LOS ANGELES

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In previous CityWatch articles I have spelled out the many long-term and harmful consequences of bad planning. Yet, in Los Angeles truly bad city planning just keeps rolling along, in particular, repeated cases of City Hall decision-makers overriding legally adopted Community Plans and local zoning through speculator-friendly spot-zoning and spot-planning enabled by campaign contributions. 

While we wait for evidence that this bothers the decision makers, it clearly bothers the engaged public. In fact, this is why Los Angeles has had so many planning-related voter initiatives, lawsuits, and Sacramento legislative directives over the past half century. Furthermore, this push back against bad planning and the Big Real Estate interests behind it will continue as long as “legal corruption” is rooted out. 

To cite but one example, Los Angeles voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition U in 1986 to limit the size of commercial buildings. Now, 30 years later, in March 2017, they can bring Proposition U into the 21^st Century through Proposition S, also called the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. As frequently discussed at CityWatch, Proposition S will stop most spot-zoning and spot-planning, while also jumpstarting the update of LA’s General Plan, including the 35 Community Plans. 

An excellent example of spot-zoning and spot-planning in the cross hairs of Proposition S is close to where I live. It is the Caruso Affiliated project at 333 S. LaCienega, the site of former Loehman’s discount clothing store. Located at the “Bermuda Triangle” intersection of San Vicente Boulevard, Third Street, Burton Way, and LaCienega, it is one block south of the Beverly Center and one block west of the Cedar-Sinai Hospital. Now under appeal to the City Council, the City Planning Commission has already awarded this project six separate zoning and planning approvals.  If sustained, these bennies would permit the construction of a 240 foot high rise luxury apartment tower on a parcel whose current height limit is 45 feet. While height is certainly a problem with this project, it also has other serious problems that I highlight later in this article. 

But, first let’s examine how this malodorous project bulldozed its way through a City Council office, a neighborhood council, the Department of City Planning, and the City Planning Commission. Part of the answer is heavy lobbying, as described in another CityWatch article, “How Big Real Estate Manufactures Consent.”  But, a second part of their formula is masking the bad planning that pervades this and similar projects with the cheap perfume of “conditions of approval.” In this case, there are nearly 40 pages of approval conditions all neatly folded into this project’s two determinations.  

This is standard practice since nearly every case that the Department of City Planning handles, including those that the City Council later approves through lot specific ordinances, is weighted down by pages of conditions. Having written some of these determinations and read far more, I now believe that their real purpose of these many promises is to gain the support of community groups who do not like specific projects.   

Flaws in Conditions of Approval: There are, however, eight serious flaws in this Big Real Estate tactic, even though it often succeeds in convincing local planning light weights to begrudgingly support a project. 

1)  The conditions cost the developers very little. They are a tiny fraction of the budget for a major project, and I suspect some conditions also qualify as tax credits or deductions, including those that were added as promises to community groups. 

2)  Most of the conditions mitigate a project’s construction and operational impacts. They are, therefore, not true community benefits. Instead their ostensible role is to buy off opponents to controversial projects. 

3)  A project’s developer and his/her tenants also benefit from conditions to offer on and off-site improvements, such as tree planting.  The improvements spruce up projects, and therefore make them more appealing to potential tenants. 

4)  Some conditioned improvements, such as quasi-public fountains, can be used to offset L.A.’s one percent Public Arts fee.  

5)  Off-site improvements promised through conditions are minimal. They do not address the real infrastructure deficits in most of Los Angeles, including but hardly limited to sub-standard street trees, crumbling sidewalks, missing ADA curb cuts, dangerous pot-holes, thirsty grass in yards and parks, decrepit alleys, dangerous overhead wires, unsightly supergraphics and billboards, lax code enforcement, old and failing water mains, missing bicycle infrastructure, slow internet, and unreliable electric power. 

6) The only conditions that City Planning actually monitors are contained in alcohol permits (CUB’s). As for more powerful discretionary actions adopted through City Council ordinances -- such as Zone Changes and General Plan Amendments -- City Planning has no monitoring staff or procedures. 

7)  The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) also does not have any proactive procedures for enforcing these hundreds of conditions for hundreds of cases.  Like all code violations, it is up to local communities to submit complaints that approval conditions have not been complied with. But, as many Angelinos have slowly learned, these complaints are frequently ignored. In fact, this is why experienced residents resort to City Council interventions in order to get LADBS to finally move on code violations. 

8) Once a building is permitted and completed, there are no consequences for unmet conditions, such on and off-site improvements. In Los Angeles, buildings are not partially or wholly demolished when they fail to meet the building code, zoning code, or compliance with the conditions imposed on all discretionary zoning and planning actions. 

Considering these eight gaping loopholes, my conclusion is that the real purpose of conditions of approval is to assuage community opponents by offering mitigation to their complaints about major projects. It is to get them to approve an otherwise bad project when measured against legally adopted General Plan elements, Height Districts, and zones. 

In my next City Watch column, I will address explain why projects like 333 S. LaCienega are truly awful city planning. For now suffice it to say the following: 

• It sets an ominous precedent for future General Plan Amendments, Zone Changes, and Height District Changes.  If this project is successful, similar requests to build other new high-rise luxury projects in this area will methodically appear. 

• It does not comply with the legally required findings that the project be consistent with the scale and character of the neighborhood. As for scale, the projects will be 240 feet high and have a Floor Area Ratio (i.e., mass) of 6.0 on a lot where the height is restricted to 45 feet and the mass of a building is limited to an FAR of 1.5. As for compatible character, the proposed tower has a nautical architectural style, similar to a cruise ship, while most of the surrounding residential buildings have Spanish Revival design features. 

• It does not comply with the City Charter Section 555, which is clear that the City Council can adopt legislative actions, such as General Plan Amendments, “… provided that the part or area involved has significant social, economic or physical identity.” A parcel that is bequeathed spot-zoning because it allows a more lucrative project hardly has a distinctive and significant identify. 

• It has not demonstrated that there is such a shortage of lots zone for luxury apartments in the Wilshire Community Plan area that the City Council should require adopted zone changes to meet this need. 

• It purports to be a transit oriented project, but the nearest mass transit station – at Wilshire and LaCienega-- will be more than a half-mile from the tower, and the transit station will not open up until 2023. Furthermore, the proposed project has 24/7 on-call, chauffer driven luxury car service for all tenants, making it high unlikely that these high flyers will walk a half-mile to hop on the Purple Line subway to travel 

• It is located at one of the most congested intersections in Los Angeles. Called the Bermuda Triangle, the site is the convergence point of San Vicente Boulevard, Third Street, LaCienega Boulevard, and Burton Way. No combination of street signs, signal lights, and traffic officers have ever managed to keep this intersection clear. 

• It claims it needs large amounts of additional height and mass economic incentives to add new pedestrian oriented features, even though this part of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills has many pedestrian-oriented projects and corridors, with buildings that conform to plans and zones. 

(Dick Platkin is a veteran city planner. He reports on local planning issues for CityWatch, and he welcomes comments and questions at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

NOW AND FUTURE DRUG POLICY-As 2016 comes to a tumultuous end, we look back on the year in drugs and drug policy. It’s definitely a mixed bag, with some major victories for drug reform, especially marijuana legalization, but also some major challenges, especially around heroin and prescription opioids, and the threat of things taking a turn for the worse next year.

Here are the six biggest stories from the year on drugs: 

1. Marijuana legalization wins big. 

Pot legalization initiatives won in California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada, losing only in Arizona. These weren’t the first states to do so -- Colorado and Washington led the way in 2012, with Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., following in 2014 -- but in one fell swoop, states with a combined population of nearly 50 million people just freed the weed. Add in the earlier states, and we’re now talking about around 67 million people, or more than one-fifth of the national population. 

The question is, where does marijuana win next? We won’t see state legalization initiatives until 2018 (and the conventional wisdom is to wait for the higher-turnout 2020 presidential election year), and most of the low-hanging fruit in terms of initiative states has been harvested, but activists in Michigan came this close to qualifying for the ballot this year and are raring to go again. In the meantime, there are the state legislatures. When AlterNet looked into the crystal ball a few weeks ago, the best bets looked like Connecticut, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Vermont. 

2. Medical marijuana wins big. 

Medical marijuana is even more popular than legal weed, and it went four-for-four at the ballot box in November, adding Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota to the list of full-blown medical marijuana states. That makes 28 states -- more than half the country -- that allow medical marijuana, along with another dozen or so red states that have passed limited CBD-only medical marijuana laws as a sop to public opinion. 

It’s worth noting that Montana is a special case. Voters there approved medical marijuana in 2004, only to see a Republican-dominated state legislature gut the program in 2011. The initiative approved by voters this year reinstates that program, and shuttered dispensaries are now set to reopen. 

The increasing acceptance of medical marijuana is going to make it that much harder for the DEA or the Trump administration to balk at reclassifying marijuana away from Schedule I, which is supposedly reserved for dangerous substances with no medical uses. It may also, along with the growing number of legal pot states, provide the necessary impetus to changing federal banking laws to allow pot businesses to behave like normal businesses. 

3. Republicans take control in Washington. 

The Trump victory last month and looming Republican control of both houses of Congress has profound drug policy implications, for everything from legal marijuana to funding for needle exchange programs to sentencing policy to the border and foreign policy and beyond. Early Trump cabinet picks, such as Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) to lead the Justice Department, are ominous for progressive drug reform, but as with many other policy spheres, what Trump will actually do is a big unknown. It’s probably safe to say that any harm reduction programs requiring federal funding or approval are in danger, that any further sentencing reforms are unlikely and that any federal spending for mental health and substance abuse treatment will face an uphill battle. But the cops will probably get more money. 

The really big question mark is around pot policy. Trump has signaled he’s okay with letting the states experiment, but Sessions is one of the most retrograde drug warriors in Washington. Time will tell, but in the meantime, the marijuana industry is on tenterhooks and respect for the will of voters in pot legal states and even medical marijuana states is an open question. 

4. The opioid epidemic continues. 

Just as the year comes to an end, the CDC announced that opioid overdose deaths last year had topped 33,000, and with 12,000 heroin overdoses, junk had overtaken gunplay as a leading cause of death. 

The crisis has provoked numerous responses, at both the state and the federal levels, some good, and some not. Just this month, Congress approved a billion dollars in opioid treatment and prevention programs. The overdose epidemic has also prompted the loosening of access to the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone and prodded ongoing efforts to embrace more harm reduction approaches, such as supervised injection sites. 

On the other hand, prosecutors in states across the country have taken to charging those who sell opioids (prescription or otherwise) to people who die of overdose with murder, more intrusive and privacy-invading prescription monitoring programs have been established, and the tightening of the screws on opioid prescriptions is leaving some chronic pain sufferers in the lurch and leading others to seek out opioids on the black market. 

5. Obama commutes more than 1,000 drug war sentences. 

In a bid to undo some of the most egregious excesses of the drug war, President Obama has now cut the sentences of and freed more than 1,000 people sentenced under the harsh laws of the 1980s, particularly the racially biased crack cocaine laws, who have already served more time than they would have if sentenced under current laws passed during the Obama administration. He has commuted more sentences in a single year than any president in history and more sentences than the last 11 presidents combined. 

The commutations come under a program announced by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who encouraged drug war prisoners to apply for them. The bad news is that the clock is going to run out before Obama has a chance to deal with thousands of pending applications backlogged in the Office of the Pardons Attorney. The good news is that he still has six weeks to issue more commutations and free more drug war prisoners. 

6. DEA gets a wakeup call when it tries to ban kratom. 

Derived from a Southeast Asian tree, kratom has become popular as an unregulated alternative to opioids for relaxation and pain relief, as well as withdrawal from opioids. It has very low overdose potential compared to other opioids and has become a go-to drug for hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. 

Perturbed by its rising popularity, the DEA moved in late summer to use its emergency scheduling powers to ban kratom, but was hit with an unprecedented buzzsaw of opposition from kratom users, scientists, researchers, and even Republican senators like Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who authored and encouraged his colleagues to sign a letter to the DEA asking the agency to postpone its planned scheduling. 

The DEA backed off -- but didn’t back down -- in October, announcing it was shelving its ban plan for now and instead opening a period of public comment. That period ended December 1, but before it did, the agency was inundated with submissions from people opposing the ban. Now, the DEA will factor in that input, as well as formal input from the Food and Drug Administration before making its decision. 

The battle around kratom isn’t over, and the DEA could still ban it in the end, but the whole episode demonstrates how much the ground has shifted under the agency. DEA doesn’t just get its way anymore.

(Phillip Smith writes for AlterNet. This piece was posted most recently at TruthDig.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE REAL COST OF AMERICAN ED--"We could have hundreds of thousands of American seniors living in poverty due to garnished Social Security benefits if this trend continues," said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Montana. The federal government is garnishing Social Security checks to recoup unpaid student debt, leaving thousands of retired or disabled Americans below the poverty line and setting the stage for an even bigger problem, according to a new report. 

The data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), compiled at the behest of Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), showed that people over the age of 50 are the fastest-growing group with student debt, outpacing younger generations -- and compared to younger borrowers, older Americans have "considerably higher rates of default on federal student loans." This leaves them open to having up to 15 percent of their benefit payment withheld, in what's called an "offset."  

