Shine a light on backroom Arizona union employee deals
Remember that most city employees are cops and they are usually union members who's salaries are set with these secret backroom deals. In most city governments the police department is the most expensive item on the budget.I think firemen are the same way. And again in most city governments most of the employees are cops followed by firemen. And again most city budgets the police department is the most expensive item on the budget followed by the fire department budget.
Shine a light on backroom union deals
Posted on December 19, 2012 | Author: Nick Dranias
Secret government union collective bargaining is the law in eleven states, including Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. By statute, these states expressly require secrecy in collective bargaining.
Similarly, in Arizona, at least eight major cities keep collective bargaining with government unions in the dark. The secrecy imposed by towns like Avondale, Chandler and Maricopa even expressly prohibit anyone from sharing records of negotiations with elected officials and the news media. Elected officials and the public simply cannot meaningfully check and balance collective bargaining negotiations when they do not oversee them and the law keeps them and the news media blind, deaf and dumb during the process. When total secrecy in negotiations is combined with laws forcing Arizona cities to engage in collective bargaining—euphemistically called “meet and confer” ordinances—government unions are free to deploy maximum leverage in negotiations while hiding from any meaningful oversight.
That leverage has a price. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that state and local government employees make nearly 43 percent more per hour on average in total compensation than private sector workers. Even when controlling for similar occupations and skills, a study commissioned by Citizens Against Government Waste found state employees in Arizona make nearly 20 percent more per hour on average than their private sector counterparts.
The presence of government unions and the strength of collective bargaining laws explain a large portion of the pay gap between government employees and private sector employees. Arizona could save $550 million every year in excessive pay to public employees simply by banning government union collective bargaining. But the next best reform involves shining a light on the backroom deal making.
It’s time for public labor unions to conduct their negotiations in the light of day.
LA County County Assessor receives his $197,000 salary despite being in jail
Our government rulers work for you! Honest, they are public servants!Of course when you read articles like this, you realized that my previous statement is 100 percent BS.
Our government rulers are our royal masters who consider us serfs that are supposed to support them like royalty. They don't work for US, they work for themselves.
And as this article shows they steal every cent they can from US and give it to THEMSELVES.
Noguez will keep salary — with raise — despite being in jail
By Jack Dolan and Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times
December 19, 2012
Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez will keep receiving his $197,000 salary in jail. The Board of Supervisors discussed his fate behind closed doors Tuesday and did not remove him from office.
Noguez has been in jail since mid-October. He is charged with taking $185,000 in bribes from a tax consultant — and campaign fundraiser — to lower property taxes for his clients.
Noguez, who was elected assessor in 2010, has not worked since June, when he placed himself on paid leave of absence to concentrate on preparing a legal defense to the corruption allegations swirling around him.
While on leave, he got a cost-of-living raise in July, boosting his annual salary from $192,000 to $197,000.
Elected officials in California typically can't be removed from office unless they are convicted of a job-related crime or voted out in a recall. On Tuesday, the supervisors considered invoking a rarely used provision that would have allowed them to remove Noguez for failing to perform his duties for three consecutive months.
After the closed session, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said, "My personal feeling is he has not abandoned his job by virtue of choice — he's been incarcerated for allegations of corruption and until a court of law convicts him of a crime, he's still the assessor of Los Angeles County."
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the board will continue consulting with attorneys regarding options, but he did not expect any "concrete response" until the new year.
On Sept. 12, nearly 90 days after taking his leave, Noguez met briefly with assessor's office staff, effectively resetting the clock. But sources say that he has not had any meaningful contact with the office since then.
Noguez has been in jail since Oct. 17, unable to make his $1.16-million bail. He must prove that any money he uses for his defense was not obtained through criminal means.
Attendance was sparse at two recent fundraisers hosted by friends hoping to get him out.
If county supervisors had determined that Noguez's prolonged absence constituted abandonment of his job, they could have appointed someone else to take his place and collect the assessor's salary. The most likely candidate was Santos Kreimann, a veteran county manager selected to run the assessor's office in June after Noguez took his leave.
Noguez's $5,000 raise in July was not reviewed or approved by the supervisors, said county spokesman David Sommers. Under county code, the assessor's salary goes up every July 1 in accordance with the consumer price index. The same applies to the sheriff and the district attorney, who are also elected.
Other county employees have not received a cost-of-living raise since 2009, Sommers said.
jack.dolan@latimes.com
abby.sewell@latimes.com
Emperor Obama goes into gun grabbing mode!!!!
SourceObama demands new gun policies after shooting
Associated Press Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:16 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday demanded “concrete proposals” on curbing gun violence that he could send to Congress no later than January — an urgent effort to build on the growing political consensus over gun restrictions following last week’s massacre of children at a Connecticut school.
It was a tough new tone for the president, whose first four years were largely quiet on the issue amid widespread political reluctance to tackle a powerful gun-rights lobby. But emotions have been high after the gunman in Friday’s shooting used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 20 young children and six adults at the school, shooting many several times and at close range, after killing his mother at home. He then killed himself.
“This time, the words need to lead to action,” Obama said. He said he will push legislation “without delay” and urged Congress to hold votes on the bill next year.
“The fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing,” Obama said. “The fact that we can’t prevent every act of violence doesn’t mean we can’t steadily reduce the violence.”
The president listed eight people across the country who had been killed by gun violence since Friday’s shooting.
As part of his call for “real progress, right now,” Obama pressed Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. He also called for stricter background checks for people who seek to purchase weapons and limited high-capacity clips.
Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime gun control advocate with decades of experience in the Senate, will lead a team that will include members of Obama’s administration and outside groups.
The administration will have to make its gun control push in the middle of tense negotiations with Congress to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of billions of dollars in tax increases and deep spending cuts that will kick in at the end of the year without a deal.
Notably, the first question asked of Obama during a press conference after his gun announcement was about the fiscal talks.
In the days since the shooting, Obama has vowed to use “whatever power this office holds” to safeguard the nation’s children after Friday’s shooting. Funerals for the victims continued Wednesday, along with the wake for the school’s beloved principal.
The shooting has prompted several congressional gun-rights supporters to consider new legislation to control firearms, and there are concerns in the administration and elsewhere that their willingness to engage could fade as the shock and sorrow over the shooting eases.
The most powerful supporter of gun owners and the gun industry, the National Rifle Association, broke its silence Tuesday, four days after the shooting. In a statement, it pledged “to help to make sure this never happens again” and has scheduled a news conference for Friday.
Obama challenged the NRA to join the broader effort to reduce gun violence, saying, “Hopefully they’ll do some self-reflection.”
