That would be good news for California.

An article in the LA Times reported some encouraging developments; sort of.

Transportation agencies in both ends of the state are finally facing up to reality:  a bullet train project in the Central Valley will not provide the impetus the system needs to win the public’s acceptance. They now appear to realize that a major makeover is required for commuter rail in the San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles metro areas.

That’s half a loaf for me.

I’ve always been a proponent for fast and reliable regional rail serving major population centers, such as the Southern California market.  At least the so-called experts recognize the importance of that much, but they are still clinging to a multi-billion dollar train wreck of a plan connecting north and south.

I will lean towards optimism and assume they just might realize the light at the end of the high-speed tunnel is an oncoming train, then convince the federal and state governments to redirect the funding to improving commuter rail.

We won’t need $100 billion to achieve major improvements.  Dedicated track for passenger service, elimination of at-grade crossings and anti-collision technology will allow current diesel locomotives to fly along at over 100 miles per hour.  According to the article, officials realize that high-speed trains would not be able to travel  much faster than that in urban areas.

Nevertheless, there is a major flaw with their vision for regional improvements – sharing track with freight.

No way; never; forget about it.

I invite the officials to try riding Amtrak or Metrolink , as I did, between Union Station and Irvine for over a year.  The segment between LA and Fullerton is shared to a large extent by commuter and freight trains.  If you want a bumpy ride subject to delays, that is what you will get if you combine the two. Passenger trains will not attract the patronage they need to recover operating costs under those conditions.

Freight traffic will only increase as the economy grows – even at a modest pace.  That will translate to slower speeds and outright delays for commuter trains sharing the same tracks.

Will Governor Brown come to his senses and convince the federal government to drop its support for high-speed rail and allow bonds to be used for regional improvements?

Fast and reliable regional service will do far more to eliminate cars from the 405, 10, 14 and 101 then a 400 mile route through the vast agricultural interior would to get cars off the 5.

It wasn’t until I got within the broadcast range of Los Angeles while driving south on lonely 395 last night that I heard the news.  I quickly switched to 640 on the AM band and caught the last thirty minutes of Bill Mandel, who was subbing for the suspended jocks.

There was no mention of the incident by Mandel or the host in the next time slot, Tim Conway, Jr. Perhaps Mandel talked about it earlier, or Conway mentioned it later in his program, but I thought it was particularly strange that neither one mentioned it in their conversation during the transition between the shows before 7 PM. Neither host is bashful when it comes to discussing controversy. I can only assume KFI management muzzled them. If so, that’s a disservice to the listeners.

John and Ken have earned their reputation for irreverence. They go beyond politically incorrect many times.

That’s too bad because it takes away from their message about corruption and incompetence in state and local government. 

In all fairness, some of their rants are no more provocative than Bill Maher’s, a classic example being the HBO host’s vulgar remarks concerning Tim Tebow’s public expression of his faith (by contrast, SNL’s Tebow skit was clever and did not cross the line).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking hard shots at officials, celebrities or other newsmakers.  Their actions or words invite just that kind of passion.  Wit, sarcasm and displays of outrage are powerful tools against those who feed off the public or allow their egos to get the better of them. 

Making bombastic statements concerning personal tragedies are another matter.  Houston, along with Michael Jackson, were primarily responsible for their own deaths even though either or both of them had enablers. 

John and Ken would have been fine had they discussed the role drugs may have played in Houston’s death. Referring to her as a “crack ho” was despicable.

So what effect will all of this have on the duo’s future broadcasts?

At least one colleague of John and Ken does not accept their apology. It will be interesting to see if KTLA continues with its short simulcast with their show.

No doubt, it will create an uncomfortable atmosphere as they attempt to collect their thoughts before opening their mouths. Their credibility will suffer as the targets of the show’s criticism will point to the unconscionable remarks about Houston as an example of  the pair’s character.