In 2015, the GAO reported (pdf), the Department of Education collected about $171 million in defaulted student loan debt through Social Security offsets from 114,000 people, the majority of that from borrowers aged 50 or older and receiving disability benefits. About 38,000 were above age 64, and more than three-quarters of older borrowers took out the loans to cover their own education, rather than to pay for their children's schooling. The typical monthly offset was slightly more than $140. And more than 70 percent of the money collected through offsets went toward interest and fees, as opposed to the loan balance. 

"This report demonstrates just how draconian these Social Security offsets are and how there seems to be a failure at all sorts of levels of this policy," Persis Yu, the director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center, told MarketWatch. 

Meanwhile, the report states: "Older borrowers who remain in offset may increasingly experience financial hardship. Such is the case for a growing number of older borrowers whose Social Security benefits have fallen below the poverty guideline because the offset threshold is not adjusted for increases in costs of living." 

Indeed, the program -- which itself may be under threat from a Trump administration -- already hands out insufficient benefits, with the GAO noting that "a growing number of these older borrowers already received Social Security benefits below the poverty guideline before offsets further reduced their income." 

As shown in the chart below, this impacts tens of thousands of borrowers: 

In its report on the "disturbing" trend, the Washington Post noted: 

Some people have been granted financial hardship exemptions, while others have successfully applied for permanent disability discharge of their loans through the Education Department. But researchers at the GAO are critical of the agency's byzantine application process that puts borrowers at risk of falling back into garnishment. If people do not submit annual documentation to verify their income, their loans can be reinstated and the cuts can resume. 

In turn, Warren decried the tactics described in the report as "predatory and counterproductive."

"The hard-earned Social Security checks that are the sole source of income for millions of seniors should not be siphoned off to pay interest and fees on student loan debt," she said in a statement. "It's no wonder many Americans don't think Washington works for them: our government is shoving tens of thousands of seniors and people with disabilities into poverty through garnishment every year -- and charging them $15 every month for the privilege -- just so that the Department of Education can collect a little bit more interest and keep boosting the government's student loan profits." 

What's more, with Americans 65 and older seeing their total student loan debt grow by 385 percent since 2005, McCaskill warned that these numbers are merely "the tip of the iceberg of what may be to come." 

"We could have hundreds of thousands of American seniors living in poverty due to garnished Social Security benefits if this trend continues," she said, "and we shouldn't allow that to happen." 

Social Security Works and Student Debt Crisis, two non-profits working on different aspects of the burgeoning crisis laid out in the GAO's report, last year pledged to "always fight in solidarity with each other."

(Deidre Fulton writes for Common Dreams  … where this piece was first posted.) (Photo credit: Kate Gardiner/flickr/cc). Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--California is trapped—caught in the dangerous space between two menacingly authoritarian regimes that want to fight each other.

One regime is headquartered in Beijing, and the other is about to take power in Washington D.C. But when viewed from the Golden State, it’s striking how much they have in common.

Both are fervently nationalist, full of military men, and so bellicose they are spooking neighbors and allies. Both, while nodding to public opinion, express open contempt for human rights and undermine faith in elections and the free press. Both promote hatred of minorities (anti-Tibetan and anti-Uighur stances in China; anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim stances in the U.S.).

And both regimes are captained by swaggering men (President Xi Jinping in China; President-elect Donald Trump in U.S.) who tend to their own cults of personality and pose as corruption fighters while using their power to enrich their own families.

Most frighteningly for Californians, both regimes seem to see advantage in escalating conflict with the other. Both leaders have encouraged hatred of the other’s citizens (Xi has embraced ultranationalists who compare American treatment of the Chinese to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews, while Trump has called China a “deceitful culture”). The incoming American administration is threatening to raise tariffs and label China a currency manipulator, actions that would likely start a trade war. The Chinese administration is provoking confrontations in the South China Sea while the new American strongman embraces Taiwan—actions that could start a real war.

All this leaves California with the enormous challenge of navigating U.S.-China tensions in a way that protects our people, our economy, and our values. And that will require tricky diplomacy that doesn’t take sides, for we need to maintain relations with both regimes. After all, we live under the laws of the United States, but are irretrievably linked to China, a vital partner in the trade, culture, technology and education sectors that distinguish California in the world.

A sustained conflict between China and the U.S. could produce all kinds of new restrictions on the flow of money and people, with devastating results for California. Our public universities rely both on federal funds from D.C. and top-dollar, out-of-state tuition fees from Chinese students to subsidize the education of Californians. So any Trump restrictions on foreign visitors—or retaliatory Chinese limits on overseas study and travel—could blow up the University of California’s business model. It also would damage the University of Southern California, the city of L.A.’s largest private sector employer, which heavily recruits Chinese students.

Our state’s signature industries—Silicon Valley and Hollywood—depend on consumers who live under both regimes. And our most promising ventures—from virtual reality and artificial intelligence technologies to major developments (like the San Francisco Shipyards in Hunter’s Point, to just name one)—rely on our ability to bring together manufacturers, investors and technologists from China and the U.S. In a trade war, both regimes could decimate innovation and development with restrictions on foreign investments.

And with both regimes so quick to escalate nationalist rhetoric, it’s quite possible that both Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans in California could become targets of bigotry and hate crimes. Our housing market relies on Chinese buyers, who spend an estimated $9 billion a year on homes here. A backlash against Chinese investors buying homes (and using them only part of the year) could produce discrimination and hurt our housing market, which in turn would damage the already underfunded public schools our taxes support.

How then can California handle such a conflict?

First, by protecting our people (especially Californians of Chinese ancestry) and our institutional connections to China with the same fervor the California government is rallying to protect our undocumented immigrants against Trump’s threats of mass deportations. This California diplomacy will be especially hard given the hyper-sensitivity of the autocrats in Beijing and D.C. to the slightest of slights; just as Trump lashes out at Saturday Night Live parodies, Xi and his loyalists see the Kung Fu Panda films as American warfare against them.

A sustained conflict between China and the U.S. could produce all kinds of new restrictions on the flow of money and people, with devastating results for California.

And, second, by reminding both regimes—in friendly but firm ways—that we are opposed to conflict because the U.S. and China need each other more than they appear willing to acknowledge.

Californians who doubt this would do well to consult John Pomfret’s masterful new book, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. Pomfret, an American journalist long posted in China, employs telling details (the tea thrown into Boston Harbor was from Xiamen; an 1860s California attorney general campaigned against Chinese prostitutes while importing his own) to show how profoundly the two countries have shaped one other’s development, and just how vital their relationship has become to the world.

“The two nations have feuded fiercely and frequently, yet, irresistibly and inevitably, they are drawn back to one another,” he writes. “The result is two powers locked in an entangling embrace that neither can quit.”

California’s role in this difficult period should be to tell the story of its own deep ties to China, while serving as a model for a productive relationship, argues Matt Sheehan, author of the forthcoming book Chinafornia: Working with Chinese Investors, Immigrants and Ideas on U.S. Soil.

Sheehan, who also publishes the weekly Chinafornia Newsletter and provides communications consulting for Chinese and U.S. companies, says now is an important time for California officials and businesses to seek out areas of productive cooperation with Chinese counterparts, especially in areas like manufacturing and fighting climate change.

“I think of California as a living laboratory for a more practical, productive version of U.S.-China relations,” he says.

But not all collaborations with China would be helpful. Our technologies companies shouldn’t be aiding the U.S. surveillance state or assisting the Chinese government in suppressing human rights, as Facebook is reportedly doing by developing a newsfeed that would empower censors.

We also shouldn’t play to anti-Chinese prejudice, like some California unions have done in opposing trade agreements and advancing union organizing. One noxious—if ridiculous—example is a current push by the hotel workers’ union to block the sale of the Westin Hotel in Long Beach (where the union has an organizing campaign) to Chinese interests on grounds that it’s so close to that city’s port that Chinese ownership would threaten national security.

One possible model for California’s strategy going forward might be Anson Burlingame, whom President Lincoln dispatched to Beijing to represent the U.S. during the Civil War. Burlingame’s approach, as described by Pomfret, was to commiserate with the Chinese (we have our terrible rebellion with the South, you with the Taipings) as a basis for collaboration. His work ultimately produced the Burlingame Treaty, which banned discrimination against Chinese workers in America, welcomed Chinese students to U.S. educational institutions, and opened the way for Chinese immigrants to become American citizens.

Today, Burlingame’s accomplishments are mostly forgotten, but his name belongs to a highly desirable suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area, a region boasting one of America’s most prosperous populations of Chinese Americans.

(Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010).)

-cw

WEALTH FORUMLA, PART ONE-The City of Los Angeles has intentionally destroyed the housing market and the result is devastating the entire city. Here we have a prime example of a City government that has so screwed up the Price System for housing that builders are constructing for a market segment in which there is a glut while ignoring the segment that has a shortage.

Developers have been misled into constructing high-end luxury apartments when the demand for that type of housing is falling. Since the City has a net exodus of Middle Class people over people who come here, more housing is available even if no one builds anything. The slight rise in LA’s population is due to the birth rate being higher than the number of people who move away or die. But newborns do not demand more houses and elderly Baby Boomers already have homes. Since people are not “taking their houses with them,” our housing supply is increasing. 

Housing costs, however, continue to escalate causing more people to move away, especially Family Millennials who should be the Number One segment of the population to stay here and demand more housing. 

Frauds in the Los Angeles Housing Market. 

With Family Millennials leaving in droves, why aren’t housing prices falling instead of constantly rising? What are the frauds that falsely deceive Angelenos into thinking there is a huge demand for housing, when in fact the demand is falling? 

For a short while, it was the securitization of residential rental income, but it appears that this scam was too much like the fraud that caused the Crash of 2008; financial institutions backed out of this folly. 

Although we know the City has been destroying rent-controlled units -- and this fact alone would cause an increase in homelessness, placing upward pressure on rents -- it does not explain the huge increase in the market segment that is over built: higher end apartments. 

While younger Millennials still in the Dorm Room Phase of life have been doubling and tripling up in order to rent over-priced apartments, there has still been a 12% glut of these units, per the City’s own data. Yet, rents have continued to increase between 2013 and 2016. The false reporting of alleged vacancy rates has misled people into believing that there is a housing shortage when there has been none. (In order to accurately report rents, they should have been adjusted “per person.” When three single people chip in to pay for a $2,000 apartment, the rent per person is actually lower than when one person pays $800 per apartment. Thus, on a per person basis, rents can be falling while the “per apartment” rents are increasing.) 

Belief is Stronger than Fact. 

Belief in a housing shortage is another reason for prices to increase year after year while demand decreases. People pay what they believe is the market rate. As in the 2000s, developers have continued to build under the misconception that there has been a housing shortage. 

Rental prices are generally provided by real estate companies motivated to keep rents high. Thus, their rental reports are usually based on what they advertise and not on the actual rents collected. Those who saw “The Big Short” will remember how no one was taking the time to go and actually look at all these new homes. When one guy did, he discovered that they were vacant and some people were buying three, four or five homes in the belief they could be flipped in an eternal up-market. Just as Wall Street made people believe there was a huge demand for homes, landlords have issued statistics that make people believe there is a shortage of apartments due to huge demand. 

The City of Los Angeles is heavy into this fraud. It keeps lying about the fantastic increases in Hollywood’s population. In April 2016, LA issued a report that the Hollywood population had jumped to 206,000 people and cited the Southern Association of Governments (SCAG) as its source. SCAG had no data about Hollywood population. 

Then, in October 2016, the City released an even more mythical figure: Hollywood’s population was 210,511 people at the end of 2015. Wow, that’s a lot of people, but people who had any memory knew that in April 2016 the City had said the population was only 206,000 people. Did the City lose 5,511 people in the first few months of 2016? Of course, since the City’s data is composed of Lies and Myths, no one should expect any of it to make any sense. 

There is nothing new Under the Sun. 

We have seen this phenomenon previously, prior to the Crash of 2008, when housing prices were rapidly increasing faster than the population was growing. Under the classic laws of Supply and Demand, a downturn in Demand generates reduced Supply as builders realize that the prices for which they can sell new homes will soon be substantially less than the cost to produce them. Yet, the housing market boomed in the face of falling demand – just as we see today. 

The boom-bust phases of the business cycle were an immutable fact until John Bernard Keynes wrote his General Theory in 1936. But after fools like Bill Clinton, the U.S. Congress and lastly Obama’s little Timmy Geithner exiled Keynes, we have reverted to the boom-bust phases. 

When the government fails to protect the Price System from fraud, no one knows what anything is worth. After Congress’ and Bill Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall and the legalization of Credit Default Swaps, massive fraud destroyed the Price System for homes. It turned out that demand for houses had been exhausted until we raised the productivity of more Americans. Rather than shift investment so that the middle and lower classes could become wealthier, Wall Street rigged the system so that people falsely believed there was this huge demand for residential housing. 

The residential housing market was similar to a Ponzi scheme in that the fraud required more and more putative home buyers in order to keep the scam afloat. In time, Ponzi-type schemes always end up demanding more buyers than there are people in the universe. 

The Formulas for Wealth. 

One need not know that PV = Rn / (1 + r)n and Ck = Rn / (1 + MEC)n are what I call the Wealth Formulas, (but most economists say “marginal efficiency of capital.”) Despite their formidable look, they simply mean that in order for a business to produce wealth, a business must sell its products for more than it costs to produce them. 