With the NRA promising “meaningful contributions” and Obama vowing “meaningful action,” the challenge in Washington is to turn words into action. Ideas so far have ranged from banning people from buying more than one gun a month to arming teachers.
The challenge will be striking the right balance with protecting the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Firearms are in a third or more of U.S. households, and suspicion runs deep of an overbearing government whenever it proposes expanding federal authority.
Many pro-gun lawmakers also have called for a greater focus on mental health issues and the impact of violent entertainment like video games. Obama also prefers a holistic approach, with aides saying stricter gun laws alone are not the answer.
Obama said Wednesday that the U.S. needs to make access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun.
Still, much of the immediate focus is on gun control, an issue that has been dormant in Washington for years despite several mass shootings.
The policy process Obama was announcing Wednesday was expected to include input from the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. The heads of those agencies met with Obama at the White House on Monday. The Department of Homeland Security is also expected to play a key role.
Pressure for change has come from several sources this week.
As shares in publicly traded gun manufacturers dropped, the largest firearms maker in the United States said Tuesday it was being put up for sale by its owner, private equity group Cerberus Capital Management, which called the shooting a “watershed event” in the debate over gun control. Freedom Group International makes Bushmaster rifles, the weapons thought to have been used in Friday’s killings.
In California, proposed legislation would increase the restrictions on purchasing ammunition by requiring buyers to get a permit, undergo a background check and pay a fee.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors wrote Obama and Congress calling for “stronger gun laws, a reversal of the culture of violence in this country, a commission to examine violence in the nation, and more adequate funding for the mental health system.”
The mayors asked for a ban on assault weapons and other high-capacity magazines, like those reportedly used in the school shooting; a stronger national background check system for gun purchasers; and stronger penalties for straw purchases of guns, in which legal buyers acquire weapons for other people.
Formerly pro-gun Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said “a thoughtful debate about how to change laws” is coming soon. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has said the debate must include guns and mental health. And NRA member Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, said it’s time to begin an honest discussion about gun control and said he wasn’t afraid of the political consequences.
The comments are significant. Grassley is senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which probably would take the first action on any gun control legislation. Reid sets the Senate schedule.
Arizona court to hear appeal on marijuana ruling (w/ video)
Posted: Thursday, December 20, 2012 8:23 am
Associated Press
PHOENIX — A state appeals court hears arguments Thursday on whether to temporarily put on hold a judge's order upholding Arizona's medical marijuana program.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is appealing Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon's Dec. 4 ruling.
Gordon ruled that the county must provide zoning clearance for a Sun City medical marijuana dispensary because federal drug law doesn't stand in the way of implementing the state's medical marijuana law.
The law approved by voters in 2000 allows use of marijuana for cancer and certain other medical conditions.
Montgomery wants a three-judge appeals court panel to suspend Gordon's ruling.
Arizona court to hear appeal on marijuana ruling
Doesn't Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery have any real criminals to hunt down???
Why does he insist on wasting our tax dollars sending people
who smoke medical marijuana to prison???
Arizona court to hear medical pot ruling appeal
Source
Arizona court to hear medical pot ruling appeal
Associated Press Thu Dec 20, 2012 8:13 AM
A state appeals court hears arguments Thursday on whether to temporarily put on hold a judge’s order upholding Arizona’s medical marijuana program.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is appealing Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon’s Dec. 4 ruling.
Gordon ruled that the county must provide zoning clearance for a Sun City medical marijuana dispensary because federal drug law doesn’t stand in the way of implementing the state’s medical marijuana law.
The law approved by voters in 2000 allows use of marijuana for cancer and certain other medical conditions.
Montgomery wants a three-judge appeals court panel to suspend Gordon’s ruling.
Bill Montgomery should work for the people of Arizona, not DEA thugs in D.C.
Source
Montgomery's loyalties
Dec. 18, 2012 12:00 AM
Dear Bill Montgomery:
The next time you get your paycheck, please examine it carefully. Was it paid by the federal government? No? Then why are you working so zealously on behalf of the Obama/Holder administration to attack the legally sanctioned use of medical marijuana in Arizona?
Please do the job we elected you to do. We elected you to represent the laws and people of Arizona, even if that means standing up to the federal government. Any time you become confused on any future issues, just look at your paycheck.
-- Bob Fern, Chandler
ALL drugs were legal at the national level prior to 1914
when the Harrision Narcotic Tax Act was passed making
heroin and cocaine illegal.
Marijuana wasn't made illegal for another 23 years when
the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was passed.
And back when drugs were legal there wasn't any crime
associated with them. It wasn't until drugs were made
illegal that the laws against drugs started to cause crime
by creating a black market for drugs.
If we again re-legalize drugs all the crime will disappear overnight,
just like the crime associated with liquor disappeared overnight
when the Prohibition was ended and liquor was re-legalized.
Easing of pot laws a scary sign of U.S. path
Dec. 18, 2012 12:00 AM
A hearty congratulations to the potheads and drug addicts. With the recent relaxing of marijuana laws, you've finally achieved your long-awaited goal of making your poison more easily available. [Poison? At the most marijuana is a mild tranquilizer!]
Good for you, but please do not claim that this newly available weed is only for folks suffering from chronic pain. Not one single law-abiding drug-free person in America believes that load of garbage.
Now, of course, your next goal will be to knock down all laws against crack cocaine, crystal meth, heroin and scores of other mind-altering substances. I won't be here, but I can plainly see America 100 years from now completely immobilized, unable to find drug-free bus drivers, airline pilots, policemen and firemen for positions of responsibility.
We will become a nation of hopheads, lying about in half-dazes and smiling as we drug our lives away. And so, go on and celebrate. You're gleefully setting this country up for your children to inherit or for our enemies to conquer. Whichever comes first.
-- Jim White, Glendale
Arizona court denies attempt to temporarily block medical-marijuana law
By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 20, 2012 12:34 PM
The Arizona Court of Appeals today denied Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s effort to temporarily block the state’s medical marijuana law.
Just an hour or so after hearing oral arguments, a three-judge panel rejected the motion to delay a Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s ruling that the law is constitutional.
Attorney Tom Liddy, representing the county, said public employees risk prosecution for violating federal drug laws if they process zoning paperwork to allow a Sun City dispensary to open. That puts them at risk of irreparable harm, one of the legal conditions necessary for granting a temporary stay of the law, he argued.
But the judges pointed out that no one has been prosecuted for implementing state medical marijuana laws, despite the “saber rattling” from federal prosecutors who warned they could be facilitating federal crimes if they issue licenses to dispensaries.
“Are you aware of ... any context where (a public employee) has been put in harm’s way from criminal prosecution?” Judge Samuel Thumma said.
“Federal prosecution? No, I am not aware of that. Harm’s way? Anyone who has exposed himself to criminal liability is harmed,” Liddy replied.