I will listen in on Monday to learn how or if they adapt, although a transition to a kinder and gentler style of political incorrectness will not occur overnight.

He could be a late pick.  God knows the Redskins could use him.

http://usc.ocregister.com/2012/02/06/nfl-draft-could-aaron-corp-be-drafted/104479/

Instead of recognizing natural boundaries and common community interests in redrawing council district borders, the members seem intent on creating a modern-day version of Yugoslavia.

I attended the latest round of redistricting hearings last night at Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City. Around 300 people turned out, some carrying signs or wearing t-shirts bearing messages suggesting support of community solidarity.

The hearing was delayed due to the late arrival of a few commission members. 160 speaker cards were submitted; I stayed through over half of the comments.  By the time I left, only five speakers had commented in favor of the draft plan.

My primary concern was the division of my neighborhood of Valley Village between CD2 and CD4.  A small slice of its western edge was arbitrarily and inexplicably thrown into the sprawling mass of CD4.  Our board members and stakeholders emphasized the need to keep our compact community together, especially when the boundaries include well-defined physical barriers such as the 170 and 101 freeways and the Tujunga Wash.  The whole of Valley Village is also covered under its own specific plan.

My own remarks took the issue further.  I expressed a preference that the whole of Valley Village remain in CD2 and not be assigned to CD4 in the final map.

One might wonder why that should make a difference, assuming we were undivided.

The proposed footprint of CD4 is an ugly rash across what is as close to being the geographic center of the city as any district.  As I told the commissioners, the boundaries make as much sense as the ones that created Yugoslavia after World War 1. The European powers somehow thought you could unite long-time cultural rivals into a cohesive nation-state that spanned the region from the Austrian border almost to Turkey.  It took a dictator to hold the country together after the Second World War. 

Proposed CD4 district slashes across the city's landscape

Contrived borders doomed Yugoslavia

CD4 as defined by the Commission is not the Balkans, but the demographics and interests are as varied as you will find anywhere in the city. The district has a leg that extends well into the northwest Valley and the overall boundaries stretch through the Cahuenga Pass all the way to Silver Lake. It also has a gerrymandered ”appendage” (as one person euphemistically described it last night) that dangles into Hollywood, an obvious accommodation to one or two city council members.

Although we are all Angelenos, residents of the city have always closely associated themselves with their local or regional  communities of interests.  That’s not going to change, and that’s a good thing.  Local pride is healthy and adds benign quirkiness to the social strata in our sprawling metro area.

Diluted communities deliver muted messages to City Hall.  Public safety and environmental concerns in particular vary widely from one part of the city to another.  It is important that our elected officials receive clear, unified advice from the residents and focus on those concerns. It’s tough enough for city council members to devote time to broad issues such as the budget.  Trying to balance too many competing and unique needs within their own districts will only mean less quality time to address grassroots issues.

So now the Commission has to amend the maps.

Unfortunately, the current draft has a poison pill - CD4.

The district’s  massive landscape is adjacent to eight others.  Any change to CD4 will impact almost all of the eight, creating a ripple effect throughout the city.  The redistricting process may have to go back to square one.

This whole controversy could have been avoided if the elected officials had put aside selfish interests in selecting commission members, or had emphasized to them the importance of respecting neighborhood council boundaries.

It was another example of City Hall failing to accept neighborhood councils as integral components in the life of Los Angeles.

I had the opportunity to watch him play in three games.  Without a running game to support him, he usually faced defenses that focused on shutting down the passing game.  His ability to work around the added pressure was exemplary.

Former USC quarterback Aaron Corp had a stellar season for the Richmond Spiders

According to CBS2, the mayor said, “It’s not a yacht. It’s a boat.”

That’s like saying it’s not a tax, but a fee.

It was reported that thousands of people have been on board just in the last two years with as many as 48 at one time. The mayor claims the boat allows potential port users to tour the facilities. That explains why groups ranging in diversity from the Morongo Indian Tribe to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council have been treated to cruises.

