns of these two firmly entrenched camps.

Especially now, when the Betsy DeVos agenda makes such a stark (and easy) enemy, public education advocates need to do more to further our cause than follow campaign narratives. It simply cannot be that the only stakeholders who matter are school district employees and those who want to privatize our schools.

The situation cries for an independent voice, a radical middle.

Individual school communities understand this. Parents, teachers, students and principals have been working together to strengthen and improve our schools outside the terms of the political debate. Yet, there has been little opportunity for us to be heard above the powerful interests during this critical election.

There is little talk about how schools will be supported, about policies that will improve our schools, about fighting legislation that causes schools to struggle. As we have seen in the last four years, a board majority “on our side” does not guarantee support for our schools in the fight against privatization.

After recent meetings with Steve Zimmer, I am now confident that he understands this and that he will welcome the independent voices. 

So I am endorsing Steve Zimmer for school board and I'm endorsing a process to help advocates for public schools hold him more accountable for seeing his rhetorical goals through.

Zimmer still differs from public education activists on some fundamental issues. His unequivocal support for school choice as a right should cause alarm to anyone fighting against privatization. Put another way, school choice is a way for our government officials to tell schools they’re on their own. And Zimmer’s unapologetic support of the temporary teaching corps, TFA, undermines the stability of our schools and the teaching profession.

Nick Melvoin supports these things, too. But he has tapped into the demands of parents and community members frustrated with an unresponsive school district. While I believe Melvoin would support efforts to improve schools regardless of which camp they come from, his reform agenda goes too far. His refusal to support legislation that would make charter schools as accountable with public money as public schools are seems to show that he is carrying the water of corporate privatizers more than being the independent voice he could be.

Moreover, the stakes of Zimmer’s re-election are higher than they were in the March primary because UTLA sat out of the race to unseat corporate reformer Monica Garcia who coasted to re-election in District 2.

LAUSD has a long way to go toward the right side of some key issues. Steve Zimmer gives us the best chance, but only if those in the movement to save and support public education push him and the rest of the school board long after the election.

Think of it as the radical resistance.

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--Earlier this week, Writers Bloc presented a panel discussion aptly titled, Is Freedom of the Press Under Siege? It was chaired by Kevin Roderick, [www.LAobserved.com] founder of LAobserved. The panelists included Dylan Byers of CNN, Cathleen Decker, senior political journalist for the LA Times, and Karlene Goller, an attorney who was formerly with the LA Times. 

You might recall that back in February, Trump referred to the media as "the enemy of the American people."  He had made comments during the campaign about making life more difficult for the New York Times, particularly when it came to their right to print negative comments about him. When a person with the power of the presidency makes such threats, it's not surprising that his targets become concerned. 

As Cathleen Decker recounted, Trump's campaign rallies included nasty remarks about the press that were picked up by his audience. As the campaign wore on, members of those audiences came to rallies prepared in advance to shout nasty epithets at reporters. Since the Trump campaign segregated reporters within a bullpen, they were an easily identifiable target. 

The American press found itself in a bind. The news media found themselves reporting on a pathological liar, but Trump was a liar who retaliated against those who were trying to expose him. Trump, it must be said, has a certain talent for retaliation. He talked about the "failing" New York Times, and refers to truthful stories about himself as fake news. 

A generation of journalists who had grown up on Orwell's 1984 and The Manchurian Candidate found themselves looking at the same sorts of ugly propaganda that were made famous not only in those works of fiction, but also in the propaganda efforts of communist and fascist governments.

Calling the media the enemy of the American people was something of a last straw, raising some very real concerns among those who began to view Trump's election as "regime change" that went beyond normal boundaries. We've had some pretty conservative presidents over the past couple of decades, but neither Reagan nor either Bush tried to turn the American people against the press as a legitimate element of American governance. 

Now all of a sudden, we are experiencing that very thing. It's not surprising that serious thinkers became concerned, or that people would be asking whether freedom of the press is under siege. 

What's interesting here in April is that the members of this panel didn't seem as concerned about impending loss of freedoms as people were as recently as February. It's not so much that people feel secure with Trump and Ryan in charge of things, but that the immediate, direct threat to freedom of the press doesn't seem as serious all of a sudden. 

What's going on? 

I would guess that members of the mainstream press have found out that they can give as good as they are getting. They have stayed on the story of Russian influence in spite of Trump's protestations. And while all this has been going on, there has been a distinct absence of jackbooted thugs breaking down the doors of newsrooms and rounding up editors. Trump gets to continue to complain, but he's beginning to discover that he can't forbid fact checking. Moreover, there is a longstanding tradition both here and abroad: When the president of the United States says something -- anything at all -- it is supposed to be taken seriously. Members of the press and of the opposite political party listen carefully, parsing each comment. It is expected that the president considers carefully what to say in public. 

Until The Donald, that is. And by shooting from the hip, Trump makes a fool of himself, and lessens his ability to play the dictator. It's hard to do that when people don't take you seriously. 

Trump is only now learning (if he is learning) that when the government says we are sending an Armada to Korean waters to send a message to North Korea, it is going to look pretty stupid if that carrier task force is actually traveling in the opposite direction. In the early going of this presidency, those who tell the truth about Trump's lies are holding a modest lead, in that public acceptance of Trump as president continues to fall. 

In other words, there is still room in our journalistic universe for the truth to be told. Even the president's powers are limited. Panelists pointed out that the Los Angeles Times just published a series on Trump's propensity to lie. As Dylan Byers politely pointed out, this was pretty much preaching to the choir. That is likely correct, but the ability to preach to the choir is an important part of press freedom. 

There was also some legal and technical discussion. The panelists agreed that getting sources within the administration is important. It follows that protecting sources is equally important. 

Attorney Goller provided a fairly involved explanation for the current state of the law. As of now, the view of the courts is that as long as a reporter does not do anything directly illegal, that reporter can make use of sources that innocently fall into his or her hands. That doesn't mean that a government staffer who works in the White House can't be prosecuted for taking a document and providing it to a reporter. But if the reporter receives a comment (with or without a document) from a White House source, the reporter is legally safe. The reporter's task is therefore to learn to protect human sources and to hide the origins of documents. 

The punch line to all this legalistic stress is that newsrooms and reporters are learning to use electronic masking tools to protect the origins and content of emails. Encryption is becoming a journalistic skill that is just as important to the new generation as the Associated Press Style Manual. 

This has been a necessarily incomplete rendition of a complex discussion carried out among a learned panel. There are a couple of issues that I would like to raise based on some of that discussion. 

As reporter Decker pointed out, modern newspapers keep separation between the editorial and reporting sides. Editorial positions are determined by separate groups of people and written by editorial writers. In theory, this protects the integrity -- and therefore the reputation -- of the news-gathering side. 

I question the usefulness of this separation in one regard. When it comes to arguments involving fact -- let's take as an example the credibility of anti-vaccination vs. pro-vaccination views -- there is a legitimate and overwhelming balance in favor of the safety and efficacy of vaccination. It's taken years for the news media to begin to report that one side is right and the other is wrong. 

Through long tradition, the journalistic, reporting side of the news doesn't like to use the word liar or the word lie when it comes to obvious untruths. There are a couple of problems with this approach. The first is that it fails to complete the story. When one side is clearly lying, it fails to make clear to the reader that this is the case. The other problem with this is a little more nuanced. In a battle between legitimate reporters and liars, the legitimate side is fighting with one arm tied behind its back. Infowars makes some story up out of whole cloth, Brietbart repeats it, and legitimate newspapers are stuck in a very old rut, reporting the allegation and filling in a little "balance" by explaining that there is no evidence that Obama ever apologized to Japan for the American use of the atomic bomb, nor did he wiretap Trump. 