“Are you aware of any charges in the history of the country?” Thumma said.
“No, your honor, we are not aware of any charges,” Liddy said. “Only the saber rattling.”
ACLU attorney Kelly Flood, representing dispensary White Mountain Health Center, argued that the county is the lone holdout in implementing the voter-approved law, which allows people with certain debilitating conditions to use medical marijuana. State and local workers have processed 450 dispensary applications, she said.
“They’ve shown no irreparable harm,” Flood said of the county, “and no basis to refuse to comply with the court’s order.”
Earlier this month, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon ruled that federal drug laws do not preempt the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and that public officials must implement the law.
The ruling essentially paved the way for dispensaries to open without fear of prosecution by law enforcement. Since then, at least two dispensaries — one in Glendale and another in Tucson — have opened their doors.
In his ruling, Gordon made clear that marijuana is still illegal under federal law, but he wrote that the U.S. Constitution allows Arizona to make different policy choices than the federal government when it comes to decriminalizing and regulating medical marijuana. The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act does not undermine the purposes of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes possession, sale or use of marijuana a crime, he wrote.
Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.
More than 20,000 missing in Mexico in past 6 years
Associated Press Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:07 PM
MEXICO CITY — A civic organization released a database on Thursday that it says contains official information on more than 20,000 people who disappeared in Mexico over the past six years, a period that also saw thousands of people killed after the government launched a crackdown against drug cartels.
Propuesta Civica, or Civic Proposal, said the database it posted on its website contains details on 20,851 missing people that it says were collected by the federal Attorney General’s Office during the just-ended administration of President Felipe Calderon.
The missing include police officers, bricklayers, housewives, lawyers, students, businessmen and more than 1,200 children under age 11. They are listed one by one with such details as name, age, gender and the date and place where the person disappeared.
The database also includes chilling details of kidnappings, including the case of a man who was taken by a group of gunmen who stormed into his workplace in the city of Gomez Palacio, in the northern state of Durango, and took him away while his co-workers watched.
Another report details the disappearance of three businessmen in the western state of Michoacan, a place dominated by the Knights Templar drug cartel, a quasi-religious organization that controls most of the state. The report says the men were kidnapped in the town of Patzcuaro by gunmen traveling in two pickup trucks.
A spokesman for federal prosecutors, who would not allow his name to be used under the agency’s rules, said the Attorney General’s Office had no knowledge of the document.
Civic Proposal executive director Pilar Talavera said the database doesn’t contain enough information to determine how many of the disappearances are linked to the drug war.
She also said the report has inconsistencies that raise questions about whether all the missing are included.
For instance, the northern state of Baja California, where the border city of Tijuana is located, has only 15 people reported as missing even though it had hundreds of people killed as warring drug gangs fought for control. Baja California is also the state where soldiers in 2009 detained a man who confessed to disposing of at least 300 bodies over a decade by dissolving them in vats of lye.
Mexico City, with 7,137 people on the list, has the largest number of missing in the country, but the capital is one of the cities least affected by drug-related violence.
Despite the inconsistencies, the organization decided to publish the database to pressure the government to release official information on the missing, Talavera said.
“This database is one of the few sources of information that civil society has had access to (and that can help) to start to comprehend the true magnitude of violence in Mexico in the last six years,” she said.
Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says that 24,000 people were reported missing between 2000 and mid-2012. It says nearly 16,000 bodies found over the years remain unidentified.
The database, which Civic Proposal said it got from a Los Angeles Times reporter, was released three weeks after the Washington Post published a story saying it had received a list of missing people created by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office that recorded more than 25,000 disappearances.
In a letter to new President Enrique Pena, Human Rights Watch’s director for the Americas, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said that if the numbers quoted by the Post were correct, they would “place the wave of disappearances in Mexico that took place during President Felipe Calderon’s six-year administration as the worst in the history of Latin America.”
In Chile, about 1,200 people disappeared during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In Colombia, non-governmental organizations and authorities say at least 50,000 people have gone missing during more than 40 years of internal violence.
Between 2006 and 2012, Calderon waged a campaign against organized crime that included the unprecedented deployment of thousands of soldiers. It is estimated by some that there were at least 70,000 deaths tied to organized crime violence during his six-year term, which ended Nov. 30.
Air Force asks ESPN for help in analyzing drone footage
Published December 20, 2012
Predators, Raptors and More: The Wide World of Drones
The U.S. Air Force confirms a new addition to its unmanned arsenal.
The Air Force is tapping ESPN to help sift and analyze the massive amounts of video footage from drone missions.
As the number of unmanned aircraft around the world and the flood of footage being transmitted in real-time keeps expanding, the Air Force is faced with the task of pouring through the data. Enter: ESPN.
"We need to be careful we don't drown in the data," David Deptula, a former Air Force lieutenant general, said, according to a report in USA Today.
Drone video transmissions returned some 327,384 hours of surveillance video in 2011. Currently, much of what drones do is complete "pattern of life" missions, which involve recording compounds for days at a time.
The Air Force turned to the sports cable network to see how it sorts through the large amounts of game footage it gets everyday, USA Today reports. A meeting between Air Force officials and ESPN did not, however, result in any technological breakthroughs.
One Air Force official said the visit with ESPN had helped with developing skills and expertise, particularly in training.
Military turns to ESPN to help analyze drone footage
By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY11:54p.m. EST December 19, 2012
JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. – Can SportsCenter teach the military something about combating terrorists?
After rapidly expanding the number of drones around the world, the Air Force is now reaching out to ESPN and other experts in video analysis to keep up with the flood of footage the unmanned aircraft are transmitting.
"They're looking at anything and everything they can right now," said Air Force Col. Mike Shortsleeve, commander of a unit here that monitors drone videos.
The remote-controlled aircraft are mounted with cameras that transmit real-time video of terrorism suspects to military analysts in the USA.
The amount of video streaming into this base, one of a number of sites that monitors and analyzes the images, is immense. Drone video transmissions rose to 327,384 hours last year, up from 4,806 in 2001.
Given the huge amount of feeds, the Air Force has launched an aggressive effort to seek out technology or techniques that will help them process video without adding more people to stare at monitors.
"We need to be careful we don't drown in the data," said David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and a senior military scholar at the Air Force Academy.
Air Force officials have met with the sports cable network ESPN to discuss how it handles large amounts of video that stream in. The visit resulted in no technological breakthroughs, but helped in developing training and expertise, the Air Force said.
Here at Langley, Air Force analysts sit for hours at a stretch in a vast room that is illuminated only by bank after bank of monitors. The drones are piloted elsewhere, often at a base in Nevada, but the video arrives here. The video is analyzed and fused with other types of intelligence, such as still photos or communications intercepts.