Maybe the Morongo Indians plan to construct a casino cruise boat.  Perhaps Silver Lake Neighborhood Council was anticipating being reassigned to a council district in the harbor area.

It is difficult to imagine that many of the 4,000 who cruised on the Angelena last year were possible port clients.

Given annual operating costs of at least $300,000 per year, not to mention occasional overhauls such as the $689,000 for an engine replacement, would it make more sense to charter a sightseeing boat out of Ports O Call village? It could even be a dinner or luncheon cruise.

One immediate savings the city can realize is to let go of the two captains who draw $147,000 in pay and have Lt. Eric Garcetti, USNR, serve as the skipper.

Of course, if Mr. Garcetti’s ship handling skills are comparable to his performance as City Council President, Los Angeles will have its version of Captain Francesco Schettino in no time.

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  Let’s commemorate it by selling the Angelena, preferably with the mayor thrown in. 

Even sinking it might be more cost-effective.

I watched Goodfellas for the umpteenth time the other night.  CACA worked well for the wise guys; maybe for the wise guys who run our city, too.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Coliseum officials paid cash to a representative for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union, usually in straps of $100 notes stuffed in suitcases.  Give the officials credit – at least the cash was not tucked into their waist bands. 

These payments, totalling at least $1 million over several years, were to cover wages and benefits for services performed by union members for rave and other events.

Whether the cash was used for the intended purposes may never be known, even with an audit.

The LA Weekly reported some extra details the Times either missed or failed to disclose:  City Controller Wendy Greuel told the Weekly before the facts surfaced that “IATSE clearly followed the rules on so many levels.”

I guess large cash payments must be part of the rules.

I am not suggesting Greuel would condone such a practice. However, by openly stating her trust in an organization that could play a major role in her mayoral campaign without really knowing how it conducts business, she displayed her  lack of judgment and blatant disregard for the public good.

It is fair for us to ask just who Greuel represents.

An article in an IATSE publication quoted an official as saying. “The locals here have worked side-by-side to help elect pro-labor candidates like Mayor Antonio Villaragosa and Wendy Greuel [L.A. City Controller-elect and President Pro Tempore of the L.A. City Council, who has been a strong advocate for the entertainment industry in Los Angeles].”

Knowing the scandal-plagued history of the Coliseum, she should have been auditing payments to the organization and reconciling them back to bank records.  Such an audit would also have involved requesting independent confirmations from the union verifying the receipt and application of all payments.  If the union had failed to provide confirmations, it would have raised a red flag much earlier.

Instead, Greuel has wasted too much of her staff’s time on performance audits, the benefits of which have not been substantiated. 

It is apparent that the city condones a culture of corruption.  That alone should dictate an audit strategy that focuses on operations at risk for significant fraud. 

But Greuel is a friend of the city’s establishment, so her avoidance of a full-scale attack on fraud should not come as a surprise.

Other elected officials may have to come clean as well.

The Times reported there were no reports of the payment activity provided to the Coliseum’s nine-member board. including County Supervisors Yaroslavsky (a possible candidate for mayor), Ridley-Thomas and Knabe. City Councilman Bernard Parks also sits on the board.

Commission members have the same responsibility as CEOs and boards of directors.  They must insure that there are adequate internal controls in place to identify suspicious activities.  Certainly, a system that permits large cash payments in this day and age would fit the tag of suspicious.

It is time we question the capabilities of officials appointed to commissions.  Experience from serving as an elected official or mayoral appointee does not necessarily constitute the right skill set for managing an operating entity.

Didn’t we learn that lesson from our experience with the DWP?

How do you know when a politician is lying?

His or her lips are moving.

That’s not quite true. 

It’s a lie when the politician’s lips are moving and forming the words tax reform or tax relief.

Legislators or candidates who promise either are pandering for votes. 