Meanwhile, gullible people read such stories on the internet and on their Facebook feeds, and become poisoned in their attitudes toward voting for non-Republican candidates. 

There is a bigger question that I raised briefly with a couple of the panelists at the end. Back in the early 1990s, Rush Limbaugh started to push the idea that the mainstream media have a liberal bias. It's an entirely nonsensical assertion, unless you interpret liberal bias to mean anything and everything that is not in agreement with what Limbaugh says on any given day. But an entire generation of American voters was exposed to this, in spite of the fact that most major newspapers and television networks are owned by fabulously wealthy individuals and corporations. Meanwhile, Fox News does the Limbaugh approach as an entire television news network. 

So the basic question, yet to be answered effectively, is how to combat wholesale lying by wealthy interests. It may be impossible to convince a whole generation of conservatives that there could be at least some validity to the idea of providing health care in spite of preexisting conditions, but it is important to communicate to those people that there is a debate. In short, has freedom of the press been downgraded by the big lie, but remains one means in the pursuit of telling the truth to gullible people?

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

TRANSIT WATCH--For years, I've been among those who've been told that this or that project "will neeeeeever happen" and then it does happen.  Sometimes, it's a win:  the Expo Line, or a Metro Rail/LAX Connection. Sometimes, it's a loss: Measure S, and the hope that LA will embrace legally-, scientifically- and environmentally-coherent Planning policy. 

But then there's the issue of not repeating the mistake of throwing away a perfectly good rail right-of-way, owned by all taxpaying citizens, which could provide a cost-effective "Second Downtown Light Rail Connector" to link LAX to South and Southeast LA, the Blue Line, the Gold Line, and Union Station. 

The idea of relegating a rail right of way (the Harbor Subdivision Right of Way) between the Crenshaw and Blue Lines, or the Crenshaw Line and the LA River, to a walkway/bikeway instead of a full light rail line WITH a walk/bikeway makes as much sense as ... 

... when the Expo Line rail right of way was to be relegated to a walk/bikeway instead of the light rail line (with a walk/bikeway) like we now have.  That was a stupid idea which we avoided in 2001, when the Expo Light Rail Line was decided by the Metro Board, and this "Rail to Rail" idea pushed by the Metro Board now is just as stupid. 

And short-sighted. And insulting to the taxpayers and to commuters and to tourists ... and to just about anyone with common sense. 

Heck, I'll go out on a limb and guess that even the Metro planners got stuck with this "Rail to River" idea against their will.  Virtually all of the Metro planners/staff I've ever met are sincere, receptive, and visionary engineers and professionals who have made me PROUD to pay my sales taxes in L.A. County. 

There is a growing interest in having an urban renewal and redevelopment, coupled with a Metro station or in the Arts District and the industrialized portion of southeast Downtown. 

There is also a growing interest as to which route the proposed light rail line from southeast L.A. County to Downtown should take.  

There is also a growing interest as to ensuring that BOTH the proposed routes of the Eastside Gold Line (SR-60 freeway route, and Montebello/Whittier route) are built out. 

Put this all together, as well as the knowledge that the Blue Line is virtually at full capacity, and the Expo Line is racing to full capacity decades faster than planned ... 

... and the idea of a SECOND DOWNTOWN LIGHT RAIL CONNECTOR using the Harbor Subdivision to connect LAX to Inglewood, the Blue Line, the Southeast Cities Light Rail Line, the Arts District, the Gold Lines, and Union Station virtually writes itself. 

Yes, portions of that right-of-way need repair because the Alameda Freight Corridor ripped through it (and appropriately so, based on our priorities twenty years ago), but a bridge or two could fix that. 

And Yes, we need an accompanying walkway/bikeway just like we need an Expo Bikeway to accompany the Expo Light Rail Line. 

And YES, this will help create affordable housing for the middle class to access their jobs and revitalize an area of Los Angeles that has been ignored for too long. 

So let's throw out that Major Investment Study to do Rail to River/Rail the right way, and not make the same mistake that we almost made with the Expo Line. 

And while we're at it, could we throw out another Major Investment Study to extend the Green Line to Torrance and the Blue Line? 

Clearly, a rail system, as with a freeway system, makes sense when we create a full network. 

Not rocket science here, folks ... just rail science and good, healthy dose of common sense and respect for the taxpayers.

(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 was co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chaired 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 Dr. Alpern.)

-cw

EASTSIDER-Since this is the last article before vote-by-mail runoff balloting begins this week, I am going to get a little lengthy and cover two different events. First was the Monday night knock down drag-out debate between Gil Cedillo and Joe Bray-Ali held in the Pico/Union area of the district. Second is the allegation that Joe Bray-Ali was a Republican who switched to Democrat simply in order to take on Cedillo

The Pico Union Debate 

If the Highland Park “bike wars” scene was Joe Bray-Ali’s home turf, the Pico/Union District is Gil Cedillo’s. The differences between the Glassell Park primary debate held at Sotomayor Learning Academies, and this one, are huge. At the Glassell Park debate, Joe had the bulk of the crowd on his side. Here at Pico/Union, both sides had a large, rowdy contingent unafraid to express themselves vigorously, but Gil clearly had the majority. And it was another very large crowd. The Monsenor Romero Hall is listed as holding 250, but my best guess is that there were more like 300 packed in. 

For those unfamiliar with the area, it is home to some of the poorest in Los Angeles -- homeless, undocumented, dreamers, with everyone mostly squished into a ton of old rental units. It is also a recent victim of the relentless gentrification we Angelenos are getting used to, in this case aided and abetted by clever owner/landlords who know how to threaten and manipulate people without power or resources to fight back. 

With a very high density, the area is over 80% Latino, home for a lot of folks from El Salvador and Mexico. It also has pockets of old Victorian houses on big lots, locations that have the non-affordable “affordable housing” developers salivating. 

Anyhow, with all the chips on the line, this event was only marginally civil. While Joe Bray-Ali didn’t actually call Gil Cedillo “Road Kill Gil,” that subtext was there loud and clear. And basically, Gil Cedillo did call Joe Bray-Ali a “liar who will say anything to get elected.” Ya gotta love it. 

More important to me were the questions asked by the moderator, La Opinion’s Pilar Marrero, who did a good job (under trying circumstances) to maintain some semblance of order and get the questions answered. 

Let me give a shout out to the sponsors, including Inquilinos Unidos, Eviction Defense Network, Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN), Inner City Law Center, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, Hunger Action LA, WORKS, the Los Angeles Human Right to Housing Collective, and the National Lawyers Guild’s Housing Committee. 

The Eleven Questions 

I counted eleven questions. From my hastily written notes, here’s the issues they covered: 

1. Development, particularly density, affordability, increased mixed use, and displacement issues. 

2. How to promote real affordable housing, and also answer if affordable housing is really a bait and switch. 

3. Top three priorities in dealing with gentrification and resulting displacement. 

4. Handling eviction attempts. 

5. Housing Authority waiting lists have been closed since 2012, while only homeless are currently getting any vouchers. What’s to be done? 

6. Renters are often harassed in Pico/Union. Why not adopt an Anti-harassment Ordinance in Los Angeles, like other cities have done? 