Much of what drones do now are called "pattern of life" missions which involve staring down at a compound for days. That information can help avoid civilian casualties, for example, by determining when children leave for school every day before a raid is launched.
It can also tell military analysts when something seems amiss, perhaps signaling the arrival of a terrorist leader. It's time consuming work that could be made more efficient if there were technology that could automate the monitoring of videos, looking for signs that seem out of the ordinary.
"The real value added would be if I could have that tool go back and say, 'How many times has this vehicle appeared in this geographic area over the last 30 days?' and it automatically searches volumes of full-motion video," said Col. Jeffrey Kruse, commander of the 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing.
The importance of video analysis is apparent in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It took 6,000 hours of surveillance video to pinpoint the location of the al-Qaeda leader who oversaw a bloody insurrection in Iraq as drones followed the movements of his known associates. On June 7, 2006, two U.S. Air Force jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on the building in which he was located in Iraq.
"You can't catch bad guys unless you know where they are and what they're doing," Deptula said.
DEA not cooperating on probe into suspect’s death, LAPD says
December 21, 2012 | 7:17 am
Los Angeles Police Department officials said their efforts to investigate an in-custody death of a drug suspect has been hampered by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which has refused to allow its agents to cooperate for more than two years.
The suspect died shortly after he was arrested in a DEA operation, according to LAPD records. An autopsy found that the suspect's ribs had been fractured in 21 places and coroner's officials concluded that the injuries were caused by "blunt force." The fractures led to internal bleeding, which ultimately killed the man, the coroner found.
Without assistance from the DEA, they cannot determine how the man's injuries occurred, according to documents reviewed by The Times.
The LAPD believes DEA agents may have caused the injuries when they placed the suspect on his stomach while handcuffing him, according to the documents. But without being able to interview the DEA agents who made the arrest, it's impossible for the detectives to determine whether excessive force was used.
Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the DEA, said the U.S. Justice Department's own Office of the Inspector General is conducting an investigation into the death to determine whether DEA agents broke federal civil rights laws by using excessive force when arresting the man. Dearden said the DEA has provided the LAPD with some information and documentation about the incident.
"However, it is not uncommon for an agent under multiple ongoing investigations to decline specific law enforcement interviews until an inspector general investigation is completed," she said.
LAPD officials said they need to conduct their own homicide investigation. Chief Charlie Beck outlined the department's struggles with the case in a report recently submitted to the Los Angeles Police Commission. Beck reports to the civilian panel on all serious use-of-force cases and in-custody deaths.
Beck wrote that his detectives had made "numerous requests" to the DEA for interviews with the involved agents but have repeatedly "been met with negative results."
And I suspect the ban won't apply to cops!!!!
The article didn't say that but from this line I think it won't apply to the police:
San Francisco moves to ban hollow-point bullets
Associated Press
Posted: 12/21/2012 11:38:13 AM PST
SAN FRANCISCO -- Hollow-point bullets and other ammunition designed to cause extreme damage could soon be banned in San Francisco.
Mayor Ed Lee, Supervisor Malia Cohen and police Chief Greg Suhr said on Thursday that high-powered, military-style weapons and ammunition have no place in the city.
The San Francisco Chronicle
(http://bit.ly/Wta69J)
says Cohen will introduce legislation next month that would ban hollow-point bullets and other ammunition meant to cause extreme damage. The law will also require that sellers notify police when more than 500 rounds of ammunition are being purchased.
The announcement comes a week after the shootings of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut school.
An earlier San Francisco plan to ban automatic weapons was thwarted by the court. The mayor says the latest proposal will likely face legal challenges.
------
Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com
S.F. seeks to crack down on ammunition
Marisa Lagos,
Published 5:03 pm, Thursday, December 20, 2012
Saying that high-powered, military-style weapons and ammunition have no place in San Francisco, city leaders on Thursday announced a proposal to ban the possession of hollow bullets and require anyone buying more than 500 rounds at a time to notify the Police Department.
The announcement by Mayor Ed Lee, Supervisor Malia Cohen and Police Chief Greg Suhr came less than a week after the Connecticut school massacre in which 26 people were killed by a gunman wielding a semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle. San Francisco tried banning semiautomatic weapons altogether in city limits, but was stymied by the courts; Lee said the latest proposal will also probably face legal challenges, but city officials decided "we've got to do something more."
The legislation, which will be introduced by Cohen Jan. 15, would bar anyone from possessing hollow-point bullets and other ammunition meant to cause extreme damage, and require sellers - including online stores - to automatically notify police when anyone in San Francisco purchases more than 500 rounds of ammunition at a time. Cohen said she is responding not just to the recent school shooting but to ongoing violence in her district.
"Ammunition designed especially for law enforcement and the military has no reason to be in our homes and on our streets," Lee said, adding that he supports Sen. Dianne Feinstein's move to ban assault rifles at the federal level and of state lawmakers' proposals to tighten background checks and other requirements.
Dr. Andre Campbell, a trauma surgeon at San Francisco General Hospital, said he has worked in emergency rooms for 24 years and watched injuries become more devastating as high-powered weapons and bullets have become more commonplace.
"When they strike a victim, it's like a bomb going off," said Campbell. "The reality is, there are people killed every day with these weapons."
Suhr, who was standing next to a table of artillery claimed by police in last week's gun buyback, said getting even one weapon off the streets makes a difference.
"I would say to the NRA and anyone else who says these guns are not a problem - then if it's not a problem, if it's not making a difference, it shouldn't make a difference banning it," he said.
- Marisa Lagos
SNIP
E-mail: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SFCityInsider.
Posted on December 20, 2012 12:47 pm by EJ Montini
Ruling a low, but Montgomery still high
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, like every other politician, gets high on publicity.
His “drug” of choice?
Medical marijuana.
Not the ACTUAL drug, of course. The issue.
As the county’s top prosecutor Montgomery seems determined to make a name for himself as a crusader against the voter-approved law allowing the sale of medical marijuana.
He lost the argument at the polls.
But that didn’t stop him. He lost in superior court, where a judge said that he would not prevent the law from going into effect. And, today, he lost in the Arizona Court of Appeals.A three-judge panel ruled that it would not issue a stay of Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon’s ruling.
I don’t expect this will stop Montgomery.
He says that government employees are at risk of arrest even though U.S. attorneys in other states with medical marijuana laws have not done such a thing.
Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne support Montgomery’s crusade, although not as vocally as they once did.
What the latest ruling means, essentially, is that the state won’t be able to close down dispensaries and prevent new ones from opening.
For Montgomery, the ruling is both a low and a high.
Legally, it’s a low.