There is one vital addition -- time. Investments generate wealth over time. Thus, an important principle is not to destroy your business while it is still generating wealth. 

Since money is the abstraction by which we figure out what different things are worth, money is the great common denominator of everything a business uses to generate wealth. In other words, if a business person wants to provide for his family, he has to make certain that whatever he makes and sells costs the buyer more than it cost him or her to produce it. This is obvious, and I hope readers are saying, “Duh!” 

The Government’s Duty, LA’s Failure. 

While businessmen use these concepts daily, most people do not realize the government’s fundamental duty to make certain the formulas actually work. While defending the nation from aggression may be the government’s most important foreign function, protecting the economy is its most vital domestic duty. 

The government must make certain that the Price System accurately translates the value of different services and things into dollars. Without a way for a business person to know the value of an employee’s labor, the value of the building he or she rents for his or her business, or the value of the equipment he or she purchases so that his or her employees have the tools to manufacture the product, there is no way for the business person to calculate how much “wealth” his product will generate.  

When no one knows the value of goods and services, then no one wants to loan a business person any money, and he or she does not want to borrow any money lest he or she be unable to repay it. 

A failure of the Price System means poverty. A correctly functioning Price system means wealth. Thus, the role of all governments is to protect the Price System so that people make sound business decisions. 

The City of Los Angeles, however, is guilty of gross dereliction of duty in this regard. 

Conclusion of the ‘Wealth Formulas’ Part I. 

No one can faithfully serve two masters. The government’s proper role is to provide for the common welfare, not to be beholden to one segment of society. For too long, the City of Los Angeles has been owned by real estate developers. Thus, the City has no process to provide for the quality of life of Angelenos. 

The Planning Department has no section on macro-economics. No one knows Adam Smith from Adam West or John Maynard Keynes for a Keys Drug Store. As a result, housing prices are chaotic and we have thousands of units which no one wants, all while suffering a shortage of the type of housing people actually need. The lack of rent-control has swollen the homeless population, while the war against the single-family home has raised prices so high that we have driven away the emerging Middle Class. The situation is beyond critical and there is no reason to forecast any improvement.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PALM TREE--I'm a typical American Jew--my tribe came up with most of the Christmas carols we love so much (we also came up with Superman and Batman ... so there!), and I just LOVE Christmas.  I love the lights, I love the spirit of giving and family togetherness, and I love the slowing down to just breathe a little.  I also appreciate the Christian spirituality, which really isn't so far removed from the rest of us. 

But as a father and husband, a transportation/planning advocate, and a pro-family advocate (and that includes kids!), I've got my own "wish list" for the twelve days of Christmas.  I could have gone for a Hannukah/Chanukah/Hanukkah (choose your favorite spelling) wish list, but that would only be eight days ... and what fun would that be when I could have twelve wishes instead: 

TWELVE parks for the City of Los Angeles--and I don't mean pocket parks, but rather BIG open spaces that is the size of about 1-2 blocks.  I'm spoiled by Mar Vista and Palms Parks, and I want a new one for each sector of the City, with a mega-big Downtown Central Park for the two districts serving most of the Downtown area (we could make this 13 for each district, right?) 

ELEVEN days of a rescheduled LAUSD school year that allows for a school year starting closer to Labor Day (NOT mid-August, you knuckleheads!), and/or allowing for a balanced school year with a two week (or perhaps 10-day) break in the spring combined with a smaller winter break.  The LAUSD Board promised a fix to all this, and then they lied to us by reneging on that promise. 

TEN Community Plans a year updated as is consistent with the Bylaws of the City of Los Angeles, to preserve single-family neighborhoods, place height limitations and direct moderate densification along our major commercial corridors to properly allow for an increased population.  No excuses! 

NINE redeveloped industrial zones to create jobs for Angelenos and other Southern Californians. Industrial isn't always ugly, and even if some folks believe it is, then the jobs those zones create will mitigate for that "ugliness". Not everyone is a lawyer who will work at home--people need middle-class, sustainable, and stable careers involved with manufacturing. 

EIGHT new transit lines to serve the Westside, the Eastside, the South Bay, the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, the Southeast Cities, the Harbor/San Pedro region, and Downtown regions. 

SEVEN more required years of work before any City, County, or State public worker can retire with full benefits--unless these workers have either saved more, given up vacation time, are physically unable to work or be retrained for other jobs demanding less physical labor.  Maybe we all "deserve" to retire in our mid-50's, but we can't afford to pay for pensions as we're doing now. 

SIX percent as the assumed earnings that public sector pension funds should presume before demanding that the taxpaying base be charged for the extra costs of pensions.  We're going broke, folks, and this isn't a game--unless city/county bankruptcies, and insufficient state funds to meet our budgetary requirements is something we all want to see more of. 

FIVE percent switching from our K-12 budget to our state college budget, in that our bloated, horrifically and tyrannically self-serving public education unions would have to live within their means while allowing taxpayers contributing to our UC and Cal State colleges a chance to affordably pay for their children to get a college education. 

FOUR new smart bus stations (not just benches or stops) each month for our most frequently-used bus connections to establish a roof/shelter, appropriate seating (or not) that doesn't encourage homeless encampments, advertisements for local neighborhood councils, LED announcements for when the next bus is coming, and with plug-in features for cellphones.  Bus riders deserve respect. 

THREE stories as the goal for our City (with the exception of Downtown and a few major commercial corridors) to focus on as the limit for housing projects to achieve affordable and desirable housing for our growing population.  Unless we're talking luxury high-rises, anything over three stories isn't a home...it's a crud-hole.  STOP it, overdevelopers and enabling politicians! 

TWO new county supervisors, and with a redistricting that allows for more appropriate representation for the geographies of our very large L.A. County...and knock it off, you racist cretins, if redistricting is something desired by ethnicity and not geography.  Our county and city is race-obsessed (a New Racism, if ever there was one) enough as it is. 

ONE new wonderful Neighborhood Integrity Initiative to pass in the spring to put the brakes on overdevelopment and require a legal and sustainable and environmentally-friendly development process in the City of the Angels. 

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays and New Year to All!

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

-cw

IMMIGRATION POLITICS-Two weekends ago, in the working class city of Lynwood in southern Los Angeles County, hundreds of anxious immigrant rights activists packed into the banquet hall of a Mexican restaurant to discuss the next four to eight years under President Trump. Nanette Barragán, the district’s newly elected Congresswoman, proclaimed her intention to fight Trump tooth and nail on the harshest elements of his famously hardline immigration agenda, including his proposed border wall. However, Barragán continued, should President Trump and Republicans in Congress propose a bill that would “afford the protections we need,” she would consider it. In particular, she referenced a recently proposed bipartisan bill that would extend by another three years a temporary reprieve from deportation that the Obama administration granted in 2012 to immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. 

“I know the danger,” she told the crowd, describing relatives in Texas who had enrolled in the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. “It’s very personal to me.” 

This subpopulation of immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” occupies a special status in the moral outlook of many politicians and of much of the public when it comes to immigration enforcement and reform. Even among Republican politicians who see unauthorized immigration as a criminal act, there are those who regard the Dreamers, unlike their parents, as essentially blameless. The Dreamers have long offered one of the only slivers of potential compromise and agreement in Congress in what is arguably the most polarizing political issue in the country. 

Obama and congressional Democrats have reached for this bipartisan brass ring repeatedly, introducing the Dreamers’ namesake bill, the Development, Relief, and Education for Minors (DREAM) Act, which would legalize the Dreamers’ status, four times over Obama’s two terms. In characteristic fashion, however, the president always counterbalanced his embrace of the Dreamers with an enormous concession to his hardliner adversaries: the erection and implementation of the most aggressive deportation regime the country has ever seen. 

The impact of this bargain on undocumented immigrants has been almost exclusively negative. The DREAM Act has yet to pass Congress; Obama’s support for it, and for immigration reform generally, remains theoretical. The millions of deportations his administration has overseen, on the other hand, are anything but that. 

If the privileging of certain classes of immigrants over others has served the undocumented population poorly under Obama, it’s likely to get much worse under President Trump. With the president-elect just a few weeks away from assuming office, California’s Democratic lawmakers have been pushing a slate of bills at the state, county and city levels to insert a layer of protection between federal law enforcement and the state’s undocumented immigrants. One of those bills is designed to move the debate over immigrant rights away from what its proponents characterize as a false dichotomy between those who deserve protections and those who do not, by extending guaranteed legal counsel -- non-citizens are not currently entitled to an attorney by right -- to every person in a deportation proceeding, regardless of their background. 

“If we create a system where we’re providing representation for some categories of people because we consider them ‘deserving,'” Emi MacLean, (photo left) an attorney with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network told me, “we’re just reinforcing this really hateful, fear-mongering rhetoric of the incoming Trump administration.” MacLean’s group is pushing the measure at the city and county level in Los Angeles. In the face of the full frontal attack that immigrants expect will follow Trump’s inauguration, MacLean believes that the proper strategy is to lock arms and allow no one to be thrown under the bus. 

Obama’s line on deportations, outlined in a 2014 speech, is that his administration targets “felons, not families.” Rhetorically, it’s a distinction with obvious appeal: Who in the world likes felons and doesn’t like families? But procedurally, immigrant advocates say, it has been used as an excuse to deny due process to a broad cross-section of people who do not conform to what Democrats have long held up as the types of immigrants that deserve priority protection, such as college-bound Dreamers, undocumented parents of U.S. citizens who have lived here for decades, or undocumented immigrants who have served in the military. 

In practice, the “felons” label is boundlessly elastic. It can mean summary deportation for an immigrant with a drug charge from more than two decades ago for which he has already served time. It can cover a grandmother accused of being a gang member by a single police officer on the basis of essentially no evidence whatsoever. It can include an old DUI or marijuana charge, or a citation for street vending without a license. Or based on no criminal history at all, or on a criminal record whose only offense is illegal entry or re-entry, which as a basis for priority deportation creates a circular argument. According to a recent study by the Marshall Project, those last two categories made up 60 percent of the 300,000 deportations that have been carried out since Obama first made his “felons, not families” speech. 

Obama’s good immigrant vs. bad immigrant language, MacLean believes, helped usher in Trump’s vilification of all undocumented immigrants. During the presidential debates, she pointed out, Trump noted that his proposed policies merely followed practices put in place by Obama. “Obama’s rhetoric of ‘we’re going to deport felons, not families’ created the mentality and the reality that we’re living today,” she told me, “where our president-elect, in his initial speech announcing his candidacy, talked about Mexicans coming into the United States as ‘rapists’ and ‘criminals.’” 

Trump has already proclaimed that there are between two and three million immigrants with criminal records who he will instruct Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport immediately upon taking office. By comparison, Obama has deported about that number of immigrants -- 2.5 million -- over the course of eight years. That was more deportations than any other president in history, and more than all of the presidents of the 20th century combined.  

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa believes that Trump’s figure is a red herring that indicates just how broad a net he plans to cast over the undocumented population. After addressing the Lynwood meeting, while walking from storefront to storefront, chatting in Spanish with their patrons about his gubernatorial campaign, Villaraigosa told me there is “no evidence” that there are two to three million undocumented immigrants in the United States with criminal records. The real number, he claimed, is closer to 800,000. Trump’s invocation of the larger number, he told me, indicates to him that the president-elect plans to go “far, far beyond” merely focusing on immigrants who pose a legitimate public safety threat. 

One immigration attorney told me that two to three million seemed to her to be a reasonable estimate of the number of immigrants already “in the system” -- through arrests and convictions, but also through DACA enrollments and asylum requests and old removal orders that were ignored or never made it to their recipients in the first place -- who the government can track down and deport without much trouble. If you’re an undocumented immigrant or an asylee and you’ve ever been fingerprinted for any reason, she explained, the federal government has your biometric data and probably a paper trail to your residence. There’s no “hiding in the shadows” under such circumstances. Trump’s two to three million priority deportation cases, then, may have nothing to do with criminal status; they’re just ICE’s low-hanging fruit. As under Obama, the “criminal” label is just an excuse to expedite deportations with a minimum of judicial oversight. 

The distinction between “felons” and “families” has already been stretched to the point of legal farce under the Obama administration. If undocumented immigrants are to have any protection from deportation under Trump, many immigrant rights advocates are convinced, it is incumbent upon Democratic-controlled states like California to undermine what has become a tool for summary deportation by purging contrasts between “deserving” and “undeserving” immigrants from their own laws and policies. 

Yesterday morning, in the administration building named after her father, Janice Hahn settled into her seat, alongside her colleagues on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, to hear more than 100 members of the public speak in favor of, or in opposition to, a measure Hahn helped write. The measure, co-written with Supervisor Hilda Solis, Obama’s former Labor Secretary, would pitch county money into a $10 million legal defense fund, jointly financed by the county, the city and private donors, to provide attorneys to immigrants in deportation proceedings. 

Similar funds are being considered in San Francisco and New York City, and a smaller fund has already been put into place in Chicago. In Sacramento, a bill is moving through the California legislature that would create a legal fund at the state level. 

Stripped of power in Washington D.C., Democrats have embraced these rear-guard actions in an effort to defend their communities, proactively or desperately, depending on your point of view, against the expected deportation onslaught from the Trump administration. In California, the bill before the state, which is entitled “Due Process for All,” makes no distinction between immigrants’ criminal histories in determining who is eligible to make use of the fund -- a victory for immigrant rights advocates who aspire to let the divisive “felons, not families” rhetoric fade into oblivion. 