7. What provisions would you make for affordable services for LGBT youth in the area? 

8. In the Pico/Union area, not to mention McArthur Park/Westlake areas, how will you protect the poor and undocumented as the developers move in and try to displace them? 

9. How will you ensure affordable housing and at the same time protect the natural environment? 

10. For renters, how can you help ensure that landlords provide timely and quality repairs for tenants? 

11. How will you handle the privatization of remaining public spaces? 

You can see how closely these questions match up to the demographic realities of the area, along with the fears and vulnerability of many who live there. Clearly these questions played to Gil Cedillo’s strengths and legislative history. 

I won’t go into a detailed discussion of each question, since some answers strayed pretty far from the questions and there were often interruptions by one group or another; occasionally, a candidate did not really answer the question. Suffice it to say that these are people and issues that Gil Cedillo is very familiar with, and while Joe Bray-Ali gave it a decent try, this was a far cry from his home base of Highland Park and Glassell Park. 

On the substance of the answers, and factoring out personal attacks, Cedillo clearly had the best of it, recognizing that some of these important questions really have no simple answers that can be addressed in a debate setting. 

Is Joe Bray-Ali Really a Closet Republican? 

Last Saturday a flyer made the rounds from Eric Bauman, head of the LA County Democratic Party. It essentially said that Joe Bray-Ali was registered as a Republican back in 2012, and has only changed his affiliation to Democrat in order to run against Gil Cedillo in an overwhelmingly Democratic Council District. 

I understand why Joe would change his affiliation to run in CD 1 -- a Republican might just as well commit suicide as run under that banner in this district. And I don’t question his right to do so, for whatever reasons. But it seemed pretty weird that this issue did not surface until now. 

Actually, it all makes me wonder if the EAPD (East Area Progressive Democrats) knew about it when they endorsed Joe as a Dmocrat, and you can be sure it will be a hot topic at the NEDC (Northeast Dems) endorsement meeting on April 19. While I am unaware of any particular rule that the Democratic Party or, for that matter, either of the clubs have regarding how long you have to be a Dmocrat to be eligible for an endorsement, you would think that it would be a proper subject for discussion. 

So I sent an email to Ari Bessendorf, Joe Bray-Ali’s Campaign Manager, asking for a response to the hit piece. I have never heard back from him. Due to this non-response, and based on the fact that during the Pico/Union Debate Joe never denied that he had been a Republican, I conclude that the allegations are true. 

Maybe I’m just old school, and it may be that the younger generation moving into CD 1 are a lot more cynical and apolitical than my generation and don’t care too much about party affiliation. Goodness knows, they have enough on their plate with huge student loans, no guaranteed jobs, and outrageous housing costs. Besides, as readers of CityWatch know, the Mayor and City Council are pretty non-partisan as they march to the tune of the developers, 15-0 no matter what. 

In the end, for me, the issue of being a Democrat over time is a big deal. My dad was a progressive Democrat and dentist in Orange County, and paid a pretty big price for his views in the heyday of the John Birch Society. Personally, I’ve always been part of the ground-up progressive wing of the Democratic Party, demanding that they listen to the troops instead of acting like a top down club for lifer politicians and the big money that co-opts them all too often. And that was before I went to Berkeley in the 60s. 

The Takeaway 

Over the years, I’ve pretty much lived all over LA, from Beachwood Dr. and Laurel Canyon, to Park LaBrea and The Brewery in Lincoln Heights. Even spent some time over in the soft underbelly of East Hollywood by LA City College; and now I live in Glassell Park. It’s a glorious, crazy and very unforgiving town unless you have money.

For all that, throughout my journey I have come love this patchwork that we call Los Angeles, even with all its constant upheavals.

In terms of the runoff, I actually like both candidates. Even though he acted like an out-of-control you-know-what during the “bike wars”in Highland Park, Joe is not afraid to call out the establishment and put pedal to the metal. He’s willing to give his all to try and change the system -- running for office without serious money is not for the faint of heart. He has a passionate following and it is only likely to grow as CD 1 continues to morph into whatever gentrified entity we are going to become, increasing inequality and all. 

I also like Gil. He’s a hard guy to get to know, and he does not have that “hi, how are ya’” plastic veneer of the true professional politician -- like Eric Garcetti or Herb Wesson, who smile at you even though they’d do you in without even a flicker of emotion. At the same time, I know that Gil has always had a real passion for the under-represented like the undocumented and dreamers, even though those people mostly don’t vote and have a very healthy distrust of government. He’s demonstrated these qualities going all the way back to when he ran SEIU Local 660 (now SEIU Local 721) in LA County. And that was at a time when these opinions were not without controversy. Same for the California state legislature. 

And yes, Gil plays the game and takes the developer/Chevron money. But of course, so does the entire rest of the LA City Council, the Mayor, and the City Attorney -- including, by the way, CD 13’s Mitch O’Farrell, a Democrat who recently endorsed Joe Bray-Ali. 

At the end of the day, I’m voting for Gil Cedillo and would urge you to do so as well.

(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.

PREVEN REPORT-A message from the City of Los Angeles to Taser International CEO Rick Smith: “Rick, it has been a pleasure doing business with you and now, without further ado, we are going to kick your ass.” Why? It’s hard to explain with our hands trembling in rage. 

Rick Smith announced two weeks ago that Taser International will offer body cameras and cloud storage free of charge for a year to any eligible police department in America. “We’re taking a pretty big financial risk,” he said to Fast Company magazine, “but we looked at this and we frankly feel that the benefits are so overwhelming. If we can get cameras in the hands of police officers, they will immediately pay for themselves.” 

To avoid conflicts of interest, Taser will not offer the eye-popping promotion to agencies with whom it’s already pursuing business. 

Let’s see. One year of free cameras and cloud storage for every police department in the country. But wasn’t it just ten months ago, on June 22, that you charged LA $8 million for “one year of body cameras and cloud storage?” And didn’t you tell us that this was a great deal -- the best possible, as required by your “most favored” pricing policy? Is the remainder of the $31 million contract – years 2 through 5 -- also a great deal? 

“If we can get cameras in the hands of police officers, they will immediately pay for themselves,” we’re told. If that’s true, then why did LA get charged the $8 million? It would have been a rip-off, apparently, even if we hadn’t paid a nickel for year one. But we paid $8 million. 

No worries. Taser can just refund us for year one -- extend the deal to LA. 

But Rick Smith fears not because, he says, we’re already in his fleecing machine and so it would be a conflict of interest to give us the promotion. 

All this and then in return we receive a defective product -- a camera which endangers civilians and officers by failing to produce an accurate account of an encounter. The cameras can’t see what the officer looks at since they “chop” the heads off of those being spoken to and they get blocked when the officer assumes the shooting stance. 

Ahem … Mr. Mayor?

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and Joshua is a teacher.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

STREET TALK--Of course! I am sure that you have most probably and most definitely heard by now that Skid Row has lost its bid; it's election for recognition by the city as an official subdivision of the downtown neighborhood council! Skid row lost by 62 votes!   

General Jeff Page is bound and determined to be recognized by the city! He has filed a number of grievances and challenges! Nine challenges to be exact! Other actions are most definitely on the horizon in retaliation and in response to the city's denial of recognition of a SRNC! 

Last I heard; one of his challenges has already been successfully received, found valid! He is most definitely moving forward! He is moving onward and upward, towards victory for the Skid Row community!  

However!  

There is mutiny in the midst! Members of the community who doubt that the city will adequately, efficiently and effectively represent, recognize, minister to and meet the needs of Skid Row have organized and separated from Jeff Page and the original Skid Row formation committee; forming their very own 'new Skid Row neighborhood council'!  

