Rain storms hit SoCal, moving beyond the Women's March, economics and the Trump presidency

"Right now I'm at El Dorado Park in which large areas have been flooded and sitting in front of a duck pond or what is usually a duck pond that has now kind of turned into a duck sea has overtaken large parts of the road. It's tough to tell how deep it is. I just saw a truck drive through it and the water was up well above the wheel well. But it's definitely deep enough that there are ducks swimming in what on a normal day is the parking lot."

"We had very heavy rain starting Saturday night into last night. But we have been okay We fared pretty well. We had continual small problems, but no major damage in the city.

"We've been through this an awful lot of times, but you can learn something all the time. Basically one of the most important things you can do is be prepared for this and make sure we have enough staff around to take care of this issue. We had staff at city hall throughout the entire weekend, both Saturday and Sunday just to be able to aid residents who had questions. Because one of the most difficult things is communication in these kinds of situations. You see roads closing, you don't know exactly what's happening. We've done our very best to use social media, telephone, internet everything to get the information out to our residents so they know what's happening."

Thornberg: They think one of his top priorities is going to be tax cuts, particularly corporate tax cuts. And we have to remember that Wall Street is not thinking, "Gee, there's going to be a huge surge in growth."



What they're simply saying is, "Guess what? I get to take home more of what my company is earning."



That's why the market is popping, so it's a little different. Everyone keeps on interpreting it as, "Oh, Trump's going to be great for growth." No, Trump's going to be great for corporate profits.  

Fernandez: We are going to see a change the tax system. I don't know what it's going to look like. They're going to try to simplify it, but it definitely could cut some of our deductions.



I want to put people on alert, particularly in California, that there's a lot of talk about wiping out the deduction for California income tax. We're a high tax state like New York and others, and that could have an impact on our taxes.

Fernandez: Looks like there's going to be a net tax decrease for high-income people, especially the 1 percent, making over $400,000. For 80 percent of the people, the Trump plan does not lower any of their taxes.

Thornberg: Dodd-Frank, [the federal law that regulated mortgage lenders after the 2008 housing crisis], was vastly over-reaching, and the net result of which had lenders stop lending to higher-risk households. 



There's room for the sub-prime market and that has been absolutely been wiped out by Dodd-Frank. That's one of the reasons the housing market recovery in the United States and home ownership in the United States has recovered so slowly.



Getting in there, busting up Dodd-Frank, getting the mortgage market working properly again – that could have a positive influence on our economy over the next few years. 

Bostic: The federal government subsides a lot of housing.



If those go away, it makes it much more difficult for two reasons. One, we don't have as much money to build. And if we don't have voucher money for people who are lower-income, we're going to see more and more families spending more and more of their income on housing, which will put stress on a whole host of other places. 

Fernandez: Obama wanted to reduce the burden on individuals about to buy a house by lowering that 1.75 percent mortgage insurance cost to 1.25, so he was going to lower it by half-a-percent.



He wrote that decision, and then Trump overturned it. It would have meant saving about $42/month for $100,000 that you borrowed.



But my understanding is that it never really got implemented by Obama, and Trump made sure it was never implemented.



Bostic: When [Obama's Housing Secretary Julian Castro] announced it, he made sure it wasn't effective until after President Trump was in office.



It was purposefully done to force a decision, and the decision was going to be one that was going to work for the Obama community either way. One is on the political side if it's reversed, and the other is on the constituent side because the payments going down.

Thornberg: He might come in and shame them, but something to keep in mind here is the number of jobs we're talking about is really almost insignificantly tiny.



We're talking about 1,000 jobs when, on a monthly basis, this nation adds any where from 150,000 to 200,000 jobs on average. It's absolutely pointless except for making a headline. 

Fernandez: People with $200,000 - $250,000 of taxable income are impacted by an additional 3.8 percent surtax for any kind of unearned income, so if you get rental income or dividends in interest, if you sell stocks, there's an additional tax related to medical insurance.



That could go down if they decide to change the Affordable Care Act.



Thornberg: Republicans are going to look at this and realize if they truly do what they're claiming to do, which is repeal it out of hand, you're not only going to have a social disaster, you're going to have an economic disaster.



For all the worries about manufacturing jobs, over the last 15 years we've added 1.5 health care jobs for every manufacturing job lost. And those are better jobs. 

First of all, the term "sacred resistance" recognizes that across faiths, we have a common sacred call to resist evil. So what is evil? We're really clear that evil isn't necessarily about people being evil, but it is what Dr. King called the 'evil that infects the human heart.' It is about resisting systems that oppress, resisting systems that deny the dignity of every human being, resisting systems that do violence to images of God in every form. 



This has always been a call for people of faith, it's a call for me as a Christian, in that way, there's nothing new going on here. What we see in this administration — in a unique way in my lifetime — is specific threats to images of God, particularly those who are some of our most marginalized, targeted and oppressed. We feel that we really need to mobilize for their protection. 

So the focus was clearly on teaching the word but in comments, trying to convey that we certainly recognize that there's been a rather significant change. It's been a rather difficult election series, and we certainly want to come to a point where we pray for our nation, we pray for our leaders, we pray for one another, irrespective of the political differences that may divide us. 



We want to begin with the assumption that we are committed to each other relationally, as Mike said, committed to the dignity of every human being so in the world we create, there are no handicaps for everyone, irrespective of ethnicity, race, gender, religion. We call people to that kind of unity in peace, starting with a committment to relationship.



Certainly, there is a time and a place for civil disobedience, we see that in history and the church has always been engaged in that when necessary, but my hope is that we will begin with a call to graceful engagement before we take a step toward divisive argumentative kind of polemics.