At the Board of Supervisors meeting, the city attorney, a Los Angeles school district board member and a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Garcetti voiced their enthusiastic support for Hahn and Solis’ measure. It passed by a 4 to 1 vote. 

The language determining the allocation of the funds, however, has yet to be written. If it mimics the state version, California will be on its way to codifying into its laws a unanimous commitment to extending a universal right to due process to all undocumented immigrants, regardless of past arrests, convictions or allegations by the police. It would send a strong message of solidarity at a moment when division could prove catastrophic to millions of the state’s residents. 

If it instead adopts the language of the Obama administration, allocating the right to legal counsel only to certain groups of immigrants deemed more worthy of protection than others, that solidarity could unravel. Immigrants have seen what the results of that division have been under a Democratic administration. Under President Trump, they can only imagine.

(Leighton Woodhouse is a Los Angeles journalist, filmmaker and graphic designer whose work has appeared in the New Republic, the Intercept, Gawker, VICE News, the Nation, Salon and the Awl. His latest feature documentary is Trumpland. This piece was originally posted at Capital& Main.)  Photos by Leighton Woodhouse.

Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PRESERVATION POLITICS-Well, now that you’ve read about the Lytton Savings building at Crescent Heights and Sunset -- and its placement on the City’s “historical register” -- maybe you’d be surprised to find that there’s another “1960s Lytton Savings” worthy of saving. It’s an orphan of a building in Van Nuys at 6569 Van Nuys Blvd. and it has an equal but different story to tell. 

A tale of two buildings, a tale of two different cities: a trendy Los Angeles versus its distant relative, the San Fernando Valley. It’s a tale of community disinterest, proof that even the professionals will “sell out” buildings in the suburbs over a building on Sunset Blvd. It’s a tale revealing that “preservation is a dirty word north of Mulholland Drive.” 

Photos of both the Crescent Heights “Lytton Savings” and the Van Nuys “Lytton Savings” show a great similarity, a love of modern architecture by Bart Lytton, one of those l960s savings and loan tycoons who pyramided the building of the suburbs into a chain of S&Ls. He had a stylebook but he wasn’t building those Home Savings structures that look like mausoleums (I’m surprised no one ever put their ashes into a safe deposit box at Home.) Lytton, a benefactor of the County Museum of Art, used clean modern lines and had a “stylebook” for his banks, but over past 50 years, they’ve disappeared. Maybe you can find one more but, to my knowledge, only the “honored” Crescent Heights and the “soon to be trashed” Van Nuys buildings remain. 

As a member of the Van Nuys Neighborhood Council, I grew up in Van Nuys admiring the Lytton Savings building. There were only two well designed buildings in Van Nuys: the Paul Revere Williams Bank of America, and next door, the Lytton Savings building with its 40 foot high atrium, skylights, a floating staircase and the loan department suspended on a balcony under the atrium. Yes, like the friends of the Crescent Heights bank, I had my $12 there 50 years ago; I’ve also had a love affair with the building ever since. 

But as a Van Nuys Neighborhood Council member, I’ve never seen the Crescent Heights Lytton Savings and that’s where a bureaucratic story begins. 

When I tried to discuss nominating the Van Nuys Lytton building for “landmark status,” I found that, like the Crescent Heights building, it is subject to demolition -- immediately. 

PROPOSITION M seems to be bringing a land rush to tired Van Nuys Blvd. where most storefronts date from the l920s. Talk about a light rail on Van Nuys Blvd means that everything is in play. And because the Lytton building had parking, four stories with 200 units can be built there. There’s such a land rush now with 400 units at the corner of Kittridge and Van Nuys -- that very same corner. 

As a member of the Van Nuys NC Plum Committee, I tried to talk up the building, but was “blackballed” from the committee. “Thank you for your interest in preservation. (You’re now off the committee.”) 

The fine art of the building isn’t worthy of discussion, but there is talk about the struggling Salvadoran market, La Tapatulcheca (photo above), now occupying it, and that the illegal vendors the market encourages bring the “wrong look” to Van Nuys. Instead, there are wild hopes of gentrification and a “SPROUTS” that will never sprout here. If you think that’s funny, you should feel what I felt when I pursued the matter. The “Lytton Savings” in Van Nuys is on the City of Los Angeles’ “SURVEY LA” list -- an architectural study project of all the City’s buildings of architectural value, including “orphans” like this one that are worthy of “saving.” 

So, ask the City Attorney, “Doesn’t the Neighborhood Council have to at least get a presentation about why the building is on the Survey LA list?” No answer. 

Ask Ken Bernstein, City Historical Preservation Officer, “Won’t you defend your SURVEY LA list of buildings of interest or concern?” No answer.   

Ask LA Conservancy for their help and you hardly get encouragement because the Crescent Heights “fight” seems more interesting. Perhaps “saving two of a kind” is just so difficult to explain that they won’t even “come over the hill” to defend my advocacy -- or SURVEY LA -- or even tell me about their Crescent Heights battle. 

I wish the Crescent Heights people well. I think their building is worthy of preservation, as I do the Van Nuys building. It’s the rare situation where “preserving two of a kind” over one of a kind makes sense. I’d welcome synergy between the groups. 

But the success (such as it is) in Crescent Heights troubles me. I’ve been given a view of City politics suggesting that there is a different threshold for honest discussion of preservation in the City. One cynically sees some sense that the Crescent Heights battle is as much about those Hollywood-Beverly Hills types riding down Sunset Blvd. in a top down convertible, either celebrating the Gehry building to come or the Lytton Savings to be “saved.” 

But if you try, as I did, to get the City’s million dollar “SURVEY LA” discussion of the building inserted into the Van Nuys NC record, you’ll find that you can’t. The City acts as if their own “SURVEY LA” guidance is a “secret” -- a bureaucratic secret for their own convenience. It’s their secret and they’ll decide when and if they want to use it. 

And as for discussion in the Valley on preservation issues -- those who built out the Valley with single family homes in the l950s will build out the Valley now with four story apartments. (Even my single family home sanctuary is being surrounded by those 4 story apartments.) When you can’t get your neighborhood council to respect you enough to make the preservation presentation, you’re not in a good place.

(John Hendry is a neighborhood council activist who lives in the San Fernando Valley.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

VOX POP--LA City Hall’s shady, underhanded ways have become a serious hot-button issue in the city’s March 2017 elections — and now City Council District 5 candidate Jesse Creed has jumped into the fray.

“As reported by the LA Times, ” Creed wrote in an email to supporters, “special interest lobbyists were at the center of a corrupt and illegal campaign finance scheme, collecting over $600,000 in illegal contributions for City Hall politicians. Do you think the politicians care about the people when the lobbyists are the financiers of their campaigns? Please. The people get hosed.”

Since early 2016, the Coalition to Preserve LA, the grassroots movement sponsoring the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, now known as Measure S, has been leading the charge against City Hall’s unfair, dishonest methods, which favor greedy developers over ordinary Angelenos.

With the City Council and mayoral elections coming up in March, numerous candidates running against City Hall incumbents are now sounding alarm that it’s time for much-needed change. Jesse Creed (photo left) is one of them. 

Creed is running against Council District 5 member Paul Koretz, who serves Hollywood, Bel Air, Fairfax, Century City and Westwood, among other neighborhoods. In a recent email to supporters, the challenger wrote:

Lobbyists are responsible for a culture of special interest dependency and corruption in City Hall, resulting in politicians who ignore the needs of the people. Meanwhile, problems like our broken streets and sidewalks, illegal dumping, and flagrant violations of building codes go unfixed.

We owe it to the people of LA to break this culture of special interest dependency. The people of LA help fund our city elections with a matching funds system that gives candidates up to $100,000 in taxpayer funds. We owe it to the taxpayers of LA to run an ethical campaign.

Coalition to Preserve LA has noted for months that developers spend millions on politically connected lobbyists, who then woo City Hall politicians and bureaucrats for special spot-zoning favors that negatively impact the rest of us through ruined neighborhoods, gridlock traffic and displacement of longtime residents.

It’s why community leaders across LA are asking Angelenos to vote “Yes on S” in March. 

For his own campaign in Council District 5, Creed vowed to not take developer or lobbyist money.

Join the Coalition to Preserve L.A. by clicking here right now to donate any amount you wish, and follow and cheer our efforts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For more information, you can also send us an email at [email protected].

DEEGAN ON LA-Frank Gehry has two options -- some may say a Hobson’s choice – now that the LA City Council has unanimously approved Historic-Cultural Monument status for Kurt Meyer’s Lytton Savings Bank building located on the property Gehry wants to transform into a complex of skyscrapers at the western gateway to the Sunset Strip. 

He can drop his objections and work his 8150 Sunset project around the Lytton Savings Bank building, or he can help developers Townscape Partners move it offsite to a new location. It’s not as if he doesn’t already have enough problems at 8150 Sunset: this project is faced with three, possibly four, pending lawsuits. He’s also contending with a vocal community that doesn’t really want the project there in the first place. 

Anything can happen. We are suddenly experiencing a through-the-looking glass political environment coupled with lots of aggressive political activism when it comes to the lava-hot issue of land use and development. Many Los Angeles communities, HOA’s, Neighborhood Councils, and NIMBYs are pushing back hard against development and these local uprisings have been one of the big political stories of 2016. Next March, in the Mayoral and City Council elections, candidates will have to face many voters who are sick and tired of unregulated over-development. They may just be inclined to support a show-stopper like the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative that would recast how zoning variances are handled -- if it is voted into reality on the March ballot. 

Getting Historic-Cultural Monument status for Lytton has been a risky but so far successful process showcasing which politicos have been brave and which have not. A couple of guys (Steven Luftman and Keith Nakata, both neighborhood council board members and land use committee members) identified the Lytton Savings Bank as something worth saving and launched a campaign for Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) status for it. The road ruptured when City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management committee (PLUM) placed approval of Gehry’s 8150 Sunset project on their agenda for consideration and then approved it, before knowing the HCM status for Lytton – the consideration for which was scheduled several weeks later. Not only was it feckless of PLUM to avoid first making a decision about Lytton, but it was also a backwards procedure. What to do about Lytton should have appropriately and logically been decided before deliberating about the 8150 Sunset project. 

Not satisfied with being chickens just once, the same PLUM committee -- Chair Jose Huizar, Curren Price, Gil Cedillo, Mitch Englander and Marqueece Harris-Dawson -- when they eventually heard the case for HCM status decided to forward it to the full City Council without any recommendation. Twice, they abandoned their responsibility to weigh in on a significant land use issue that eventually benefitted a developer. 

Bravely, Councilmember David Ryu (CD4), who brokered an agreement over the 8150 project, stepped in and publicly voiced his support of Lytton’s HCM status. This helped push it through. Whatever it was that happened behind the scenes, led to the result, a few days ago, of the council unanimously approving Historic-Cultural Monument status for the Lytton Savings Bank building. 

All councilmembers, including the five PLUM members that twice dodged the issue, voted for it in the go-along-get-along City Council culture. In this case, they appear to have gone along with Ryu. 

What the supporters of Lytton have gained may be a Pyrrhic victory: the HCM vote may slightly delay demolition, but it does not guarantee that the building will survive. At least, not at its present site. 

In an October 27 letter to the City Council, Frank Gehry addressed the Lytton Savings Bank building issue, telling the politicos that he had tried different massing options without finding one that would preserve the Lytton bank. He concluded, “I really do not believe that I can design a successful project while keeping the bank on the site.” More prosaically, he admitted to the PLUM committee that his construction crane needs to sit on the existing footprint of the Lytton building so, he says, the Lytton building cannot coexist with his project. 

If he sticks to the claim that the Lytton Bank building is in his way -- although there are two alternative findings in the Environmental Impact Report concerning Lytton that challenge that assertion -- the only other option for saving it is to move the building to a new location. But finding a sponsor and a piece of land may be very difficult. Two valuable resources, cash and location, would need to materialize and, so far, there is no one, including Gehry, who publicly advocates and is willing to pay for moving Lytton to another site. 

The effort to save Lytton has produced many wins, including the willingness to challenge a world famous architect, pushing the politicos, exposing the double-cowardice of PLUM members Jose Huizar, Curren Price, Gil Cedillo, Mitch Englander and Maurice Harris-Dawson, and creating a cohesive community around this critical neighborhood issue. 

The only possible loser is the zig-zag-roofed Lytton Savings Bank –and maybe -- a couple of city councilmembers on the decaying PLUM committee (Gil Cedillo-CD1 and Curren Price-CD9) who are up for re-election in March 2017. They could be ripe for replacement by anti-out-of-control-development voters in the City of LA.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Photo credit: Los Angeles Magazine. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-When it comes to government corruption, extortion and bribery are two sides of the same coin. It is often hard to distinguish between the two. A military contractor may approach a Congressman and offer to get his kid into a prestigious private school and arrange for the tuition to be “handled.” In Los Angeles, for example, it costs between $11,000 and $32,000 a year to send one child to private school. When the person who pays the money initiates the deal, we call it bribery. 