DLANC has a long history of denying support and funding to various entities and organizations on Skid Row; especially those who fight for increased accessible affordable housing and those who expose civil/human rights violations, police brutality etc! 

Undoubtedly, DLANC does not want the primarily black residents  on Skid Row to get any money! Neither do they want the people of Skid Row to have a voice in exposing and preventing police brutality, in determinng, selecting, ensuring adequate, increased, accessible affordable housing, or in determining just what new businesses are in Skid Row etc! Thereby raising the standard of living; upsetting the status quo in favor of the poor and colored people who live in Skid Row! Lovingly and fondly referred to as 'Skid Rowdians'! That would be 3rd street to the north! 7th street to the south! Alameda to the east! Main street to the west!   

(Yvonne Michelle Autry is a Skid Row activist and a voice for the homeless.)

-cw

MCDONALD REPORT--New York Times reporters often cover Los Angeles as if they are newly arrived missionaries encountering a lost Amazonian tribe for first time  — and the “unsophisticated” natives don’t know what’s best for them. It would be funny if it wasn’t so wrong. 

That mentality was on display on April 11 when the paper published, “‘A Different Los Angeles’: The City Moves to Alter Its Sprawling Image.”  The piece essentially told the world that the natives in LA have finally gotten their acts together and will build a dense city like any proper metropolis should. But as is also too often the case, the newbie missionary ignores, or has little idea of, the street-level impacts of what he or she is championing. 

Before we keep going, we believe the Times is an important newspaper that contributes mightily to American society and helps us maintain (and gain) our rights and freedoms. It provides similar, and invaluable, services on the international stage. People should read the New York Times. 

Let’s go back to LA. 

From the get-go, the informed reader sees trouble coming just by looking at who’s quoted in the article. No social justice activists, no homeowner groups, no good government watchdogs. In sum, no citizen, activist, or grassroots organization that knows what’s happening on the street. That’s not good. 

Instead, the New York Times talks with Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and wealthy developer Nelson Rising. That’s it. All are members in good standing of LA’s political and civic establishment, and that establishment wants to build tall and dense — billions of dollars in profits and millions of dollars in campaign contributions can be made.  

For Hawthorne, he’s been pushing a theory called the “Third LA,” which proposes a denser Los Angeles with a more pedestrian culture. He helps to promote the politicians and developers’ agenda. 

Since only the LA Establishment gets to have its say, readers never learn why so many activists and residents are up in arms over new development.  

Right now, lower- and middle-class Angelenos from the San Fernando Valley to the Westside to the Eastside to South LA are dealing with displacement and gentrification caused by all forms of dense, luxury housing. Over the past several years, City Hall politicians have been rubber-stamping such high-end projects for deep-pocketed developers who hand over campaign contributions and other political money. 

It makes perfect sense that residents are resistant to change, also called “progress” by the L.A. establishment that kicks them out of their homes. The Times makes no mention of all that.

The establishment wants to build transit-oriented development. By only talking with the establishment, the New York Times essentially approves of that desire. But a recent UCLA study found that transit-oriented development in L.A. creates gentrification. 

The Times shows no knowledge of the study, but the self-righteous missionary is unconcerned about learning such details. He or she knows best no matter what, even if the tribe will suffer.

Such a missionary is also not troubled by some chicanery in order to “civilize” the natives.

In one shocking passage, which undoubtedly made LA activists do a spit take in disbelief while drinking their morning coffee, the Times noted: 

Mr. Garcetti said he planned to eliminate regulations that stymie innovation, “whether it’s the size of units, or the connectivity of transportation modes.” 

“We’re writing the rules as we go,” the mayor said, acknowledging “that can be very disruptive to people.” But, he added, “We need to get with it.” 

All of this signals a move toward building that Third LA. 

Read that again. 

In Los Angeles, the second largest city in the nation, the mayor just told the New York Times that laws and regulations that protect residents do not matter. In fact, he’s going to deregulate and make things up as he goes.

If the current president of the United States said that, the Times would have a conniption. But Garcetti, a liberal establishment figure with an Ivy League education and the son of a former Los Angeles County District Attorney, gets a pass. 

In fact, the Times appears to think that Garcetti’s by-any-means-necessary method for building a denser city is laudable. But neighborhood and social justice activists know it spells trouble.

Garcetti and the City Council have already shown they won’t adhere to city rules and ordinances that protect residents and neighborhoods from numerous quality-of-life problems, and they’ll give developers anything they want to build a luxury city that only the affluent can afford. There’s a long track record of LA politicians performing such shenanigans, which judges often find illegal. 

Again, the New York Times shows no knowledge of that. It’s what happens when you don’t talk with the neighborhood activist or good government watchdog. 

The Times’ approach in covering LA is actually humorous in a screwball kind of way — there goes that poor, nutty missionary again. But such a person can cause serious pain for the natives. 

By uncritically pushing the establishment’s vision for LA, the New York Times is actively helping Garcetti, the City Council, and developers ignore the rules, dismantle protections for residents and neighborhoods, and usher in a gentrified Third LA For Angelenos, getting forced out their homes is not progress, and it’s no laughing matter.

(Patrick Range McDonald, an award-winning investigative journalist, worked on the Measure S campaign as senior researcher and website editor. This perspective was posted most recently at washataw.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

BELL VIEW-Years of banging the podium at City Hall for my allotted sixty seconds of screaming into the abyss have taught me one basic truth: Whenever a problem -- or a "crisis," as most problems are referred to these days – needs fixing, the people trying to fix the problem have to answer one question before anything can happen. Not "How do we fix this problem?" or "How do we solve this crisis?" Not "Where do we get the money?" or even "Can this problem be solved?" The first question that must be answered before absolutely anything can happen in 21st Century America is "How will the rich get richer?" 

Before we decide what we're going to do to, say, cure cancer, or save an endangered species, or stop the planet from killing us off, we, first, need to figure out how the solution is going to make the rich much richer. 

Luckily for us, our elected officials have been working hard at coming up with an answer to this central question of our time. 

War, for example, is a no-brainer. The rich always get richer off of war. War makes money coming and going. The rich get richer blowing things up. Then get richer again putting things back together. The rich have even figured out how to get rich on things like addiction, disease, and poverty: just declare war on them and the cash starts rolling in. 

And say what you will about the qualifications of our current Secretary of Education, at least she has solved the basic conundrum of how the rich get richer off of public education. 

Unfortunately, once the rich have taken their share – there is almost never much left to solve the problem we wanted to solve.

On the local level, the rich have a juicy housing crisis to feast upon. You don’t need a degree in economics to figure out how the rich get richer off of a housing crisis. But homelessness – ah, that’s been a tough nut for the rich to crack. How, exactly, do the rich get rich off of the homeless? For the longest time, I struggled with this question. 

Now, it looks as if Mayor Garcetti and the City Council have found a solution. Remember the $1.2 billion we decided to raise for the homeless in Measure HHH? Remember how the bulk of the funds were earmarked for “Supportive Housing” – the kind of housing the chronically homeless need? The drug addicted, the mentally-ill, the elderly. Remember being told that no more than 20% of the funds raised would go to “affordable housing” – designed to help people who had not quite ended up on the streets, but were headed in that direction? 