The Internal Revenue Code is beyond reform; it is foolish to make an attempt given the barriers created by the sheer complexity of the code and the influence of interest groups from almost every sector of society and industry.

It is easy to promise fairness and relief through reform when relatively few are familiar with the content of the Code.  

To paraphrase a few lines from one of  Les Miserable’s most popular scenes:

Rules beyond compare,

rules beyond belief!

Put them altogether

and call it tax relief!

We are as bamboozled as Thenardier’s guests when it comes to taxes.

It was pure chutzpah that the Congressional action which created the current version of the Internal Revenue Code was named the Tax Reform Act of 1986.  Maybe it was reform in the Bizarro world.

In my view, about the only good that came out of it was the consolidation of tax brackets from fifteen to five.  That much made it a little easier for the average person to plan what they might owe to the federal government, but many people still couldn’t tell if they were measurably better off or worse than in prior years. Comparing your taxes from one year to next is an apples to oranges affair under stable conditions; attempting it when the rules have been overhauled is more like water to dirt, unless you want to pay a professional to figure it out.

Taxpayers were still left with a Byzantine system after 1986 and unsure if the changes offered any relief….and there was certainly no relief when it came to preparing returns. 

Changes have been made since 1986, some of them substantial (such as the Bush tax cuts) but the structure has been virtually untouched….and that feeds the rage people have expressed over the fairness of the system.

Arguments over who is or is not shouldering a fair share are based more on emotion than facts. It is not anywhere near as simple as the 99% versus 1% as the Occupy Everything movement insists .

It’s not that there isn’t unfairness - indeed there is – but unfairness transcends most income levels.  Two households with the same income can have tax liabilities that are as different as night and day within any bracket.

The alternative minimum tax (AMT) is one of the best examples of the Code’s obfuscation. Originally designed to reel in 155 wealthy Americans who did not pay a dime of tax, it has now grown to where 27% of households earning under $200,000 paid it. The AMT is a parallel tax system that most taxpayers must calculate, even those with average incomes, to assure they are in compliance with the law.

Fortunately, readily available tax software does the calculation for you, but it does not prevent a nasty surprise when you learn you owe more than anticipated.  A taxpayer may have made all the right decisions throughout the year to minimize taxes only to discover that many deductions they were counting on are wiped out in the other universe of the AMT. 

Yet, we put up with this chicanery. People just roll over and allow their federal legislators to perpetuate it, allowing themselves to be strung along with false promises of tax reform.

Do you know what kind of “tax reform” is on the table?

The elimination of the mortgage interest deduction, for one thing! 

Now, I could support that if it were part of a wholesale conversion to a flat tax system along the lines of what Steve Forbes suggested years ago.

Unfortunately, Forbes also got excited over Texas Governor Rick Perry’s flat tax plan. If something like it were implemented, it would mean suffering through three methods of tax calculations: regular, AMT and a flat tax. I would hardly call that tax reform.

Herman Cain made some noise with his 999 concept, but one component – a 9% national sales tax - would have been grossly regressive. If you turn 999 upside down, you get 666. If you ever watched The Omen, you know what that means.

Fortunately, both Cain and Perry are out of the picture as far as the Presidency is concerned.

But they succeeded in giving the concept of a flat tax a black eye.  Many people are not going to think beyond the flawed ideas they proposed.

Let’s clarify one thing before going further – all flat tax proposals, including Forbes’, is at least moderately progressive. What makes it so is setting an income level below which nothing is taxed - a zero tax bracket.

Say every penny of income up through $35,000 were not taxed; everything above it taxed at 15%. A filer earning 35,000 would owe nothing; an income of $50,000 would pay an effective rate of 4.5%; $500,000 would bear a 13.95% effective rate. 

There would also be no deductions, credits, personal exemptions nor preferences in the purest flat tax plan – and no AMT.

Notice I said “in the purest flat tax plan.”