On the other hand, the Congressman may tell the military supplier, “You know that X-71B which you manufacture? My committee doesn’t think that it is essential and we will be holding hearings in a few months to cut it from the appropriations package.” The Congressman’s kid is then admitted, with tuition pre-paid to the RichieLoo School for Privileged Brats, and miraculously, the cutting of X-71B never appears on the Committee’s agenda. We call this extortion or “grow up, this is how things operate.” 

Extortion Comes to Los Angeles 

City government also has oodles of opportunity for extortion, but until recently Los Angeles’ comprehensive Mutual Bribery operation kept the system relatively clear of extortion. It was a beautiful system in its efficiency and the way it allotted “developer corruption” throughout the City. 

Each councilmember could make any deal he wanted with a developer without any regard for the law, guaranteeing unanimous approval of the project. LA City Council’s Mutual Bribery system is so well known now that it is no longer news. 

How Extortion was Held to a Minimum 

What no one had noticed was the degree to which it limited extortion. With a City Council of fifteen, it would be financially ruinous if a developer had to enter into deals with a majority of the city councilmembers. Thus, each developer has only had to deal with the councilmember representing the district in which he wanted to build his project. We will leave aside the fact that this system has resulted in massive over-development that has turned Los Angeles into the least desirable urban area in the nation. 

Why Los Angeles Is Facing Run-Away Extortion 

Recently, the City of Los Angeles has embarked on an era of massive extortion. A number of factors have contributed to this and it will infect LA in the coming years. 

1. As noted above, extortion and bribery are two sides of the same coin. Thus, adding extortion to Los Angeles’ modus operandi is an extension of its general criminal nature. 

2. Part of the Mutual Bribery pact was: “You stay out of my district and I will stay out of your district.” There are many places during the administrative process where other councilmembers could throw up road blocks to a project outside their district, but they refrained from such interference. For example, if a councilmember became angry, he could use his influence to have a home declared historic, which would throw a monkey wrench into a project. When Councilmember Krekorian and Ken Bernstein at the city planning department decided that Marilyn Monroe’s home was not historic, it would be troublesome if another councilmember agitated to have the home declared historic. 

3. The Sea Breeze Project showed that Mayor Garcetti was dealing himself into the Mutual Bribery scam even though he was no longer a member of City Council. Garcetti wanted and got $60,000 so that the Sea Breeze Project could proceed. 

What was worse, councilmembers far outside Council District 15 where the project was located were getting significant pay offs. 

As the LA Times article noted, “In several cases, elected officials received the money as they were poised to make key decisions about the development, known as Sea Breeze.” 

In addition to the $203,500 to then CD 15 Councilmember Janice Hahn and $94,600 to subsequent CD 15 Councilmember Joe Buscaino (you gotta love the flexible morality ex-cops like Dennis Zine and Buscaino,) hundreds of thousands of dollars went to councilmembers far flung from South Bay’s CD 15. 

Councilmember Englander got $65,800 and his district CD 12 is located in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley and newcomer Councilmember Nury Martinez got $7,700. She too represents the Valley. 

Interestingly, Councilmember Huizar who represents DTLA got $30,400. Gee, I wonder why? The LA Times noted, “More than $30,000 went to Councilman Jose Huizar, who heads the powerful council committee that reversed the Planning Commission’s decision and approved Leung’s project.

At least $65,800 went to Councilman Mitch Englander, who sits on that committee with Huizar.” 

Remember, one famous ploy of extortion is a threat which then disappears. The Planning Commission had thrown up a road block to the Sea Breeze Project, but then Huizar’s PLUM Committee removed that road block. I am certain it was all in the interest of justice and the $30,400 had nothing to do with the obstacle’s disappearance. 

4. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Fruin says that city corruptionism is okay. This decision is no surprise as Judge Fruin announced a long time ago that the City is above the law and he would do nothing to interfere with the system of Mutual Bribery. Echoing Woodrow Wilson’s call to make the “world safe for democracy,” on December 13, 2016, Judge Fruin made Los Angeles safe for corruptionism. The unintended consequences are already evident. 

When the courts sanction massive eternal bribery, the courts have to turn a blind eye to extortion. There is no way the court can dissent to the massive extortion which the LA Times laid bare in its October 30, 2016 article without infringing on the City Council’s right to operate on the basis of Mutual Bribery. 

How would the court word its opinion? “It is okay to accept bribes, but it is not acceptable to solicit bribes (extortion).” Of course, developers would point out that extortion is essential. How else will they know whom to bribe and when to bribe them? 

5. Thanks to Judge Fruin all councilmembers may now create obstacles which will be expensive for the developers to overcome As the December 13, 2016 issue of WeHoVille wrote, “In a unanimous decision this morning, the Los Angeles City Council approved designating the 56-year-old Lytton Savings building at 8150 Sunset Blvd. as a historic cultural monument (HCM).  The designation bestows certain protections against demolition on the mid-century modern building, but does not guarantee its survival.”  

OMG – classic extortion! A huge problem, which may be made to disappear. On the other hand, is Councilmember Ryu’s striking back at Garcetti’s interference in his district similar to his interference in CD 15 with the Sea Breeze Project? Councilmember Ryu was elected on his claim that he would listen to his constituents about development. This hideous project is the one massive Hollywood project which falls outside Mayor Garcetti’s CD 13. (We know Garcetti still runs CD 13 and Mitchie is his stooge.) 

We won’t belabor the behind the scenes machinations and pressures on Councilmember Ryu, but the most powerful community group, Fix The City, Inc., has sued over 8160 Sunset. It is clear that Councilmember Ryu’s constituents hated this nightmare, yet he could not stop it. 

So which do we have? Are all the councilmembers dealing themselves into the extortion game at the same time Judge Fruin has given his judicial stamp of approval to corruptionism, or is the City Council retaliating against Garcetti for messing with their rights to be lord and masters of their own council districts? After all, that is the promise holding the Mutual Bribery pact together: “I get to be absolute ruler of my council district.” Maybe it is a little of both. 

Judge Fruin would have been wise to heed Lord Acton who said in 1887, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By placing the City Council above the reach of the law, anything goes. The knowledge that the courts will never interfere with the City Council’s corrupt ways imbues the councilmembers with massive power to do whatever they want – including de-generating into vicious internecine warfare over the billions of dollars to be divvied up under Measures JJJ, HHH and M.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Barbara Boxer was never a particularly effective senator. Just name a signature legislative achievement or a victory for California in her 24 years representing the state.

So her exit was fitting.

She went out protesting the passage of what had been our own bill of water projects. And she went out blasting her own colleague, Dianne Feinstein, for crafting a practical compromise on water that was attached as a rider to that bill.

Feinstein effectively made a deal with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican who is #2 in the House. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an improvement. It states protections for species while allowing for more water deliveries South and more flexibility in managing water, with the goal of capturing water from storms.

Boxer, who was clearly not part of negotiations, opposed the bill and vowed to block it.

“This is a devastating maneuver,” Boxer said, as quoted by the Sacramento Bee. “This last-minute backroom deal is so wrong. It is shocking, and it will have devastating consequences if it makes it into law, which I can tell you I will do everything in my power to make sure that it never, ever makes it into law.”

As it turned out, there wasn’t much in her power. The bill went through and appears likely to be signed by the White House as of this writing. Feinstein patiently explained that “This bill isn’t perfect but I do believe it will help California,” Feinstein said, and noted that it was a better deal that she might have gotten once Trump takes office.

Feinstein took criticism from skeptical editorial pages. But she got the deal done. Boxer made a point, but not much else.

California desperately needs Kamala Harris to be more Feinstein than Boxer.

(Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010).

LESSONS FOR CHARTERS--In 2014, when teachers at Los Angeles’ Jefferson High School opened their own charter school, the Student Empowerment Academy, they hoped to bring the larger world into their classrooms. They wanted to show kids opportunities outside of their neighborhood, where academics often took a back seat to economic survival. Kids would learn science, math and social studies by solving real-world problems in teams, just as they would in the work-force, while teachers would have autonomy and genuine decision-making authority. 

But faculty members soon found themselves facing one real-world problem they hadn’t bargained on -- a tug of war for power with administrators and board members. Conflicts reached a boiling point in 2015, with staff leaving en masse – either fired, pushed out or stressed beyond their limits. 

The school also ran afoul of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which oversees the city’s charter schools, for financial mismanagement and other shortcomings. With enrollment dwindling, Jefferson announced that SEA would have to move to another facility for the 2017-18 academic year. If these obstacles weren’t enough, in its last year the fledgling charter school was led by a former professional football player with no teaching background and little administrative experience, and who, along with the academy’s board of directors, would throw the academy and students under the school bus once the going got tough. 

SEA’s story highlights the precarious nature of small independent charter schools, and brings to light the fact that charter boards of directors are largely independent and don’t always have to account to parents, teachers and communities for decisions that affect students. In the end, the academy’s board of directors concluded that SEA faced problems that were so intractable that the only solution was to shut it down, and last June, two weeks after classes ended for summer break, the directors voted for permanent closure. 

Teachers and parents were left reeling. Parents demanded to know what happened to the public funds that created the school, and where their kids would attend classes the next year. Teachers argued that more could have been done to save the school. 

Jefferson High sits in a South LA neighborhood where corner stores, modest homes and ramshackle apartments huddle cheek by jowl with small factories, all in the shadow of downtown’s skyline. Alumni include diplomat Ralph Bunche, the first African American Nobel laureate, choreographer Alvin Ailey, jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon and singer Etta James. About a decade ago Jefferson became notorious for massive brawls that erupted on campus. Television news reports blamed racial tensions, but more-in-depth accounts noted that nearly 4,000 kids were crammed into a school built for a third that many. 

Six years ago in response, the school created small learning communities to break down the anonymity of the giant high school. One of those initiatives was the New Tech High School for Student Empowerment Academy, a sort of school within a school. When, in 2013, administrators announced staff cuts and larger class sizes, faculty member Linda Rahardjo was one of several teachers who designed the 300-student independent charter version of SEA to carry on the work they had begun. 

Rahardjo told Capital & Main the decision to go charter was an ultimately futile attempt to preserve what the faculty had originally built. The teachers who formed SEA were a closely-knit group who came to school early and stayed late to create a safe place where students could learn to study and think. “Being able to pass their classes became the in-thing,” she noted, adding that the students had begun to put brains above brawn, especially where disputes were involved. “They’d step back [from a fight] and say, ‘That’s not what we do here.’” It was a cultural shift at Jefferson. 

SEA’s troubles began in earnest with a perfect storm of problems that included its coming expulsion from the Jefferson High campus, declining enrollment and financial instability — all of which exacerbated tensions between the academy’s faculty and its board members. Matters weren’t helped by a financial scandal. 

Earlier this year LAUSD demanded an explanation after SEA paid an outside contractor more than $130,000 for services that should have been provided for free by the school district, and for supplies that district staff said would have been much cheaper if purchased from LAUSD. 

For instance, the contractor charged nearly $5,000 for toilet paper that district officials said LAUSD would have sold for less than $1,000. He allegedly inflated shipping and handling fees and billed $2,000 for taking notes at four board meetings. 

One of the SEA board’s most consequential choices, however, was to hire of one of its own to run the school as it was floundering at the end of the 2015 school year. The last principal had been let go amid student walk-outs and teacher dissatisfaction. Had there been other eyes on the process, and greater scrutiny of the next principal’s track record, the new man might not have landed the job. 

Marvin Smith is a former National Football League linebacker who played for the LA Rams in 1983 until, he said, he was sidelined by an injury. He has since resurfaced as an ordained minister, a radio talk-show host and an advocate for low-cholesterol diets.  Smith doesn’t appear to have a teaching or administrative credential. In his resume, he claims a master’s degree in business from Azusa Pacific University; however, a university spokeswoman said Smith enrolled in a program in organizational management and attended classes, but she could find no record of his graduation. 

More notably, Smith is a charter school devotee who said he intends to remain in the field his entire life. But so far, his educational ventures have been short-lived. 

He founded and directed the Doris Topsy-Elvord Academy, a small charter middle school in North Long Beach. But he closed the school three years ago because of some of the same financial and enrollment problems that would plague SEA. 

The SEA board has been remarkably charitable about Smith’s CV. 

“Sometimes you learn more by failing than succeeding,” said SEA board chair Tommy Newman, when asked about the closure of Smith’s Long Beach charter venture. He told Capital & Main that the board stood by the decision to hire Smith. 

Ref Rodriguez, an LAUSD school board member whose district includes Jefferson High School, called Smith a “wonderful person,” while admitting that he lacked understanding of teaching and learning. 

Others have not been so sanguine. 

“Not only did this guy not know instruction but he didn’t know how to manage a school,” Betty Forrester, a United Teachers Los Angeles vice-president told Capital & Main. “Top it off with a lack of transparency, communication and democracy. Those things make people wonder.” 

Smith explained to Capital & Main that he took the SEA post to bring unity and calm to the school, insinuating that, operating behind the scenes, disgruntled teachers had sparked the student protests that led to the ouster of his predecessor. It’s an opinion both Rahardjo and student leader Karen Espinoza reject. 

“The reason I stepped in is, I don’t like kids being manipulated by adults for adult agendas,” Smith said, without identifying those agendas. “We have to push for the kids.” After assuming control of SEA, Smith said he embarked on what he called a “team effort” to overhaul the school. 