Well … that’s no fun at all. And, since it doesn’t make the rich richer, it was basically a non-starter. Now, it turns out, only 50% of the “supportive housing” needs to be supportive housing – and only 50% of that needs to be reserved for the chronically-homeless. Get it? So the 80% of the $1.2 billion that was supposed to be used to help the most desperate of LA’s massive homeless population will now be sliced up into smaller and smaller chunks with only about 25% of it going to the people it was meant to help. 

When I lived in East Hollywood, a real do-gooder rehabbed an old apartment building and put a dozen formerly-homeless families into real homes. These are families with kids that were living in their cars before they got a hand up. No one in the neighborhood even knows the place is "homeless" housing. It's a model that could succeed all over the city. 

But the threesome cooking crack in a tent in the alley behind this place? They're not exactly candidates for this type of solution. 

So, when someone tells me that "studies show" the homeless do better when they're integrated into the community -- I don't disagree. I just need to point out that not all the homeless are the same. Anyone who thinks people are going to pay market rent to live down the hall from a crackhead are smoking something.  

No. Something tells me this new market-based solution to chronic homelessness will peter out just after Job One is accomplished. The rich will get richer and the truly desperate homeless will still be looking for a place to land.

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-It goes by many names – the free market, trickle-down economics, supply side economics, market magic, market fundamentalism, and neo-liberalism – but its content is the same. Let the private sector maximize its profits through deregulation, bailouts, tax breaks, and financial incentives. Then the ensuing rising tide of investment will lift all ships. It will create jobs aplenty, while also building affordable housing. The resulting glut in pricey housing will not only drive down all housing prices, but grants to non-profit affordable housing corporations and inclusionary housing programs, such as LA’s density bonus program, will fill LA’s affordable housing vacuum. Just sit back, and market magic will fix what ails us, like a vibrating waistband that peels off extra pounds at the flip of a switch. 

The basic supply-side argument, whether articulated by the Mayor, the City Council, academics, realtors, LA Times editorial writers, dependent non-profit organizations, Chamber of Commerce boosters, or anonymous Internet trolls, is as straightforward as could be. Planning and zoning laws restrict housing production, and this is the main cause of expensive housing in Los Angeles. 

Therefore, if City Hall loosens up land use regulations, developers will march into LA, build oodles of housing, which increases supply and supposedly reduces prices to the point that housing again becomes affordable. 

What trickle-down got right and got wrong. 

Whatever the name, it is a superficially convincing theory, and one part of it is even correct. The deregulation of zoning and environmental laws has allowed real estate profits to soar in Los Angeles. Trickle-down has really been trickle-up, and the market fundamentalists at least got that part of the equation correct. 

But, as for the other part of the equation – fixing LA’s housing crisis – their theory has been a bust. Despite years of granting real estate developers every zoning request they request, as well as notoriously lax enforcement of the City’s building and zoning codes, LA’s housing crisis has continued to worsen, especially since the 2008-9 Great Recession. Gentrification, housing prices, and income inequality have all soared, pricing out many residents and newcomers. 

To begin, there is no evidence that trickle-down generates jobs. Real estate projects built through zoning deregulation -- such as pay-to-play spot-zones and spot-plan amendments, wide-scale up-zoning through Community Plan Updates, Community Plan Implementation Ordinances, re-code LA, or indirectly through slipshod code enforcement -- have not resulted in net gains of short-term construction jobs or long-term building management and maintenance jobs. 

In fact, this often repeated jobs claim has only served two other purposes. The first purpose is to justify City Council votes to deflect dangerous Environmental Impact Report findings with the untested claim that a project is really a major job-generator. The second purpose was to lasso trade unions and non-profit groups to oppose Measure S in LA’s recent March 7 election. 

But, that still leaves the second claim: an uptick in housing construction leads to greater housing affordability. Even if the new units are expensive apartments, condos, and houses, they supposedly pull down all housing prices. The result is alleged to be more affordable housing. In fact, according to this theory, some of LA’s 50,000 homeless  should finally be able to get a real roof over their head. 

Like other missing benefits of deregulation, there is still no evidence that increasing the supply of expensive apartments somehow increases the supply of affordable housing. One of the reasons should be obvious; the widespread gentrification of many LA neighborhoods has not missed a beat. In fact, since 2001 the LA Times reports a loss of 20,000 official affordable units. What took their place? More expensive housing, of course, for the new urban gentry. 

Gentrification: This gentrification process is now painfully obvious in Los Angeles neighborhoods experiencing mansionization, small lot subdivisions, and Ellis Act evictions. In all these cases, older housing, some of which is subject to LA’s rent stabilization ordinance, and all of which is less expensive than the new housing that replaces it, is sacrificed for new, expensive houses, apartments, condos, and townhouses. The evicted residents must then scramble for replacement housing, spending a higher percentage of their income to find a place to live. In fact, in Los Angeles, over 59 percent of renters are now officially cost-burdened because they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. 

The other reason why trickle-down economics has led to a housing market crisis should also be obvious. Luxury housing and affordable housing are separate housing markets. Developers rake in sizable profits by building, selling, and renting expensive housing. But, they would commit financial suicide if they went into the affordable housing business. This is why they don’t do it. Even when they overbuild at the expensive end, such as in DTLA, they never drop selling prices or rents to the point that their new units become affordable. Instead, they hold on to the vacant units until the market changes, turn to Airbnb short-term rentals, or offer modest incentives such as free parking. But, they never rent out expensive units at a financial loss. Never. 

This is why supply-side economics trickles down to a dry stream bed when it comes to affordable housing. The real process should be called trickle-up, which explains why the supply-side beneficiaries spent $11 million in LA’s recent Measure S election to perpetuate their trickle-up business model. 

Now, with memories of the March 7 fading away, the free market campaign slogans are not faring well. Campaign bluster can go a long way, but ultimately reality asserts itself; Los Angeles has had a continuous affordable housing crisis since the end of most Federal housing programs over 40 years ago. 

More empty claims about beneficial market forces: 

In case there are still a few true believers clinging to their faith in market magic, here are several more realities they should consider when the supply-siders resurrect their empty claims. 

1) They don’t work. Since the elimination of most HUD public housing programs in the 1970s and 80s, every county in the entire United States has a demonstrable shortage of affordable housing. Regardless of supply, demand, local land use regulations, local wealth or poverty, the private housing market is simply not capable of providing affordable housing. It never has and never will. 

2) Measure HHH is trickling-up. Until a few years ago, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) filled some of this funding gap by devoting 20 percent of its budget to quasi-public housing. But the California State legislature dissolved all CRA’s several years ago. Since then, the closest the trickle-downers have come to replacing the CRA is Measure HHH. But as Patrick McDonald reported in the April 18, 2017, CityWatch, HHH funding is quickly moving into the “croneysphere.” City Hall now wants to use the affordable housing bond issue to bankroll mixed-use buildings and mixed-income housing. The trickle-down from this bond issue is, as expected by critics such as myself, already trickling up to real estate speculators. 

3) Un-tapped zoning potential. The free marketeers also claim that LA's housing crisis results from wide-scale downzoning since the 1980s, but this is bunk. According to detailed City Planning studies from the early 1990's, which are still the most recent official data, Los Angeles could reach a population of 8,000,000 people based on existing zoning. But, led by UCLA's Prof. Greg Morrow, these trickle-downers declare that Los Angeles has virtually no more un-used zoning potential for housing. But, this is simply not true. In addition to lots zoned R-3 and R-4, Los Angeles is filled with long, low-rise transportation corridors (e.g., Pico, Olympic, Washington, Vermont, Hoover) featuring commercial zoning. 