However, it also means that Montgomery will be able to soldier on in his anti-medical marijuana crusade.
Which gets him publicity.
Which, like every other politician, gets him high.
If the NRA is calling for cops to have guns in schools instead of teachers I certainly agree with the folks that say the NRA is the largest gun organization in the USA.
The NRA should be protecting the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms, not creating a jobs program for cops.
The NRA should be demanding that teachers and school employees be allowed to carry guns to work.
Newtown: NRA calls for armed officer in every school
Associated Press Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:31 AM
The most powerful gun-rights lobby in the U.S. said Friday it wants to address gun violence by having an armed police officer in every school in the country.
[What rubbish!!!! We need less cops, not more of them!!!!!]
The comments by the National Rifle Association came exactly a week after a gunman killed 26 people at a Connecticut school, including 20 children ages 6 and 7. The comments were the group’s first substantial ones since the shooting, while pressure has mounted in Washington and elsewhere for more measures against gun violence.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre.
At least two protesters broke up his announcement, despite tight security. One man held up a large red banner that said “NRA killing our kids.” The protesters were taken away by security, shouting that guns in schools are not the answer.
The 4.3 million-member National Rifle Association may be facing its toughest challenge in the wake of national horror over last week’s killing of children, many of them shot multiple times and at close range by high-powered rifle.
LaPierre brushed aside the idea that gun control legislation is needed, saying, “20,000 other laws have failed.” Instead, he blamed video games, movies and music videos for exposing children to a violent culture day in and day out.
He also blamed the media, saying it has “demonized lawful gun owners” and “rewards (mass shooters) with wall-to-wall attention.”
As “some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent,” he added.
He refused to take any questions from the audience.
Reaction to the NRA comments was sharp.
“Their press conference was a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was outspoken for more gun control measures even before the shooting, said in a statement. “Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe.”
[The NRA's solution of a cop in every classroom isn't much different then Michael Bloomberg's. They both want to take guns away from the public and give them to the government!]
LaPierre announced that former Rep. Asa Hutchison will lead an NRA program that will develop a model security plan for schools that relies on armed volunteers.
Shortly after LaPierre spoke, four people were reported killed in a mass shooting along a rural road in Pennslvania.
The NRA largely disappeared from public debate after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, choosing atypical silence as a strategy as the nation sought answers after the rampage. The NRA temporarily took down its Facebook page and kept quiet on Twitter.
Five more funerals or memorials were being held Friday in Newtown.
Since the shooting, President Barack Obama has demanded “real action, right now” against gun violence and called on the NRA to join the effort. His administration has been moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms.
Obama has said he wants proposals on reducing gun violence that he can take to Congress by January, and he put Vice President Joe Biden, a gun control advocate with decades of experience in the Senate, in charge of the effort.
The president said in a video released early Friday that the White House has received an outpouring of support for stricter gun laws over the past week. “We hear you,” he said.
A “We the People” petition on the White House website allows the public to submit petitions. Nearly 200,000 people have urged Obama to address gun control in one petition, and petitions related to gun violence have amassed more than 400,000 signatures.
At the same time, however, gun shops across the country have reported higher sales, including of assault weapons. A spike in gun sales is not uncommon after mass shootings.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would end a provision that allows people to purchase firearms from private parties without a background check.
The president also has indicated that he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines, which the 20-year-old gunman used in last week’s shooting.
Obama wants to build on a rare national mood after years of hesitation by politicians across the country to take on the issue of gun violence — and the NRA.
“I’ve been doing this for 17 years, and I’ve never seen something like this in terms of response,” said Brian Malte, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, based in Washington, D.C. “The whole dynamic depends on whether the American public and people in certain states have had enough.”
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report Thursday showing that the Newtown shooting has led to more discussion about gun policy on social media than previous rampages. The report says users advocating for gun control were more numerous than those defending current gun laws.
Legislators, mostly Democrats, in California and New York plan a push to tighten what are already some of the most stringent state gun-control laws.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina and Florida have called for making it easier for teachers and other adults to have weapons in schools.
A Pew Research Center survey taken Dec. 17-19, after the shooting, registered an increase in the percentage of Americans who prioritize gun control (49 percent) over gun owner rights (42 percent).
Those figures were statistically even in July. The December telephone survey included 1,219 adults in all 50 states. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
———
Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed.
Marijuana, Not Yet Legal for Californians, Might as Well Be
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: December 20, 2012
LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California.
No matter that its recreational use remains technically against the law. Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.
“It’s shocking, from my perspective, the number of people that we all know who are recreational marijuana users,” said Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor. “These are incredibly upstanding citizens: Leaders in our community, and exceptional people. Increasingly, people are willing to share how they use it and not be ashamed of it.”
Marijuana can be smelled in suburban backyards in neighborhoods from Hollywood to Topanga Canyon as dusk falls — what in other places is known as the cocktail hour — often wafting in from three sides. In some homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, it is offered at the start of a dinner party with the customary ease of a host offering a chilled Bombay Sapphire martini.
Lighting up a cigarette (the tobacco kind) can get you booted from many venues in this rigorously antitobacco state. But no one seemed to mind as marijuana smoke filled the air at an outdoor concert at the Hollywood Bowl in September or even in the much more intimate, enclosed atmosphere of the Troubadour in West Hollywood during a Mountain Goats concert last week.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, ticked off the acceptance of open marijuana smoking in a list of reasons he thought Venice was such a wonderful place for his morning bicycle rides. With so many people smoking in so many places, he said in an interview this year, there was no reason to light up one’s own joint.
“You just inhale, and you live off everyone else,” said Mr. Schwarzenegger, who as governor signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Some Californians react disdainfully to anyone from out of state who still harbors illicit associations with the drug. Bill Maher, the television host, was speaking about the prevalence of marijuana smoking at dinner parties hosted by Sue Mengers, a retired Hollywood agent famous for her high-powered gatherings of actors and journalists, in an interview after her death last year. “I used to bring her pot,” he said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”
When a reporter sought to ascertain whether this was an on-the-record conversation, Mr. Maher responded tartly: “Where do you think you are? This is California in the year 2011.”
John Burton, the state Democratic chairman, said he recalled an era when the drug was stigmatized under tough antidrug laws. He called the changes in thinking toward marijuana one of the two most striking shifts in public attitude he had seen in 40 years here (the other was gay rights).
“I can remember when your second conviction of having a single marijuana cigarette would get you two to 20 in San Quentin,” he said.
In a Field Poll of California voters conducted in October 2010, 47 percent of respondents said they had smoked marijuana at least once, and 50 percent said it should be legalized. The poll was taken shortly before Californians voted down, by a narrow margin, an initiative to decriminalize marijuana.