On the contrary, Forrester said, Smith did not truly welcome teacher collaboration, which she argued would have given the school a better chance to succeed. 

“People didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “There were no clear answers. It was like, ‘Shut up, go into your classroom and do what we tell you.’” 

While the school struggled during its last months, Smith was already exploring new charter opportunities for himself in Ohio, with an apparent assist from one of SEA’s board members. Bryan Bentrott, a Newport Beach developer, who is a personal friend of Smith’s, wrote him a letter of support for the venture just six months before SEA closed. Bentrott, who also served as a board member for Smith’s failed Long Beach charter school, portrayed Smith as a charter superhero who had saved the academy from closure. 

“Last year Marvin singlehandedly rescued a charter school in Los Angeles,” Bentrott wrote. “Despite tremendous odds, Marvin stepped in and saved a school, which was on the verge of shutting down.”

In reality, SEA was in its death spiral. 

As teachers rallied to solve SEA’s problems, Smith may have already given up, perhaps having gotten wind of the coming closure. The school’s budget documents show that in May, he cashed out his paid time off, collecting over $11,000 a month before the shutdown vote. 

Smith may still be pursuing the chance to open a new charter school in Ohio. He wouldn’t answer questions about it. Such applications are difficult to track because many private and public agencies are authorized to approve charters in Ohio. 

While the teachers’ efforts to help save the academy didn’t bear fruit, José Cole-Gutiérrez, a director at LAUSD’s charter school division, said they weren’t necessarily wrong to try. Unless it had a fatal flaw, such as a serious threat to student safety, he said his office would have considered renewal if SEA showed improvement. 

It also turns out that the school’s financial picture might not have been as bleak as Tommy Newman and his board colleagues painted. A draft audit shows the school ending 2016 $175,000 in the black, although he contends that late legal bills might not have been factored into the bottom line.

Newman, an attorney who currently works as communications and public affairs director for a nonprofit housing developer, also cited an unpaid loan, high personnel costs and legal expenses associated with negotiations for a union contract as reasons the school could not continue. He also said the school faced risk because of the contractor affair, although Cole-Gutiérrez said no specific action on the overpayment is currently contemplated, adding that LAUSD has the authority to ask its inspector general to investigate or refer the matter to the district attorney. 

SEA’s closure meant kids would lose the close teacher-student relationships the school had cultivated, and either have to navigate a large high school or scramble for a spot elsewhere long after enrollment decisions had been made for the next year. 

“To me, the shame is that this was a teacher-led and teacher-initiated school,” said LAUSD board member Ref Rodriguez. “That we were not able to make it work pains me.” 

A couple of months before the closure vote, social studies teacher Kari Mans and art teacher Bill Neal had both joined with co-workers in a last-ditch effort to solve some of the school’s most vital issues, like finding space for the school to operate out of, or recruiting students. In an interview, Neal said he was still hopeful, even though he said his and the other teachers’ efforts had largely been ignored or rebuffed by Smith. 

“We were starting to get this sinking feeling,” he said. “All of this had already been decided. It was like a foreboding. This is going to be bad.” 

“It was heart-breaking,” Newman acknowledged. “It felt like failure. I’d invested a year and a half of my life in it.” 

However, he argued, the school couldn’t survive financially because of low enrollment and lack of funds. He contended that even if SEA made it through another year, the Los Angeles Unified School District would be unlikely to renew its charter because of poor oversight reports. Still, the latest report also highlighted strengths, such as the school’s $250,000 Walton Foundation grant and its substantial implementation of the innovative aspects of its charter. 

Teachers pointed to other assets: Graduation rates were relatively high, and many in the class of 2016 were bound for college. Mans, who had recently joined the faculty, told Capital & Main that the school’s project-based learning approach produced students who could think critically and solve problems. 

For all the dedication he described, Tommy Newman didn’t have to answer to anyone for his vote.

He and his four fellow board members were essentially in charge of a very tiny school district, with final responsibility for everything from finances to personnel to purchasing, albeit with oversight from the LAUSD. 

But unlike the LAUSD’s board members, SEA’s weren’t elected to their posts and when they decided to throw in the towel, they faced no consequences. They were not required to show they’d done everything possible to keep the school open. With the exception of the sole parent representative on the board, they didn’t live in the community and could return to their jobs or businesses after the closure without looking back. 

The LAUSD’s Cole-Gutiérrez said he takes closures seriously, but that a school’s board of directors holds ultimate decision-making power. 

“It’s contemplated in the Charter Schools Act that there is an exchange of autonomy for accountability,” Cole-Gutiérrez said, adding that shuttering schools is sometimes a necessary part of that. 

In addition to Newman and the lone parent, the board included a retired middle school principal, Bentrott and another attorney. The board might have been savvier than some, but Newman said he had no idea of the problems he’d face when he agreed to join. 

That’s not uncommon, said UTLA’s Betty Forrester, who got involved at SEA after teachers voted to join the union. Charter school board members are sometimes recruited simply because they raise their hands to volunteer, or so that a school can meet the basic requirement of having a board in place, she said. And even though they don’t have to answer to voters, their decisions carry huge weight for the children they serve. 

“Students only get one chance to be in ninth grade,” Forrester noted. 

For what it’s worth, parents and teachers could get some answers about the school’s financial viability when the school’s final audit is submitted later this week. 

They will be lucky if they do. The state Department of Education reports that many charters can’t afford to provide a final audit, or simply ignore the requirement after they close. Smith’s former charter, Doris Topsy-Elvord Academy, was one that did not bother submitting a final audit as required by law. 

Additionally, more than 100 shuttered schools have failed to return public funds they’ve been granted; collectively they owe the state upwards of $49 million.  

The question of whether the school itself could have made it, had the board not opted for closure, will likely remain unanswered, because board members have no further obligations to the community the school served. 

What is known, said Forrester, is that the students Marvin Smith vowed to fight for were the losers at the Student Empowerment Academy. 

“There were issues with academics, with supplies, and massive teacher turnover,” she said. “Stability is huge in education. They weren’t able to stabilize the school. They didn’t do right by the students.”

(Robin Urevich is a journalist and radio reporter whose work has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Las Vegas Sun. This piece first appeared in Capital & Main.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Back in October, I wrote my CityWatch column about the presidential election as a referendum on feminism. For the first time in U.S. history, a woman was on the top of the ticket for a major party. Her rival was a man known over the years as much for his pronouncements about the female form during his appearances on Howard Stern as for his experience as a mogul and as a reality TV celebrity on The Apprentice. When a conversation between former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush and Trump went viral mid-election season, we knew the GOP candidate believed his fame entitled him to “grab” and kiss women without their consent. 

The following month, Donald J. Trump had pushed past the magic number of 270 electoral votes to become President-Elect. As results indicated a Trump victory (and the following day as I listened to Hillary Clinton’s concession speech), I reflected on my October column. Did the election results indicate that Americans no longer support feminism? 

As we follow news, whether via the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN or via Twitter, Politico or other online sites, Election 2016 appears to be more complicated, given our intelligence citing Russian hacks and possible interference even at the polls. Regardless of whether or not the absence of interference might have changed the election results, women remain a formidable force. 

Kamala Harris is headed to the Capitol to replace Barbara Boxer and closer to home, Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger will join Sheila Kuehl, Hilda Solis and Mark Ridley-Thomas on the LA County Board of Supervisors. Women will form the majority in the country’s largest local government agency. The 15-member LA City Council, however will only have one woman. 

Next month on January 21, on the day following the Inauguration, tens of thousands will join the Women’s March on Washington with similar events across the U.S., including a Women’s March LA to be held downtown. 

According to the Women’s March on Washington site, the organization and participants “stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country. 

“We support the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities. We call on all defenders of human rights to join us. This march is the first step towards unifying our communities, grounded in new relationships, to create change from the grassroots level up. We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society. We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equity for all.” 

The election has turned out to be a referendum but not in the sense I once suspected. The rallying of women throughout the country, as well as the men who support us, has shown that we remain a powerful force for change. 

For more information or to register: 

Women’s March on Washington  

Women’s March on LA  

Register for Women’s March on Washington – Los Angeles (by 12/24.)

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

@THE GUSS REPORT-There are grudging, trudging phases that politicians go through when dealing with guerilla journalists. Often, they provide a window into which direction the story will lead. 

The first phase is to ignore us. The second is when they realize we are onto a story and we have an outlet and an audience. That’s when they call us their friend or employ the pregnant pause and the faint praise, “I really admire your…..passion.” Third, when we nail a story that is picked up by the mainstream media, and we are credited for breaking the story, they go silent and cold as a nuclear winter. And fourth is the thaw when they realize that people beyond their reach are reaching out to us to share their stories. 

Before we launch into 2017, let’s take a quick look back at the 2016 you and I shared. 

In 2016, I contributed 39 articles to CityWatch, amplified by the occasional invitation to talk on KFI AM 640 where the Sunday Morning News humorously bestowed upon me the title, “Eric Garcetti’s Worst Nightmare.” In developing these stories, there were more than a few humorous encounters like when I prepared to exit an LA City Hall elevator and a certain chief of staff was on the other side of the opening doors; someone’s jaw dropped, and it wasn’t mine. Others included awkward overtures and a hearty, guffawing handshake from an elected official who never previously said as much as “hello” to me. 

In February, my article LA’s Hypocrisy on World Spay Day: ‘Backyard Breeders’ Get a Pass showed how city officials are all talk and no action when it comes to controlling the pet population that results in overcrowded pounds that kill thousands of healthy, happy and adoptable animals. In March, I wrote of billionaire hedge fund guru Bill Ackman costing many of his clients their life savings by investing against (i.e. “shorting”) the stock value of LA’s Herbalife while overdosing on investments in Valeant, a dubious Canadian pharmaceutical firm. Since then, Herbalife kept winning in court and in its stock price while Valeant lost half of its remaining value, reaching an all-time low last week. 

As spring approached, I wrote how Time Warner Cable would have little to offer us after the 2016 season in which iconic Dodgers announcer Vin Scully retired, having deprived subscribers of other services of enjoying his last few seasons. Now rebranded as Spectrum, it is the same tired service, at higher prices and virtually no portability while DirecTV launches its lower priced, bundling-not-necessary and completely portable DirecTV Now service. 

In April, I wrote in (Dis)-honorable Mentions at LA City Council how our lawmakers honored a local school whose alumni included what amounted to a rogue’s gallery of former LA Sheriff Lee Baca, former LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, former LAPD Chief Darryl Gates and former tennis champ Bobby Riggs. Later, in LA City Council Soapbox Evades its Own Sexual Misconduct Failures I told you the story of how city officials talked about helping sexual assault victims while standing alongside, and completely ignoring the costly sexual harassment settlements of, their colleague Councilmembers Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar. 

In May, I showed in ‘No Kill’: LA’s Big Lie how Mayor Eric Garcetti falsely claimed the city’s animal impounds are no longer killing animals because he simply redefined the meaning of death and adoption. A week later, I showed in Duped Councilman Rationalizes Mayor’s Animal Bamboozle how Councilmember Paul Koretz, LA’s biggest phony on humane issues, rationalizes the fraud to please his wife’s employer….Mayor Garcetti.

Also in May, my Ill-Prepared LA Grovels for a Super Bowl it Won’t Get told how the City of LA, which doesn’t have an NFL team or stadium, groveled for a Super Bowl that it would not, and ultimately did not, get.

In June, I wrote Garcetti Reappoints ‘Arrogant’, Delinquent Commissioner to show the mayor’s disconnect in reappointing Roger Wolfson, the “No-Show Commissioner” of LA Animal Services. He, along with fellow panelist Larry Gross, contributed articles to CityWatch this year, but ironically, none of them were about humane issues. And that’s just the way the Mayor wants it -- experts in areas other than the Commissions to which he appoints people. 

When we got to July, I wrote about a Deputy LA City Attorney named Hugo Rossitter who failed to disclose his outside legal businesses, let alone pay business taxes to the cities of LA and Beverly Hills, in LA Prosecutor, Fake Businesses … and, Why It Matters. 

In August, I launched a series of articles with Herb Wesson: King of the Foreclosure Dance on how the Los Angeles City Council president was continuously on the verge of losing his homes due to decades-long foreclosure troubles, while he sold the public on failed affordable housing and homelessness issues. Wesson later misled LA Times’ City Hall reporter David Zahniser on the origins of his problems, and what he was doing about them. (Photo above: Herb Wesson.)

As late summer turned to fall, I tracked down in Sherman Oaks Gives Tourists … and LA’s Curious … the Bird a wayward peacock named Percival, who was as colorful and overt in his Valley activities as Congresswoman-turned-County-Supervisor Janice Hahn’s campaign flunky John Shallman was in his anonymous online pursuits in Exposed: Hahn Operative Trolls CityWatch.

In the September through November corridor, I showed, starting with Garcetti Playing Dirty Pool? how the mayor removed a heroic LAFD whistleblower named John Vidovich from his post just a few months prior to his retirement for exposing fraudulent fire inspectors, and what role the overtime-gobbling firefighters’ union had to do with it. My big “get” of the year was when the LA Weekly and KCBS picked up on the story after I exposed the LA Times’ original story on Vidovich to be bogus and – perhaps – vindictive. 