Since all of these commercial zones can be used for by-right R-4 apartments, Los Angeles still has an enormous untapped potential for housing construction. Furthermore, these future apartments could be built up to 35 percent over the zoning code's requirements. Based on SB 1818, developers could set aside 20 percent of their units to become affordable. They then obtain incentives that raise the overall number of market and affordable units. 

4) Developers’ Business model is the real culprit. The basic problem is, therefore, not LA's zoning build-out potential, but the private developers’ business model. They must make a serious profit, and this is only possible through pricey housing. We could totally eliminate planning and zoning laws in Los Angeles, like Houston has, and these real estate investors would still build expensive housing. They would simply build it in more locations.   

5) Short-term fixes. In the meantime, though, there are several things we can do in Los Angeles until the real fix appears, the restoration of Federal and local public housing programs: 

• Eliminate vacancy de-control from LA's Rent Stabilization Ordinance.  

• Apply the Rent Stabilization Ordinance to all rental units, not just those built before 1979. 

• Prosecute the speculators who illegally evict people from small apartment houses in order to demolish the buildings and replace them with expensive housing. 

• Demolish all speculative structures built through code violations. 

• Properly fund and monitor LA’s Department of Building and Safety, LA’s Housing and Community Investment Department, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and LA County Public Housing to ensure that zoning, building, and health codes are enforced.

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatchLA. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--Since Campaign 2016, a chasm has erupted and the fault lines continue to crack. As protesters gathered on April 15 from Fifth Avenue to Pershing Square to demand President Trump release his tax returns, heated -- and violent -- exchanges ensued between pro- and anti-Trump camps at a Berkeley park that was the scene of a stabbing, as well as at least 20 arrests for assault with a deadly weapon and several felony assaults. 

Police say seven protesters had to be taken to the hospital and at least eleven were injured. Between 500 and 1,000 were gathered in the park at the height of the protests with about 100 moving the fights to a nearby intersection. 

This melee was a three-peat -- following earlier episodes of violence and vandalism in February after UC Berkeley cancelled a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, former editor of Breitbart. Last month, a mix of about 500 pro- and anti-Trump demonstrators resulted in punching, spraying and clubbing.

This Saturday, a pro-Trump group had scheduled a “Patriots Day free-speech rally and picnic” in Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley. Anti-Trump protesters responded with a counter-rally. Police banned any potential weapons, including pepper spray, mace, baseball bats, and glass bottles. A Farmers Market held next to the park was cancelled.

Fights broke out despite the precautions as police in riot gear worked to keep sides apart and members of a citizen militia protected Trump supporters. The two sides were separated by a barricade, which did not stop people from throwing cans and bottles.

While our First Amendment Rights of Speech and Assembly are essential to democracy, the disturbing trend that appears to be happening in Berkeley is hopefully not the harbinger of violent exchanges across the country.

Many of us have experienced divides and rifts between family members and friends over politics and more deeply, over the values that are represented by those politics, whether protection of human and environmental rights or globalism vs. isolationism. The violent protests are symptomatic of these deep divides -- and the divisiveness in our country is profoundly troubling.

With hope, we can heal as a nation and we can put these days of hostility and violence behind us. The 1^st Amendment promises the right to speak freely, not the right to fight. Reminder: Democracy is not a bystander sport. Closing the divide begins with me … and you.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw

BUDGET ADVOCATES--On Thursday April 20, at 10 a.m., Mayor Garcetti will present the 2017-18 budget at City Hall.

TAX DAY: THE NUCLEAR OPTION-"Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I'll tell you what you value," said former Vice President Joe Biden, quoting his father. He knew that a budget reflected the values and priorities of our nation. Each April our country funds its priorities. Ultimately, as the Rev. Jim Wallis has said, "Budgets are moral documents." 

Each year Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles calculates how much money the United States spends on nuclear weapons programs for the current tax year. The Nuclear Weapons Community Costs Project has identified that for tax year 2016 the United States spent $57.6 billion on nuclear weapons programs. California contributed more than $7 billion to this amount while Los Angeles County sent approximately $1.8 billion to the federal coffers to fund weapons that can never be used. In Flint, Michigan, where we have allowed our children to be poisoned by lead in their drinking water, $9 million was spent. In the nation’s poorest county, Buffalo County, South Dakota, they spent more than $142,000 on nuclear weapons. 

Every dollar spent on nuclear weapons is a dollar taken from programs that support the health and well being of our country, our communities, and our loved ones. These are critical funds that we can never get back. 

The Trump administration is proposing a dramatic increase in the budget for nuclear weapons while simultaneously proposing a dramatic decrease for social and environmental programs. This is in addition to the nuclear grand bargain of the Obama administration's proposed buildup of our nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion over the next three decades. This is the opening salvo as other countries follow suit in this new nuclear arms race.  

Having grown weary of our actions and failure to meet our legally binding commitment to work in good faith toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, the non-nuclear nations are refusing to be held hostage by the nuclear states any longer. Taking their future into their own hands the vast majority of the non-nuclear nations will complete negotiations at the United Nations this July on an international nuclear ban treaty that will outlaw nuclear weapons just as all other weapons of mass destruction have been banned. This will leave the United States and other nuclear nations once again in breach of international law.  

Fortunately, a world under constant threat of nuclear apocalypse either by intent or accident is not the future that has to be. But change will not happen on its own. Each of us has a role to play. Ultimately it will take the people of the United States to awaken from our trance and join the rest of the world in demanding that our leaders work to abolish nuclear weapons and to redirect these expenditures to secure a future for our children and address the real needs of our country. 

The time for action is now.   

Contact your representatives at: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

(Robert Dodge is a family physician practicing full time in Ventura, California. He serves on the board of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles serving as a Peace and Security Ambassador and at the national level where he sits on the security committee. He also serves on the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions. He writes for PeaceVoice. This piece appeared most recently in CommonDreams.org.)  Prepped for City Watch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren D. Price Jr. has been implicated for fraud and perjury, perhaps unwittingly, by his own attorney Stephen J. Kaufman. 

And that’s the least of Price’s problems. 

The backstory is this: In a misdated 2012 affidavit, Price and his then-divorce attorney Albert Robles (who is the current Mayor of Carson, CA) claimed that Price’s first wife Lynn could not be located for the purpose of serving her divorce papers, although they repeatedly tried to serve her at her residence at 4519 Don Arturo Place in Los Angeles. 

The problem is, Lynn Price never lived there.  

A bigger problem is that Curren Price knew that Lynn Price never lived there. 

That’s because the property was and remains owned by Price’s second wife, Del Richardson-Price, since June 21, 2001. 

Yet, as documented in Mr. Price’s and Mr. Robles’ affidavit, they repeatedly sent his process server, Antonio D. Inocentes, to that address on January 18, 19 and 21, 2012 to document multiple attempts to serve her – to a location at which Mr. Price, and perhaps Mr. Robles, knew she never lived. 

A few days ago, I got an email from Mr. Price’s current attorney, Stephen J. Kaufman, in which he echoed a call he made to me a few days earlier, perhaps without understanding the implication of his words. “Lynn Suzette Price never lived at 4519 Don Arturo Place,” he reiterated to me. 

Was it Mr. Price’s goal in misleading the court his desire to obtain a divorce from his first wife Lynn without serving her notice of it? His reason for doing that may have been to shield the assets of his second wife, Del Richardson-Price, and his own assets (worth millions of dollars combined) from being split as community property.

Why would the assets of Price’s second wife, Del, be subject to community property splitting with his first wife, Lynn? 