“In a Republican year, the legalization came within two points,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who worked on the campaign in favor of the initiative. He said that was evidence of the “fact that the public has evolved on the issue and is ahead of the pols.”
A study by the California Office of Traffic Safety last month found that motorists were more likely to be driving under the influence of marijuana than under the influence of alcohol.
Still, there are limits. No matter how much attitudes in California may have changed, it remains illegal in most of the country — as Californians have been reminded by a series of crackdowns by the Justice Department on medical marijuana here. People who use the drug recreationally, who said they would think nothing of offering a visitor a joint upon walking through the door, declined to be quoted by name, citing the risks to career and professional concerns.
That was the case even as they talked about marijuana becoming commonly consumed by professionals and not just, as one person put it, activists and aging hippies. Descriptions of marijuana being offered to arriving guests at parties, as an alternative to a beer, are common.
In places like Venice and Berkeley, marijuana has been a cultural presence, albeit an underground one, since the 1960s. It began moving from the edges after voters approved the legalization of medical marijuana in 1996.
That has clearly been a major contributor to the mainstreaming of marijuana. There is no longer any need for distasteful and legally compromising entanglements with old-fashioned drug dealers, several marijuana users said, because it is now possible to buy from a medical marijuana shop or a friend, or a friend of a friend growing it for ostensibly medical purposes.
That has also meant, several users said,¸that the quality of marijuana is more reliable and varied, and there are fewer concerns about subsidizing a criminal network. It also means, it seems, prices here are lower than they are in many parts of the country.
Mr. Newsom — who said he did not smoke marijuana himself — said that the ubiquity of the drug had led him to believe that laws against it were counterproductive and archaic. He supports its legalization, a notable position for a Democrat widely considered one of the leading contenders to be the next governor.
“These laws just don’t make sense anymore,” he said. “It’s time for politicians to come out of the closet on this.”
Of course that is probably something expected of politicians who will lie and say anything to get elected.
Obama also lied to and sold out the the gays, pot smokers and anti-war folks to get their votes, so it's not earth shaking news that he also lied to and sold out the Latino voters.
Obama administration sets deportation record: 409,849
By Alan Gomez Associated Press Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:02 PM
For the fourth year in a row, the Obama administration set a record for the number of people it deported. In 2012, the total reached 409,849.
President Obama has received a lot of support from Hispanic voters, who voted for him 71-27 percent over Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the November elections. But his deportation record has remained a major disappointment to immigrant rights groups throughout his first term.
The number of people deported under Obama has risen in each of his four years in office, culminating in the record set in fiscal year 2012.
“That’s a dubious accomplishment,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11million illegal immigrants. “In reality, these numbers reflect the urgency with which our government needs to create a better immigration process. Instead of spending our limited resources on deportations, we need laws that strengthen our families, our communities and our economy.”
Department of Homeland Security officials say the criticism is misguided, since they are not just increasing the number of people they deport. Over Obama’s first term, the department has increased the percentage of deportees who are convicted criminals or fall into other high-priority categories.
During President George W. Bush’s last year in office, 33 percent of the people deported by the U.S. were convicted criminals. The Obama administration has increased that percentage each year, reaching 55 percent in 2012.
In all, 96 percent of the people deported fall into Homeland Security’s priority categories, including recent border-crossers, repeat immigration violators and fugitives from immigration court.
“While the FY 2012 removals indicate that we continue to make progress in focusing resources on criminal and priority aliens, with more convicted criminals being removed from the country than ever before, we are constantly looking for ways to ensure that we are doing everything we can to utilize our resources in a way that maximizes public safety,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said in a statement.
And from the point of being a fantastic government welfare program that gives billions of dollars in corporate welfare to companies in the military industrial complex the BioWatch program is a huge success.
Troubled BioWatch program at a crossroads
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2012, 4:14 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Year after year, health officials meeting at invitation-only government conferences leveled with one another about Biowatch, the nation's system for detecting deadly pathogens that might be unleashed into the air by terrorists.
They shared stories of repeated false alarms — mistaken warnings of germ attacks from Los Angeles to New York City. Some questioned whether BioWatch worked at all.
They did not publicize their misgivings. Indeed, the sponsor of the conferences, the U.S. Homeland Security Department, insists that BioWatch's operations, in more than 30 cities, be kept mostly secret.
Now, congressional investigators want Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to open the books on the 9-year-old program and explain why $3.1 billion in additional spending is warranted.
The move by the House Energy and Commerce Committee — spurred by reports in the Los Angeles Times about BioWatch's deficiencies — puts the program at a crossroads.
On one side is mounting evidence that the technology does not work. On the other are companies eager to tap federal contracts, politicians fearful of voting against any program created to fight terrorism, and a top Homeland Security official who says the program is functioning properly.
Government records show that BioWatch signaled attacks more than 100 times when none had occurred. Nor is the system sensitive enough to reliably detect low yet infectious concentrations of such pathogens as anthrax, smallpox or plague, according to specialists familiar with test results and computer modeling. Another defect is BioWatch's inability to distinguish between particular pathogens that are genetically similar, but benign.
Lab and field tests found similar problems in the latest technology intended for BioWatch, "Generation 3." The congressional investigators are seeking internal documents illuminating BioWatch's performance, plus the private comments of Napolitano's top science and technology advisor, Dr. Tara O'Toole, who recommended killing Generation 3.
O'Toole's skepticism is shared by Dr. Donald A. Henderson, a renowned epidemiologist who led the global eradication of smallpox. Henderson, a federal anti-terrorism advisor when BioWatch was launched in 2003, says he has yet to see a "scientific justification" for it.
"It has never stood the test of rationality," Henderson said. "This whole concept is just preposterous."
Political ties
But as Napolitano weighs whether to deploy Generation 3 — at the cost of $3.1 billion over its first five years — the program will not be easy to scale back.
The company in line to install Generation 3, Northrop Grumman Corp., is a major donor to federal campaigns with a broad presence in Washington.
From 2004 to 2012, the company's political action committee gave more than $6 million to congressional candidates, campaign finance records show. Northrop Grumman, a top defense contractor, ranked No. 10 this year among all PAC donors to congressional campaigns.
Northrop Grumman also hired the former head of BioWatch, Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, as an advisor to assist its pursuit of the Generation 3 contract.
On Sept. 27, Runge told invitees to the Harvard Faculty Club that a survey he designed for what he called "homeland security related professionals" had found support for deploying the new technology, regardless of potential shortcomings.
Rather than wait for more research to refine Generation 3, Runge told the gathering, "the respondents seem to be saying … 'Deploy the detectors, even if they can't pick up every intentional pathogen or genetic variation, and deal with the problems later.'"