As Trump v. Clinton came on the horizon, I took one more jab at the Mayor’s phony humane claims with How Eric Garcetti Falsified 8,807 Pet Adoptions and Worse. 

A day before the November 8 presidential election, I cautioned in Wall Street. Wednesday. Watch Out! that the stock market, were Trump to win, would experience dizzying turbulence. When it appeared Trump would in fact win, the Dow Jones pre-market price dropped almost 800 points, but has boomeranged to unprecedented heights ever since. So I was right about the turbulence, but so very wrong about its duration. 

After a foray into the hurt feelings of the election in Obama: ‘Go Out There and Win an Election’ and Vote Recount: The 3rd Stage of Grieving I attempted to bring some reasoning to Thanksgiving with Thanksgiving: Both Sides Now. 

And finally in December, I delved into dangers of tourists pursuing access to our world famous landmark in Runaround Ryu and Hollywood Sign Danger and how Garcetti, City Council, City Attorney Mike Feuer and City Controller Ron Galperin are in denial about much bigger problems that LA faces in 2017 in City Hall’s Latest Delusions on Terror, Fraud, Fire … and Everything Else. 

In 2017, the LA City Hall and LA County Supervisors’ bubbles may finally burst, and the leaders’ spines will be tested. My predictions and previews are coming next week.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640 and Huffington Post. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PERSPECTIVE-I had a firsthand look of the chaos bestowed on the population by the passage of Prop 47. As almost all of you know, the measure raised the threshold of a felony and led to the early release of many career criminals. 

A neighbor’s house was ransacked and robbed last night. The family was on an errand for a period of less than two hours, not a long time by most measures, but far more than enough time for criminals to do their deed. 

I talked with the LAPD officers who were investigating. When I mentioned there has been a steady increase of property crimes in the community since the passage of Prop 47, the officer piped right up, “We are seeing an influx of thieves from other states. They know the odds of going to jail are slim.” 

There have been steady reports posted to Nextdoor about burglaries in Valley Village. As president of the homeowners’ association, I am acutely aware of this growing problem, which effects many communities in Los Angeles. I have lived here since 1986 and have never before seen such a spike in crimes. 

Many of the crimes are brazen – carried out in broad daylight. Thieves have walked all the way up driveways to break into cars, not simply satisfied to target those parked on the street. That takes some cajones -- and desperation -- a combination that is dangerously explosive and could indicate a propensity for violence by the perpetrators. 

It is bad enough that thousands of professional burglars have flooded the streets after early release; we have also become a magnet for out-of-state talent, as the LAPD officer related. 

The people of California voted for Prop 47. It was supported by the top elected officials in the state. It even had the support of New Gingrich! 

It is time for the state’s voters to reverse this truly misguided policy. It will require a new ballot measure, and, in the short run, legislation mitigating the impact of 47. 

It is also time to build new prisons. Instead of selling bonds to construct an extraordinarily expensive high-speed train, let’s invest in state-of-the-art prisons which have the facilities for addressing and correcting the causes of recidivism. There will always be those who do not respond to intervention – they will ultimately require a lifetime of incarceration, so the capacity must be in place to deal with them as well. 

Opponents to this would claim we cannot incarcerate ourselves out of a growing, statewide crime wave. The converse for that argument is more grounded in reality – we cannot reduce crime by rapidly increasing the supply of criminals, as Prop 47 has done.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Graphic: Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LEANING RIGHT--Unlike my counterparts from the Left, I will neither underestimate nor under empathize with those who approach this Christmas and New Year with dread and fear.  There are quite a few reasons to fear a President-Elect Trump, but exploring the source and lessons from where that dread and fear are coming from show promise for our nation...and ourselves:

1) The Russians/Nazis/Racists are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!
Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  A bunch of skinheads and Nazis want to start pushing around Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims, and Jews?  Wow.  Now THAT would lead to a butt-whooping if ever I saw one--with the skinheads and Nazis being on the receiving end of that little smackdown.

Furthermore, if the Breitbart bunch are dominated by racists, then they're some of the silliest racists I've ever heard of, because they're dominated by Jewish editors.  Sheriff Clarke, that bad-ass African-American sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin? Not exactly the kind of person I'd expect to tolerate any racist gibberish or crimes.

And the Russkies? Well, any hacking is a serious issue, but weren't we told for so long that the Clinton server and e-mails were no big deal?  So why is any server/e-mail exposure to foreign hacking...now...a big deal?  And are we being played by the President who once derided Mitt Romney that he was focused on the wrong decade?

No, I think that Ms. Clinton lost the presidential election of 2016 all by herself.

2) The Male Chauvinists are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!
Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  Eliminate the education and buying power of half our nation, would they?

Considering how the new Trump Administration stands to be filled with many women (including some firmly against Trump over the past election cycle), and considering how the new "first lady" (Ivanka, not Melania, Trump) will push for affordable childcare for single mothers, it's not too likely that women will be shoved out of the workforce.

And virtually all abortions will be legal for a long, long, long time, because even if Roe vs. Wade ever were reversed we'd see 50 states with laws allowing legalized abortion through the second trimester within nanoseconds.  Of course, the question of why healthy babies with healthy mothers needed to have a third trimester abortion would finally be answered.

Although it might be nice to allow and demand that boys become good men, and to allow and demand that girls become good women.  And with the understanding that LGBTQ rights should be upheld, it might be nice to dispel the notion that male and female humans are wired the same, or that one gender is "better" than the other.

3) The Polluters are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!
Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  I doubt that this nation is ready to shred its goals for clean water and fresh air, just to make a few greed-bags a few bucks.

Although the debate over what role the U.S. has in Global Warming, er Global Cooling, er, uh, Climate Change would be welcome.  Because while anyone visiting Glacier National Park knows that the glacier for which that park is named has virtually melted away, what we can or should do about it is up for considerable debate.

And as for making a few greed-bags a few bucks?  How about the Green Machine, where a few opportunists have allowed our local and regional utilities to thrash the middle class and their employers with high utility bills and excessive regulations that help a few connected folks get rich while the overall economy is hamstrung?

It's great that Big Oil has to account for its actions.  It's now long overdue for Big Green to do the same.  Perhaps population control and a healthy economy can stimulate environmental reform that REALLY works for EVERYONE.

4) The Christians are coming, and they're out to control and destroy our nation!

Well, well, well...I'd like to see them try.  But which Christians are we talking about?  The ones who accept and support Jews and the nation of Israel more than many American-born Jews do?

Which Christians are we talking about? The ones who enlisted in our nation's armed forces and fought to create and defend democracy and human rights of Muslims and others in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout the entire world?

Which Christians are we talking about? The ones who merely want to be left alone and celebrate their religion in peace, while encouraging the same for others?  The ones who believe in charity and kindness to others?  The ones who share followers of both black and white, both Asian and Arab, and both Catholic and Protestant backgrounds?

Well, I'm one Jew who doesn't tolerate any bigotry, or cruelty, or bullying, from anywhere or anyone...and I'm hardly alone.  I've had Christians pray for my eternal soul, and I'll take any help I can get. 

I'm solidly and blissfully aware of what Christmas means.  Yes, it's the pagan/solstice thing that places December 25th as the birth of Yeshua, also known as Jesus, and also known as the Christ. It's not known whether Jesus was born on December 25th, but that's a moot point--it's THAT Jesus was born that matters.

And THAT there is a God to be worshipped who understands the joys and misery of the human condition, because Christmas celebrates a God who lived and died as a human to show God's never-ending Covenant with Humanity.  No floods or rainbows...just a brief life and a painful, horrible death.

So Merry Christmas, everyone, and Happy Holidays to All.  Fear not for what hasn't come to pass, but be ready and confident if bad things do come to pass.

There's no "don't worry, be happy" to be bandied about, but it shouldn't be forgotten that there's room to accept both our personal and national successes AND failures.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  Life will be filled with joys and battles to be experienced to the enrichment of us all.  And we will say that, yes, we did have the privilege of living in very, very interesting times!

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

-cw

URBAN PERSPECTIVE-On Wednesday, December 21st, the South Los Angeles Homeless TAY and Foster Care Collaborative (Collaborative), along with the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce and other local partners, will honor the lives of homeless youth who have passed away and those experiencing loss during the holiday season with a prayer and candlelight vigil. 

December 21st is considered as one of the longest nights of the year. Likewise, the month of December is one of the most stressful periods for homeless youth suffering trauma due to a lack of stable housing and a strong support system. 

The Collaborative is gathering more than 100 community members to embrace love and compassion for youth experiencing homelessness, heighten awareness about homeless youth, and offer prayers, comfort, and new beginnings. 

To wrap up 2016, the Collaborative will share advances in the Homeless No More Community Plan to End Youth Homelessness and encourage ongoing commitments to end youth homelessness by 2020. 

“We are taking this opportunity to remember the resiliency of youth and our commitment to end youth homelessness in South Los Angeles,” said Rev. Kelvin Sauls, Chair of the South Los Angeles Homeless TAY and Foster Care Collaborative. “We believe our youth need our focused attention and are taking this evening to connect with them by showing that we care and that they matter to us.” 

With the approach of a colder winter in Los Angeles, the Collaborative also encourages people to join in their Covenant of Engagement, a promise to do something to end youth homelessness: 

• Connect with local agencies in the Collaborative who have specific in-kind needs this holiday season 

• View a list of partner organizations and contact them to volunteer or get more information on how youcan get involved. 

• Offer platforms to dialogue about youth experiencing homelessness. 

• Participate in the upcoming January 2017 Homeless Count 

• Contribute financially to partner organizations to increase resources for homeless youth. 

“We are doing something very profound. We are letting our youth know that we are here to be of service and support. This village is committed to helping our youth achieve a better quality of life“, said Armen D. Ross, President of the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce. 

The Collaborative’s Youth Remembrance Ceremony will be held on December 21st, from 6 pm, in Leimert Park and is held in conjunction with National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, an annual event commemorated in more than 150 cities and counties across the United States.

(The South Los Angeles Homeless TAY and Foster Care Collaborative is a coalition of business, government, nonprofits, and residents working to prevent and end homelessness for South Los Angeles’ Transition Age Youth. For more information, visit the organization’s website at www.southlatay.org.) 

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NEW GEOGRAPHY--The oligarchs’ ball at Trump Tower revealed one not-so-well-kept secret about the tech moguls: They are more like the new president than they are like you or me.

In what devolved into something of a love fest, Trump embraced the tech elite for their “incredible innovation” and pledged to help them achieve their goals—one of which, of course, is to become even richer. And for all their proud talk about “disruption,” they also know that they will have to accommodate, to some extent, our newly elected disrupter in chief for at least the next four years.

Few tech executives—Peter Thiel being the main exception—backed Trump’s White House bid. But now many who were adamantly against the real-estate mogul, such as Clinton fundraiser Elon Musk, who has built his company on subsidies from progressive politicians, have joined the president-elect’s Strategic and Policy Forum. Joining Musk will be Uber’s Travis Kalanick, who half-jokingly threatened to “move to China” if Trump was elected.

These are companies, of course, with experience making huge promises, and then changing those promises to match new circumstances. Uber, for instance, touted itself as a better deal than a cab for both riders and drivers before it prepared to tout a better deal for riders by replacing its own soon-to-be obsolete drivers with self-driving cars.

Silicon Valley and its leading mini-me, the Seattle area, did very well under Barack Obama, and expected the good times to continue under Hillary Clinton. Tech leaders were able to emerge as progressive icons even as they built vast fortunes, largely by adopting predictably politically correct issues such as gay rights and climate change, which doubled as a perfect opportunity to cash in on Obama’s renewable-energy subsidies. Increasingly tied to the ephemeral economy of software and media, they felt little impact from policies that might boost energy costs or force long environmental reviews for new projects.

No wonder Silicon Valley gave heavily to Obama and then Clinton. In 2016, Google was the No. 1 private-sector source of donations to Clinton, while Stanford was fifth. Overall the electronics and communications sector gave Democrats more than $100 million in 2016, twice what they offered the GOP. In terms of the presidential race, they handed $23 million to Hillary, compared to barely $1 million to Trump.

Yet, there is one issue on which the Valley has not been “left,” and that is, predictably, wealth. It may have liked Obama’s creased pants and intellectually poised manner, but it did not want to see the Democrats become, God forbid, a real populist party. That is one reason why virtually all the oligarchs favored Clinton over Sanders, who had little use for their precious “gig economy,” the H-1B high-tech indentured-servants program, or their vast and little-taxed wealth.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder with a net worth close to $70 billion, used his outlet, The Washington Post, to help bring down Bernie, before being unable, despite all efforts, to stop Trump. So now Bezos sits by Trump’s side, hoping perhaps that the president-elect’s threats to unleash antitrust actions against Amazon will be conveniently forgotten as an artful “deal” is struck.

For these and other reasons, there’s little doubt that the tech elite would have been better off under Clinton, who likely would have, like Obama, disdained antitrust actions and let them keep hiding untaxed fortunes offshore. Now, they will have to share the head table with the energy executives they’d hoped to replace with their own climate-change-oriented activities.

The tech oligarchs have long had a problem with what many would consider social justice. Although the tech economy itself has expanded in the current period, its overall impact on the economy has been less than stellar. For all of its revolutionary hype, it’s done little to create a wide range of employment gains or boost worker productivity.