Because records suggest that Curren D. Price, Jr., a Los Angeles City Councilmember, is concurrently married to both women.

While Mr. Price has denied being a bigamist in media reports, he refuses to state when he married his second wife, Del. According to some of their sworn documents, he and Del wed between August 8, 2008 and April 1, 2014, without his first divorcing his first wife Lynn. The big “if” is whether their sworn statements on real estate and other documents are truthful. 

According to Mr. Price’s LA City Ethics forms, at the time he claimed his first wife Lynn resided at the Don Arturo house, he simultaneously received more than $10,000 in annual rental income (possibly a great deal more) for its occupancy from Dr. Josephine B. Isabel-Jones, a pediatric cardiologist at UCLA, and her family, whose residency at the hillside home-with-a-view has been confirmed. 

So sit with that for a moment.  

Knowing that his first wife Lynn never resided at the house on Don Arturo Place, Mr. Price still had his process server repeatedly go to that address, disrupting his paying tenants, the Jones family, in order to willfully mislead the divorce court that he was making an attempt to serve Lynn there. 

A few months later in 2012, the Los Angeles Superior Court didn’t buy Price’s and Robles’ claim that they could not locate Lynn Price and denied their request to instead serve notice with a paid newspaper advertisement. Lynn Price’s address was readily available on the website of her Trenton, N.J., law firm, on the California and New Jersey Bar Association websites and through other sources. The divorce file has been in limbo ever since, and is overdue for a housecleaning update, or an “Order to Show Cause,” by the court. 

While District Attorney Jackie Lacey and apparently the FBI investigate Price’s activity in this mess, what those agencies may not yet know is this: 

According to Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder records, the voter registration of Mr. Price’s first wife Lynn has been dormant for all elections from 2002 to the present. But in August 2010, in the midst of Mr. Price’s unsuccessful and dubious attempt to get a divorce from her, someone changed Lynn’s address on her voter registration to – you guessed it – 4519 Don Arturo Place, without her ever living there, and without her using that address to vote in that year or in any year since. (Lynn Price has for years been registered to vote in New Jersey.) 

Mr. Price’s current attorney Stephen J. Kaufman denies that his client or anyone close to him had anything to do with changing Lynn Price’s voter registration, claiming that it was automatically changed through the United States Postal Service’s National Change of Address System.

But that’s not possible, according to both the USPS and the LA County Registrar-Recorder’s office.

“The Postal Service’s National Change-of-Address system does not reach out and ‘change’ a customer’s address” without explicit direction from the person or someone pretending to be her, said Evelina Ramirez, a USPS spokesperson. And the USPS doesn’t change someone’s voter registration, at all. The LA County Registrar-Recorder’s office in Norwalk echoed that sentiment. A voter registration is only changed when they receive a mail-in affidavit or DMV change, which is scanned and saved, or via correspondence, which is not. 

Because Lynn Price’s change of voter registration address has no stored affidavit or DMV transaction, it is believed to have been changed through correspondence. 

Attorney Kaufman, when told that his client Mr. Price claimed on his 2012 affidavit that Lynn Price did reside at the Don Arturo address, stopped talking altogether and did not respond to the following questions:

1. Could he identify anyone other than Curren Price or Del Richardson-Price who stood to benefit from that change of Lynn Price’s voter registration address? 

2. Why, if Lynn Price never lived at the Don Arturo Place house, did the National Change of Address system just happen to choose his client’s second wife’s house as the new address for her voter registration? 

3. Why does he believe that the National Change of Address system changed Lynn Price’s long-dormant Los Angeles voter registration, but not her active one in New Jersey? 

4. Why, if Lynn Price never lived at Don Arturo, did his client have his process server attempt to serve her there three times in January 2012? 

Kaufman’s deflections are not only ludicrous on their surface, but also statistically questionable. 

There are 3.267 million residential housing units in Los Angeles County. The odds of Lynn Price’s voter registration being randomly and illegally transferred to an address owned by her husband and his second wife are significantly worse than her odds of winning a high-end grand prize in a California Lottery scratcher game, which is about 1 in 3,000,000. And this just happened to occur at a time when Mr. Price and Mr. Robles tried to convince the court that they could not locate her at that exact address. 

Further, throughout a five-year correspondence that Del Richardson-Price had with the IRS from at least June 2010 to July 2015, Del used Don Arturo as her address at the time Lynn Price’s voter registration was changed to the same address in August 2010. 

Mr. Price refuses to state where he lived during this time. 

The can of worms that that opens is this: if Del Richardson-Price told the truth about her residence address on her years-long communications with the IRS, why was she registered to vote, and still is, at a different address, in a different LA City Council District, far below her admirable, affluent economic status? 

The Don Arturo house is located on a nicely manicured cul-de-sac in a hillside community with a sweeping view befitting someone of a doctor’s, or Curren Price’s and Del Richardson-Price’s, professional success. But it is located in LA City Council District 8. 

Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr., represents Council District 9, aka, “The New 9^th,” and it is illegal for him to reside outside of the community he represents. Just ask former LA City Councilmember Richard Alarcon what happened when he did that. 

According to Curren Price’s and Del Richardson-Price’s current voter registrations, in stark contradiction to their address on IRS correspondence as late as 2015, they reside in a downscale, multi-family rental property in a working class community with a flock of roosters cock-a-doodle-doo’ing across the street and an inexpensive, conspicuously license-plated car, parked where millionaires with two six-figure incomes generally do not live.

Is something that started out as a simple inquiry of whether Mr. Price is a bigamist about to morph into something with far bigger consequences? 

The evolution of this story can be found in my earlier CW articles: 

February 27: “LA’s Own Bigamist-ery.”  

March 2: “LA Sentinel Throws Up a Smoke Screen for Councilman Price on the Bigamy Mystery.”  

March 6: “LA Times Tiptoeing Around the Price Bigamy Allegations.”  

March 27: “Curren Price Plot Thickens: Councilman’s Problems are Bigger than Bigamy.”  

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport.  Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEATH PENALTY WATCH-Ghoulishness envelops Arkansas’ decision to pump deadly drugs into eight men over the next fortnight. Although two of the eight scheduled executions have definitively been stayed and a temporary restraining order has been issued as to the remaining six, the state plans an emergency appeal. 

Articles about “midazolam,” the drug whose expiration date prompted Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to schedule this unprecedented mass execution are abuzz on the internet and social media. By this point many Americans have heard or are generally aware that while midazolam is supposed to render the condemned unconscious and insensate, it has been linked to a number of gruesome and botched executions in the United States. 

These are lethal injections where instead of drifting into a sterile, serene, slumber-like death, the condemned have for minutes and even hours, convulsed, coughed, clenched their fists, writhed and thrashed their bodies, murmured, spoken, or cried out in obvious distress; some have gasped for interminably long periods of time mimicking the discomfiting death-throes of still-live fish thrown flat on a sunbaked pier, to suffocate and to burn. 

Importantly, torturous executions linked to midazolam have occurred when just one or at most two executions have been scheduled at one time. This is why a chorus of lawyers, law professors, medical experts, ethicists, and former correctional officials, have all raised their voices in the last few days against Hutchinson’s mass-killing decree. 

“Multiple executions create rushed circumstances. Rushed circumstances risk error,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. In other words, the assembly-line nature of Hutchinson’s expediency-centric execution schedule exacerbates the risk that one or more of the men to be executed next week will suffer an excruciatingly painful execution; an execution plainly in violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. 