Runge, who provided his prepared remarks to The Times, said Northrop Grumman solicited his advice a few months after he left the government in 2008 and paid him an hourly rate. The consulting arrangement ended in summer 2009, he said.
Runge said the company paid him to explain how the Homeland Security Department "is thinking, how Congress is thinking, about the future of biodetection." Among those he briefed, Runge said, was Northrop Grumman's project manager for Generation 3.
In 2010 and 2011, Northrop Grumman donated a total of $100,000 to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, which, beginning in July, circulated three commentaries supporting federal funding for BioWatch and Generation 3. The donations were disclosed in the group's annual reports.
Steven P. Bucci, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow, wrote on July 11, "BioWatch is far from an 'unnecessary expenditure.' Congress should thus continue to fund the program."
The third Heritage essay, issued Dec. 12 and also written by Bucci, said that although BioWatch was "only marginally effective," Napolitano and President Obama should stay the course. "Cutting funding to this project," he wrote, "leaves us vulnerable in a way that will cripple our future security." Bucci said his writings were his own.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman, Brandon R. Belote III, said the company "recognizes the importance of participating in the democratic process."
For politicians determined to appear resolute against terrorism, fully funding BioWatch might carry less risk than scaling it back.
"If somebody cancels the program, and a week later there's a release, they'll never, ever recover from making that decision," said George Mason University microbiologist Stephen Prior, who co-wrote a 2004 National Defense University study of BioWatch. "If they don't make that decision, they can't be wrong."
Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Department's chief medical officer, Dr. Alexander Garza, has assured Congress that BioWatch is performing effectively. In March, Garza told a House subcommittee that the Generation 3 system was "right where it needs to be," but he did not cite the deficiencies found by the tests of prototype sensors.
On Sept. 13, Garza told another congressional hearing that, in his view, none of the existing system's mistaken detections of benign organisms as lethal pathogens were false alarms. Though each of the laboratory-confirmed results signaled potential terrorist attacks, Garza asserted that they were not false alarms because authorities never ordered evacuations or other emergency measures.
The panel members voiced concerns about BioWatch. None, however, pressed Garza to explain his basis for defending BioWatch's misidentifications of the harmless organisms. Nor did they question Garza about the system's poor sensitivity.
Eroded confidence
When he announced the program in his 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush said BioWatch would "protect our people and our homeland." He called it "the nation's first early-warning network of sensors to detect biological attack."
BioWatch units placed in public places suck air through composite filters all day and night. Once every 24 hours, the filters are delivered to public health laboratories, where technicians search for the DNA of the targeted pathogens. Under Generation 3, BioWatch would be converted to automated sensors, each a "lab in a box," designed to both capture and test samples of air.
The first false alarms occurred soon after BioWatch's deployment, demonstrating that it could not distinguish between the most commonly signaled pathogen, tularemia, and "near-neighbor" organisms that pose no life-threatening harm.
Previously unpublicized Homeland Security materials show that the Houston area alone racked up more than 30 false alarms as of mid-2008, nearly all for the germ that causes tularemia, also known as rabbit fever.
The many false alarms nationwide — including results that caused tense deliberations among health officials at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and at championship sporting events — have eroded confidence in the system.
Local, state and federal officials faced with a BioWatch alarm have not once evacuated an area or dispensed antibiotics or other emergency medicines. They have instead monitored hospitals for days or weeks in search of potential victims before deciding to disregard the alarms, a wait-and-see approach counter to the rationale for BioWatch.
The Homeland Security Department's emphasis on keeping the details quiet is reinforced at the annual BioWatch conferences, according to attendees and government documents. The 2008 conference included such workshops as "Loose Lips Sink Collectors! Managing Media Inquiries about BioWatch," and "Psychology of Press Releases."
Last month, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Homeland Security had withheld key documents that the panel had asked for in July. In a letter to Napolitano, the committee said the episode raised "serious questions about the department's willingness to cooperate."
The department has pledged cooperation, and Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, has delegated the public defense of BioWatch to Garza, also a presidential appointee. Garza has said that scientists are working "to improve BioWatch to keep the nation safe from any potential biological threats."
In recent interviews, more than a dozen specialists who have worked with or examined BioWatch said it should be independently assessed, and scaled back or dismantled.
Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann, a physician and public health researcher at Rand Corp. who studied BioWatch from 2007 to 2009 as a member of a National Academy of Sciences committee, said it "has generated nothing but false alarms."
Kellermann and other specialists said the money spent on BioWatch could have paid for training and equipment to help medical professionals more quickly diagnose a patient exposed to an attack. The many false alarms, they said, invite complacency.
"After you hear a certain amount of car alarms in your neighborhood, you stop worrying about them," Kellermann said.
david.willman@latimes.com
Peña Nieto team decries past drug cartel strategy — and keeps it
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2012, 4:43 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — You find the capos of the drug trade, and you arrest them or kill them.
That, in its simplest form, was the idea behind the so-called kingpin strategy that former Mexican President Felipe Calderon pursued with zeal for most of his six-year term. As his administration drew to an end this year, he would often mention, as a point of pride, that his government had taken out two-thirds of Mexico's 37 most wanted criminals.
But as new President Enrique Peña Nieto rolled out his crime-fighting strategy this week, his team was explicit about the trouble that "kingpin" had wrought:
On Monday, Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said the strategy caused a fragmentation of criminal groups that had made them "more violent and much more dangerous," as they branched out into homicide, extortion, robbery and kidnapping.
The next day, Jesus Murillo Karam, the new attorney general, said in a radio interview that the strategy was responsible for spawning 60 to 80 small and medium-sized organized crime groups.
But just because the strategy has taken some hits doesn't mean it's dead. And Peña Nieto, who took office Dec. 1, is unlikely to kill it.
His Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico as a quasi-dictatorship for 70 years, was notorious for looking the other way when it came to organized crime, and Peña Nieto, 46, has promised that the party will not return to its old habits.
Peña Nieto is also unlikely to jeopardize the generous security assistance provided by the United States, which helped design the kingpin strategy. The U.S. is intimately involved in carrying it out, providing intelligence on drug leaders' whereabouts and spending millions to strengthen the Mexican security forces who act on that intelligence.
All of which probably explains why, shortly after the ministers' criticism of kingpin, a top presidential advisor told The Times that the new government had no plans to abandon it.
"That will not stop at all," said the advisor, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
But there will be changes. The pursuit of capos, the Peña Nieto advisor said, will be a quieter affair than during the Calderon administration, their neutralization presented with less fanfare. Calderon's aggressive crackdown on cartels has been criticized as having done little to stop the flow of drugs while exacerbating violence, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.