To be sure, there have been large surges of employment in the Bay Area, Seattle, and a handful of other places. California alone has more billionaires than any country in the world except China, and nearly half of America’s richest counties.

But for much of the country, notably those areas that embraced Trump, the tech “disruption” has been anything but welcome news. This includes heavily Latino interior sections, home to many of America’s highest employment rates. Overall, the “booming” high-wage California economy celebrated by progressive ideologues like Robert Reich does not extend much beyond the Valley. In most of California, job gains have been concentrated in low-wage professions.

Despite its vast wealth, California has the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate in the country, with a huge percentage of the state’s Latinos and African Americans barely able to make ends meet. California metropolitan areas, including the largest, Los Angeles, account for six of the 15 metro areas with the worst living standards, according to a recent report from demographer Wendell Cox. Meanwhile, the middle and working class, particularly young families, continue to leave, with more people exiting the state for other ones than arriving to it from the, in 22 of the past 25 years.

Even in Silicon Valley itself the boom has done little for working-class people, or for Latinos and African Americans—who continue to be badly underrepresented at the top tech firms as many of those same firms aggressively promote diversity. A study out of the California Budget and Policy Center (PDF) concluded that with housing costs factored in, the poverty rate in Santa Clara County soars to 18 percent, covering nearly one in every five residents, and almost one-and-a half times the national poverty rate. Since 2007, amidst an enormous boon, adjusted incomes for Latinos and African Americans in the area actually dropped (PDF). 

Much of this has to do with change in the Valley’s industrial structure, which has shifted from manufacturing to software and media. The result has been a kind of tech alt-dystopia, with massive levels of homelessness, and housing costs that are prohibitive to all but a small sliver of the local population.

With a president whose base is outside the Bay Area, and dependent on support in areas where jobs are the biggest issue, the tech moguls will need to find ways to fit into the new agenda. The old order of relentless globalization, offshoring, and keeping profits abroad may prove unsustainable under a Trump regime that has promised to reverse these trends. In some senses the Trump constituency is made up of people who are the target of Silicon Valley’s “war on stupid people.” Inside the Valley, such people are seen as an obstacle to progress, who should be shut up with income supports and subsidies.

So can Silicon Valley make peace with Donald Trump, the self-appointed tribune of the “poorly educated”? There are two key areas where there could be a meeting of minds. One is around regulation. One of the great ironies of the tech revolution is that the very places that are home to many techies—notably blue cities such as San Francisco, Austin, and New York—also tend to be the very places most concerned with the economic impacts of the industry.

Opposition to disruptive market makers in the so-called sharing economy like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb is greatest in these dense, heavily Democratic cities. What’s left of the private-sector union movement and much of the progressive intelligentsia is ambivalent if not downright hostile to the “gig” economy. Ultimately, resistance to regulations relating to this tsunami of part-time employment could be something that Trump’s big business advisers might share in common with the techies.

More important will be the issue of jobs. It may not work anymore for firms to lower tech wages by offshoring jobs or importing lots of foreign workers under the H-1B visa program, since Trump has denounced it. IBM’s Ginni Rometty, who had been busily replacing U.S. workers with ones in India, Brazil, and Costa Rica, has now agreed to create 25,000 domestic jobs. Other tech companies—including Apple—have also been making noises shifting employment to the United States from other countries. Trump may well feel what “worked” with Carrier can now be expanded to the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy.

If the tech industry adjusts to the new reality, they may find the Trump regime, however crude, to be more to their liking than they might expect. Companies like Google may never again have the influence they had under Obama, but many techies may be able to adjust. As long as the new president “deals” them in, the techies may be able to stop worrying about Trump and begin to embrace, if not love, him.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. … where this piece was most recently posted. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, will be published in April by Agate. This piece first appeared at The Daily Beast and was published most recently by New Geography.) 

-cw

VOICES--Whenever there is a discussion of overly generous public sector pension plans, the first thing you hear is "yes, but they don't get Social Security.”

They don't get Social Security for a very basic reason: they haven't paid into it. When that statement is made, the tone suggests that the public sector person believes getting Social Security is somehow comparable to, or better than, their public sector pension. It most certainly is not! It is much worse. And just thinking this way demonstrates how ill informed many of these folks are. 

Let's look at what a recipient of Social Security receives: 

First of all, you can't retire and collect any Social Security benefits before the early retirement age of sixty-two.
Then, the maximum amount you can get from Social Security in 2016, if you retire early at 62, is $2,102 a month, or $25,224 a year. If you retired in 2016 at full retirement age of 66, the maximum benefit is $2,639 a month, or $31,668 a year. This is the maximum. No one can make more than this retiring at 62 or 66 years of age. This is what someone who has earned the Social Security maximum pay for their entire career can draw out of it.

Note that the retirement age is older than for public sector workers. Note that the amount anyone can receive is lower than public sector workers earning less for their entire careers receive through their pension.

Here's another very significant difference. A public sector worker who retires at 50 to 60 years old can collect pension benefits from the first employer, and take a new job from another employer without jeopardizing benefits from the first job. Not so with Social Security. If you start collecting Social Security at 62 and take another job, you can only earn $15,720 before your Social Security Benefit is reduced. They reduce it by $1 for every $2 you earn over the $15,720 limit. Once you reach full retirement age of 66 years old you can again work without reducing Social Security benefits.

Public sector Defined Benefit pension plans are clearly better than Social Security -- in retirement age, benefit amount, and program flexibility. Any time you hear "we don't even get Social Security,” take it on. There is not a person alive who wouldn't take a public sector pension in place of Social Security.

(Jef Kurfess is a Cal graduate and lives in Westlake Village.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--It's easy to become despondent about the right wing war against science. It's been exposed in books and in countless blog posts. There is a lot of truth to the existence -- and danger -- of the unrestrained attacks on scientific practice. The world is descending into global warming and its effects are not entirely predictable, yet there are those who continue to deny. In addition, there are those who oppose the proper teaching of modern biology due to its foundational theory of evolution. That's the downside, but as the infamous year 2016 heads to a finish, it's worth considering the bright side of things. Science is continuing, and an enormous amount of progress is being made. 

We might begin the discussion by considering a seminal event, the 1836 creation of a library of medical texts that served the office of the U.S. Army Surgeon General. It grew and was moved around over the next century or so, most notably in 1866, to the same Ford's Theater where Lincoln had been assassinated. People were opposed to the idea of the theater being reopened for plays, so the government took the building and placed its collection of medical books there. The Library, eventually known as the National Library of Medicine (NLM), came to its new location in Bethesda, Maryland in 1962. Incidentally, one of those involved in the creation of the new library was Senator John F. Kennedy, who got to see its opening after he became the president. 

Within a few decades, the growth of computer technology and then the rapid expansion of the internet allowed for an equally rapid expansion of scientific communication. In the 1970s, the Library created Medline, an online search tool that was available to a few medical libraries. In 1986, the Library, demonstrating that it did not lack for a sense of humor, released a computer program called Grateful Med. It allowed anybody with a desktop computer and a dialup modem (remember those?) to go online and search for articles of interest. At the beginning, you had to write to the NLM in Bethesda and ask for the program disks, which came to you by mail (remember mail?). The program worked in the pre-Windows environment, and users had to pay to use the system. By the 1990s, it was possible for anyone, at any place in the world that had a telephone line, to look up the latest findings in most any scientific field. 

By the late 1990s, online searches of the scientific literature were available as a free service. The online system is called Pubmed, and the jargon, "do a Pubmed search" is familiar to pretty much all life science researchers. 

It's hard to explain how great was the effect of Pubmed on the ability to do science in a knowledgeable and intelligent way. The best I can do is to remind people of a certain age what life was like before we had Google searches or what playing music was about prior to iTunes and the smartphone. The before and the after were whole different worlds. 

The expansion and widespread acceptance of the internet as a part of our lives resulted in the migration of scientific journals to the online realm. There are still a lot of journals that put out print editions, but most have some sort of online presence. One result of digital efficiency is that new results go online quickly. The NLM picks up the information on new publications within the week and puts them in its Pubmed database. 

This isn't just theory, but actual result. We had a paper accepted in final form by an international journal on December 9. When we bothered to check it on Pubmed a week later, it was already listed on the search engine. 

Because knowledge is available at the click of a button, it's possible to design experiments more quickly. What used to take two weeks -- trying to look things up in the brick and mortar library -- is now a task that can be accomplished in five minutes on your laptop keyboard. And when you've done the search, you can download abstracts or even print out entire research papers on your desktop printer. 

The result of these informational advances is to make science itself more efficient and more effective. 

The other big change is that automated laboratory systems for sequencing DNA and finding RNA allow for the accumulation of the kind of data that are opening the view into how living systems work, right down at the submicroscopic level. There is enormous complexity in currently available biological data, but it can be dealt with and, to a certain extent understood, even at the level of a laptop computer running Excel. 

So where am I going with this wordy introduction? Let me offer one example from personal experience. We were interested in the effects of a toxic chemical on cellular function. In particular, we wondered if we could see any changes in the expression of any of the genes. (You know, that process where DNA is copied into something called RNA, a mechanism called transcription.) 

In living memory -- at least the memory of some people still living -- this was impossible to do. The tools did not exist. Then it became possible to analyze the effects on a few genes. You had to know which genes you were looking for, and the whole process could take as much as a month, but you could find things out. 

More recently, it became possible to send the RNA collected from cultured cells to a testing lab and within a week or two, receive back an email listing the effects on every single known gene. By doing this, we found that out of the approximately 25,000 genes available to the human cell, there were a few dozen that were particularly affected by this one known chemical. 

We were not alone in doing this kind of research. Other researchers developed methods for rapid DNA sequencing that allowed clinicians to look for mutations particular to a particular condition or disease. To do this kind of work, you need to have samples from lots of people (some having the disease and others without it). Then you get DNA sequence data from all of those people and look for differences that fit one group but not the other. 

Think about what I just said. At one point, some audacious people suggested that we sequence the entire human genome. It was a daunting prospect for those who chose to engage, but through advancing technology, the project was finished within a few years. Now, it is possible to sequence many samples in parallel and compare them against each other. 

This is one of the most promising areas for current research, because it provides the possibility of defining some diseases at the ultimate causative level. There are certain genetic disorders such as sickle cell anemia where the genetic defect has been known for a long time. Other diseases such as cancer can be the result of many genes interacting in a complex way. Over the past 20 years or so, many of the defects and changes that lead to cancer have been discovered. There is still lots of work to be done, because there are complex interactions among these factors, but the understanding of how the disease begins and progresses is building. 

Science is making progress. Let's consider a couple of snapshots in time. Running a Pubmed search on the category cancer yields a few citations from the early 1800s. Apparently the curators have been photographing articles from very old journals and making them available right along with modern studies. One of the earliest is from a journal called Medico-Chirurgical Transactions and is from December 23, 1828. The article has a rather unusual title by modern standards: Two cases of fracture of the thigh-bone taking place without any violence, in which a diseased state of the bones appears to have been the predisposing cause of fracture, and concurring with cancer in the breasts in both patients. 

The author, Thomas Salter, ESQ, F.L.S., explains that each of the two women suffered a spontaneous broken bone, high in the thigh, in the absence of a major violent event. Both are also described as having had breast cancer, although there is no additional detail. We can surmise that in an era without X-ray and where little was actually known about the cause of disease, the spread of cancer to the bone several years after the initial onset was not something that doctors were trained to look for. And if they were to look, there would have been little or nothing they could do about it. 

The other snapshot is today's edition of Pubmed in which the search using the term cancer yielded three and a half million citations. Taking only the most recent citations, we can find an article titled (don't panic when you read this. It's not on the test) Association of single nucleotide polymorphism re6983267 with ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer. Without going into detail, this is a study which locates a single mutation in a single spot in the genome, and shows that the mutation correlates to a certain type of cancer and a certain medical condition. This understanding comes from being able to sequence samples from numerous people quickly and inexpensively. 

This is the beginning of a new era in which researchers will look for specific cures for specific genetic mutations. At the least, the information will guide the development of targeted treatments. 

As I mentioned above, these are two citations out of nearly four million. Most of the citations are from recent decades and taken as a whole, represent huge progress in medical science. Compared to modern knowledge and methods, that surgeon of 1829 might as well have been doing archeology on old bones in terms of developing insight into disease causation. 

So here is the good news: In spite of the anti-science prejudices of some of our politicians led by all too many corporate lobbyists, we are making progress in science. Even if American science is stultified by Republican committee chairmen in congress, the rest of the world will continue. In addition, medical science will probably face less congressional wrath than climate science, so even in America, we will continue. 

By the way, Pubmed searches for heart disease yield more than a million citations, and searches for terms such as arthritis yield their own hundreds of thousands of hits. Mankind is making progress, and luckily it has little to do with the political winds, other than that politicians can provide funding or cut funding. 

Molecular biology, which has come so far, has led to attempts at molecular medicine, and out of molecular medicine has come all those new drugs with names ending in mab. The mab is short for monoclonal antibody, and is this generation's approach to targeting specific molecules on the surfaces of specific cell types. For some things, monoclonal antibodies really work. They didn't even exist when many current scientists were getting started. 

But the current generation of treatments is just the beginning. New research into something called microRNAs (miRs for short) may lead to the next generation's approach to therapy, maybe even paired with carefully chosen stem cells. But that's a subject for another year.

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

-cw