In January 2016, I wrote about the then-impending execution of Christopher Brooks in Alabama – an execution likely botched by the controversial use of midazolam – a drug that according to competent medical experts, is inappropriate for use in executions. 

Specifically, I wrote: “In the United States, we rightly condemn barbaric executions in other countries, like in North Korea, where, in front of an audience, Kim Jon-Un executed his defense minister with an anti-aircraft gun, or, in Saudi Arabia, where beheading remains a common practice. We have especially condemned ISIS executions, executions that have included burning and burying people alive.” 

Highlighting Brooks’ federal defenders’ arguments that, because of the documented problems with midazolam, Brooks would feel like “he is [both] being buried alive” and “burn[ed] alive from the inside”, I plaintively demanded: “How can we countenance the fact that we, as Americans, may also be subjecting human beings – irrespective of their crimes, even heinous ones – to that same end? Can the fact that US executions are not broadcast to the masses from some windswept desert in the Middle East, and occur, instead, in sterile prisons, under the color of law, really make such a difference? Isn’t it morally wrong to execute someone by reproducing the sensation of being buried alive followed by burning them from the inside out?” I lamented, “Aren’t we, as a nation, and as people, better than that?”   

Next week, if Arkansas’ state-sanctioned killing spree goes forward, the answer to that question will resoundingly be “no.” It’ll be no, no, no, no, no, no. 

And as far as the title of my one-year-old Huffington Post blog, “When Will the United States Stop ‘Tinkering With The Machinery of Death?’”, based on the monumentally-high level of depravity promising to be on display next week in Arkansas, not soon enough.    

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Saturday morning federal Judge Kristine G. Baker of the Federal District Court in Little Rock, AR, halted the state’s plan to execute the eight prisoners. The Arkansas Attorney General has vowed to appeal the decision.)

(Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter #SteveCooperEsq.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-When medicine bottles are filled with poison, people die. The most famous incident was in October 1982, when someone laced Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area with cyanide, resulting in seven deaths. While the nation moved quickly to guarantee the safety of over-the-counter medicines, the adulteration of our judicial system has been pandemic for generations. 

From civilization’s beginning, mankind has striven to develop institutions that ensure an honest and just society. In the beginning of Genesis, we learn about the corrupt judges in Sodom. Their abuse was so destructive that they were named Liar, Habitual Liar, Deceiver and Perverter of the Law. According to Jewish tradition, these judges so adulterated Sodom, that God destroyed the city and all its inhabitants. From a moral stand point, filling political institutions with poisonous men is as lethal to society as putting cyanide in medicine. 

One difference between lacing Tylenol capsules with cyanide and allowing corrupt people to have positions of importance is that corruption is slow acting and spreads insidiously until the entire society becomes morally bankrupt. The first injustice by a Sodomite judge did not cause fire and brimstone to hail down on Sodom. Cruelty and injustice enriched some Sodomites, causing extreme harm to their victims. As the corruption spread, evil dominated without any thought that a day of reckoning would arrive. 

During the 1770s, people in the American British Colonies became displeased that the Crown was contaminating British institutions. The colonists believed there should be no taxation without representation. They believed they were entitled to impartial courts when they had just grievances against the Crown. But King George and Parliament believed otherwise and saw no reason that their “Tylenol” bottles should not also contain tyranny. The King’s courts were a farce. Like in Sodom, truth, honesty, and justice had been supplanted by power. The colonists expressed their displeasure with this adulteration of the judicial system in the Declaration of Independence, stating: “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.”   

Our Declaration of Independence posited that all individuals have certain inalienable rights and among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We drafted the U.S. Constitution to secure the Blessings of Liberty, not to continue the rule of tyrants. The foremost objective of the judiciary is to protect an individual’s fundamental rights. The legal system is not to be manipulated for the benefit of the rich and powerful.   

For decades, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was an abusive occupying force in South Central Los Angeles (aka Watts) where, in 1965, police brutality after the stopping of a black motorist triggered six days of violence and civil unrest. There was $40 million ($308 million in 2017 dollars) in property damage and 34 deaths. The unrest was fueled not only by the racist nature of the former LAPD, but also by the courts when they backed up a police department that engaged in the brutalization and criminalization of the Black community. 

Twenty-six years later, in 1992, Los Angeles again erupted in violence with the worst civil unrest since the Civil War – with 54 dead and $1.5 billion (in 2017 dollars) in property damage. Again, a poisonous judiciary had been crucial in the breakdown of civil society. 

While the acquittal of the police officers was what sparked that violence, the foundation for the death and destruction was laid months before by the appellate court’s manipulation of the location of the police officers’ trial to Simi Valley, a bedroom community for police officers. The appellate court claimed that due to publicity, a fair trial could not be had in LA County. Thus, the trial was moved to Ventura County, where the media coverage was as extensive as in Los Angeles County but the jury pool was extremely pro-police. In brief, the appellate court concocted a ruse to place the police officers’ trial in a place where the jury would be overwhelming sympathetic to white police officers and hostile to their Black victim. 

After decades of police brutality and a corrupt court system, the Black Community believed that with the video of the beating of Rodney King, there would finally be justice in at least one case. The appellate court knew better. The Simi Valley jury consisting of 10 whites, one Hispanic and one Filipino acquitted all the officers. 

As the violence mounted in South Central Los Angeles in response to the acquittals, the police pulled back, leaving citizens and businesses defenseless to marauding thugs. When a white truck driver, Reginald Denny, was yanked from his truck at the intersection of Normandie and Florence, no police or National Guard responded. Instead, local people (Bobby Green, Lei Yuille, Titus Murphy and Terri Barnett) who saw the brutal attack on TV, rushed from their homes and saved Reginald Denny’s life. Many people do not want to acknowledge the social disintegration unleashed on Los Angeles that was caused by the appellate court’s moving the trial to Simi Valley. 

Decades later, in 2015, when three federal judges told us our State Court system has suffered from an epidemic of misconduct, we shut our ears and allowed the sadistic abuse to continue. In January 2015, the Federal courts complained about state court prosecutors’ committing perjury in order to obtain convictions, but their real target was the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye. 

The three judge federal panel identified the cause of the epidemic of misconduct as the California court system itself which turned a blind eye to lying jailhouse informants, prosecutors who took the stand and committed perjury and a host of other misdeeds. If Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye, who has held her position since July 22, 2010, had taken remedial steps in the intervening four years, one of the three federal judge would have taken note. 

However, since January 2015, the Chief Justice seems to have done nothing to remove the poison from our judicial system. According to The Orange County Register, “The U.S. Department of Justice launched a civil rights investigation of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department on Thursday (December 15, 2016) over allegations that prosecutors and deputies withhold evidence and use jailhouse informants to illegally obtain confessions.” 

A significant number of judges are former prosecutors, so they are very familiar with these illegal tactics and recognize when they are deployed in their courtrooms. The complaints of the cyanide in the Orange County courts pre-date the complaints by Judge Kozinski in January 2015. Nonetheless, it takes another federal agency to investigate the same type of vile betrayal of public trust which we saw 4,000 years ago in Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Angelenos should not become complacent by thinking that these abuses are relics of bygone eras. Facts and fiction are still fungible commodities in courtrooms. No fact can be too firmly rooted in reality for a judge to proclaim that its opposite is an Undisputed Fact; perjury which favors a judge’s position is preferable over truth. Just as no one knows when the weight of economic frauds will again crash the economy, no one knows when judicial corruption will cause another outbreak of violence.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. 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.