Eight years ago, I voted for Steve Zimmer believing he’d be a breath of fresh air for LA’s school children; boy was I proved wrong. He’s been on the wrong side of so many issues I care deeply about – opposing better accountability for the District’s failing schools, increasing fiscal irresponsibility for unfunded employee and retiree pensions, denying authorization and renewals of qualified charter schools, and increasing funding for a bloated, unresponsive central bureaucracy. I’ll give you just one glaring example: LAUSD has been plagued by very low graduation rates; Zimmer’s solution was to reduce the requirements to graduate in the core subjects from a C to a D. The problem is that high school graduates with a D in the core subjects are not eligible to enroll in California’s UC and Cal State systems. I’m not prepared to give him another 5 and ½ year term. We need new blood and a fresh attitude that puts the kids first on the LA School Board.

The Trump Administration and House Republicans are back for another try at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. The salient new added-on features are state waivers of 1) community rating, and 2) essential health benefits. What does this all mean?

Some of us remember learning and mostly failing at the limbo in our younger and suppler years. President Trump and the Freedom Caucus in the House are engaged in the same dance moves. The consequence is not whether you embarrass yourself and fall on your ass (inevitable at some point), but rather how little coverage you will have left when you get sick (also inevitable at some point with dire financial consequences if you are uninsured or underinsured).

Republicans face a tough choice tomorrow: do they listen to their constituents, to their funders, to their President or to their party leaders? They have created these dilemmas for themselves by eight years of unrelenting antipathy for everything President Obama sought to do, but they are facing really tough political dilemmas nevertheless.

The Trump Administration’s new budget provides a 10% increase ($54 billion) in military spending. What are the context and the rationales?

The Republican House proposal would do the following:

1.     Eliminate the penalties on individuals and employers requiring the purchase, offer and acceptance of health coverage beginning in 2017.

2.     Reduce the federal Medicaid matching rate for the new eligibles to the state’s traditional match beginning in 2020; in California this would reduce the match from 90/10 to 50/50 for new medically indigent adult eligibles from that point forward.

3.     Cap the growth in federal Medicaid matching payments to the growth in the medical CPI beginning in 2020

4.     Repeal the income and cost adjusted refundable tax credits for individual coverage and replace them with flat, age adjusted refundable tax credits beginning in 2020. Extend them to out of market plans.  

5.     Appropriate $80 billion for state grants to stabilize the individual market beginning in 2018

6.     Replace the 3/1 age rate band with a 5/1 age rate band in 2018

7.     Eliminate the 60% actuarial value floor for coverage sold in the individual and small employer markets beginning in 2020

8.     Require a 30% premium surcharge on individual coverage if an individual is uninsured for more than 63 days a year

9.     Repeal the surcharges on the Medicare payroll tax for high income individuals in 2018 – savings of $275 billion

10.  Repeal the annual tax on health insurers in 2018 – savings of $145 billion

11.   Delay the Cadillac benefits excise tax until 2026 – savings of $48 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office made several key findings in their analysis of the Republican “repeal and replace” of the Affordable Care Act legislation today: 1) the numbers of uninsured Americans will increase by 24 million by 2026-- i.e. that many people will lose coverage due to the House Republican plan, 2) the deficit will be reduced by $337 billion by 2026, 3) private individual insurance premiums would rise by 15-20% over the next two years then fall by 10% by 2026.

The House Republican's Repeal and Replace Proposal has six key elements.

As Republicans in the House begin to develop their legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, independent analysts are beginning to assess the impacts on states and individuals.

I hope you will consider voting for Proposition H. It would authorize a ¼ cent sales tax in Los Angeles to pay for services to reduce homelessness for the next 10 years.

I have two grandchildren in public schools and three more on the way to public schools so the performance of these schools is highly personal for me. Furthermore the performance of the public education system for all our children is the key to a fast growing economy and an educated citizenry making good choices for our nation’s future. That’s why I’m supporting Nick Melvoin and Allison Holdorff Polhill for LAUSD District 4. 

The Trump Administration is off to a rocky start in part due to difficulties with fictional facts. While that did not appear to matter too much on the campaign trail rallies and speeches; it starts to matter a lot when you are truly governing a large nation.

Donald Trump won the Presidency despite alienating and offending large sections of the US population and having the largest negatives of any person elected to the Presidency. His actions since becoming President have continued this pattern, but it has now expanded to almost every other nation of the globe, including the United Nations itself.

To quote Lin Manuel in Hamilton, “immigrants, we get the job done.”

The Voyage of the Damned recounts the Jewish refugees on the ship Saint Louis turned away from Cuba, the United States and Canada just before the Second World War. An anti-Semitic group of State Department officials, led by Breckenridge Long, did everything possible to obstruct Jewish immigration to the US in advance of the Holocaust at a time when anti-Semitism pervaded parts of the United States and its government.

n California, we are more threatened than most states by TrumpCare. At the best, President will follow through on his promises and all Californians, (indeed all Americans but the undocumented) will have excellent coverage and lower out of pocket payments for their health care. At the worst, he will follow through on his promises and close to 16 million Californians will lose their coverage. The state of California will lose at least $20 billion annually in federal assistance for its health care programs to low, moderate and middle income Californians if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.

We urge you to build upon rather than repeal the Affordable Care Act. It is the most important advance in health coverage since Medicare and Medicaid were adopted in the mid 60’s. We agree with you on the need to cover every American, the need to reduce escalating prescription drug prices and to further reduce deductibles.

The Congressional Budget Office today released its analysis of the selective repeal of the Affordable Care Act as recently approved by Republicans in the House and Senate. Premiums in the individual market would initially spike by 20-25% and eventually would double due to repeal. The numbers of the uninsured would grow by 18 million in year 1, then increasing to 27 million and eventually grow to 32 million.