We are not going to see that until pigs fly, the cows come home and hell freezes over.  There are compromises that will have to be made , but we could still have a Code that would take less space than a chapter in a Dan Brown novel….and a tax return on a 5×7 postcard for almost everyone.

Only individuals who never made it past third grade math would require preparation assistance.  Even those people would be able to avail themselves of free help from the IRS.

The simplicity would offer a number of benefits: almost no preparation time; no anxiety; no preparation fees; easy tax planning.

The government would benefit as well: more reliable revenue projections; less costly administration; more time for Congress to address meaningful issues.

Potentially, a flat tax could translate to more revenue for the government.  IRS agents would be far more productive chasing down the individuals responsible for the annual tax gap instead of enforcing arcane rules that they themselves may not understand (the confusion over whether airline miles are taxable is a recent example of the limbo facing many citizens).

The latest estimate for the tax gap - the difference between the aggregate tax liability and the actual revenue collected – grew to $385 billion in 2006, up from $290 billion in 2001 (the data used for these estimates lag, which is why 2006 is the latest year evaluated). By the way, those amounts are per year.  Just do the math to estimate the cumulative impact, if you dare, and imagine what it means to the federal deficit.

Instead, IRS agents are spending too much time determining if a taxpayer was using the right depreciation method or was eligible for the earned income tax credit, or enforcing other useless rules with questionable economic value.

It won’t be an easy task to close the tax gap in any event, but the odds would be much better if the IRS could focus on the population segments with the greatest risk of non compliance. There are data riches to be mined that would give clues to whether some people were playing  fast and loose with revenue reporting, but the resources needed to do perform the analysis are inadequate and preoccupied with enforcing the current Code.

Congress would have to change its mindset on the objectives of a tax system before we could move forward with a flat tax system. 

Rather than using the code as a means of social engineering, economic stimulation and revenue generation, drop the first two (they have failed us) and focus on a system that raises adequate revenue in a fair and understandable manner.

The subject was how last year’s robust pension earnings for civilian and sworn employee pension funds will lower the projected deficit for the fiscal year 2013 budget by $100 million.  A nice improvement, but it still leaves the city short by almost $150 million, not counting the projected deficit for the current year of $70 million. It is interesting that the good results have been known for months, yet they were not factored into the original $250 million deficit projection.  Too bad Zahniser did not question CAO Miguel Santana about that.

Zahniser also points out the bad news – fund earnings have been flat since the end of the last fiscal year.  Please note that Calpers’ return rate since June has been an anemic 1.1%, so the drop in earnings at the city is not an anomaly.

It is likely that 2013′s pension contribution will exceed $1 billion. That’s over 20% of the general fund – let’s not even think about the cost of healthcare – and it will continue to absorb a growing piece of the budget pie as the years progress, which means less money available for services.

In what has to be the understatement of the year, the article quoted Santana as saying, “If we ever want to get out of crisis mode, we have to address our ongoing deficit – the gap between revenue and expenditures.”

You don’t have to be a Harvard MBA to figure that out. Homer Simpson could have surmised that much.

The city’s structural deficit problem is nothing new.  Santana’s advice is more than a day late and a dollar short.  The Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates have been harping about this for years – and they are not compensated as the CAO is. Perhaps the mayor should cut Santana’s salary in this next round of budgets before slicing the neighborhood councils’ funding again.

The bottom line is that city officials remain fixated on one year at a time, especially when it comes to pension costs.  There is no plan to address the long-term cost impact of retirement benefits and healthcare, only talk and wishful thinking.

You cannot depend on consistently strong investment earnings to cover future core services, but the mayor and his allies think they can.

That’s a good question and there are no answers from Governor Brown – the cat must have his tongue.

We should think twice before allowing the state to put its paws on our money for this political catnip.

This exclusive video shows a scale model of the planned first leg of the bullet train through the San Joaquin Valley.

As far as I can tell, no cats were harmed in the filming of this video.

An alternate route might also face problems.