Peña Nieto, in a speech Monday before Mexico's National Public Security Council, said that "evaluation and feedback" would be a pillar of his crime-fighting strategy, though he was vague on the details. He emphasized, as he has many times, that his government would make it a top priority to focus on solutions that reduce the number of homicides, kidnappings and extortions.
Osorio Chong said that between 2006, when Calderon's term started, and 2011, kidnappings increased 83%; violent robberies, 65%; and highway robberies, 100%.
The kingpin strategy was based on a similar plan in Colombia in the 1990s, said Shannon O'Neil, the senior fellow for Latin American studies at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations. Colombian cartel leaders at the time were directing their violence against the state, targeting high-profile federal officials for assassination. When the capos were taken out, the threats to the federal government were reduced.
Peña Nieto's full security plan is still coming into focus, with some elements more specific than others: He has promised to create a gendarmerie to patrol the most violent areas, and 15 federal police units that will focus only on extortion and kidnapping. He has also called for a revision of arraigo, the practice of detaining suspects for up to 80 days for serious crimes that was commonly used under Calderon but which rarely resulted in the suspect being prosecuted.
In his speech Monday, Peña Nieto also vowed to launch a national human rights program, more robust crime prevention programs, better planning and coordination, plus a system, as yet undefined, to evaluate it all.
Jorge Chabat, a professor at Mexico City's Center for Economic Research and Teaching, said Peña Nieto was in a difficult position because he wants to show that he'll fight the drug war in a way that distinguishes him from Calderon, but at the same time, "there's little room to maneuver in terms of changing the security strategy. In reality, there aren't many options."
Columnist Carlos Puig, writing in the newspaper Milenio, criticized the speech for lacking substance and detail. But he was pleased that Peña Nieto was striking a different tone than Calderon, a tone decidedly more wonkish and not "the speech of a valiant warrior."
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Cecilia Sanchez of The Times' Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
S.F. cops crack down on pot in Haight
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to arrest???
Source
S.F. cops crack down on pot in Haight
Shoshana Walter, Bay Citizen
Updated 9:00 pm, Friday, December 21, 2012
San Francisco police Capt. Greg Corrales strolled down a dirt path in Golden Gate Park, wearing a pair of black jeans, a Giants cap and a jersey that read "Grumpy." He was looking for someone to arrest.
As Corrales, 64, approached Alvord Lake, a ragged young man caught his eye and pinched a finger and thumb between his lips.
Corrales knew the sign: weed for sale.
The undercover captain said he wanted $20 worth of marijuana, pocketed his purchase and disappeared into the park. Moments later, a team of officers swooped in to arrest the unsuspecting seller.
The police operation was one of 50 undercover busts Corrales has led since transferring to the Haight-Ashbury district in June to lead a crackdown on street-level marijuana dealing. In a buy-bust operation, an undercover officer poses as a customer and buys drugs from an individual he or she suspects of selling them.
To many residents, the arrests are a welcome relief in a neighborhood they say is overrun by aggressive vagrants and dealers. But to marijuana legalization activists and residents who fondly recall the Haight of the 1960s, the campaign represents a return to a time of zero tolerance for peace, love and pot.
In the district that was the birthplace of the hippie revolution, police are jailing suspects for amounts of marijuana that, in a possession case, would amount to a $100 ticket.
"The people of San Francisco have voted repeatedly they don't want marijuana laws enforced," said Dennis Peron, a longtime medical marijuana activist. "It's a waste of time."
Small-time busts
Some of the operations have netted repeat offenders, including several suspects with guns or outstanding warrants. But most of the suspects carried small amounts of marijuana. Some had medical marijuana ID cards. Corrales, a former head of the narcotics division, said he didn't care.
"It really doesn't matter," he said. "They can't sell."
Ted Loewenberg, president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, is among those who approve of the crackdown. He moved into the neighborhood in 1989, in the midst of a crack epidemic.
"I got to see the everyday reality of what the drug culture did to people," Loewenberg said.
He and about 30 others formed a group called RAD - Residents Against Druggies. A few nights a week, they armed themselves with two-way radios and walked the streets, looking for buyers and dealers.
"If we saw someone we suspected of buying, we would circle around them and just make them so uncomfortable they didn't want to buy," recalled Susan Strolis, a waitress who moved to the neighborhood in 1985.
Easing pot laws
But others in the city wanted to decriminalize marijuana. In 1991, voters passed Proposition P, urging the state to legalize medical marijuana. Peron opened the Cannabis Buyers' Club, the country's first dispensary, in 1992.
Corrales, a former Marine, had made a name for himself as a young undercover officer in the 1970s. His specialty was the buy-bust targeting heroin dealers in the housing projects.
By 1994, he was a captain and headed the narcotics division. Corrales said he couldn't ignore Peron.
"He got so brazen, he went on the television show 'Hard Copy.' They had a segment with him showing the reporters around," Corrales recalled. "He was a marijuana dealer."
Peron was leading the statewide campaign for Proposition 215 to legalize medical marijuana. Corrales and his undercover investigators found evidence that Peron was selling marijuana to customers who were not ill. But then-District Attorney Terence Hallinan refused to prosecute.
By then, Hallinan had visited Peron's medical marijuana club. "I thought it was great," he recalled. "There were people there with AIDS. Everyone had company and friends. It didn't make sense to me to go raiding that. So they went around me."
Raid backfired
Corrales took his case to then-Attorney General Dan Lungren, an aspiring Republican gubernatorial candidate and Prop. 215 opponent. In the summer of 1996, with voters considering the measure, Lungren led a raid on Peron's dispensary.
The raid, however, created sympathy for Peron's cause. Californians voted in favor of the initiative; the police chief banished Corrales from narcotics.
In the Haight, many merchants and residents now clamor for Corrales' aggressive strategies.
After residents complained to the Police Commission in February about open marijuana dealing, an impatient Chief Greg Suhr ordered a buy-bust team into the district and replaced the district's captain with Corrales.
Now the number of buy-busts in the Haight has more than tripled.
"I could see if it was crack cocaine or something harsh like meth," said 25-year-old Michael Fulmore, who is fighting two felony charges after giving an undercover officer a gram of marijuana in March. "But this is pot. A gram of weed. It's like a ticket. Not a felony."
Caught off guard
Corrales has no qualms about the buy-bust operations.
"When I first went out there, they were careless," he said. "I probably could have bought marijuana in a suit and tie because there had been no enforcement, so nobody was paranoid. Now they're more careful."
He was still wearing his "Grumpy" shirt on that day in June when he returned to the group of men at the lake.
"Got anything?" he asked.
"Not for you, we don't," one replied, muttering "pig" under his breath.
Corrales feigned outrage.
"I'm 75 damn years old," he yelled, adding more than a decade to his age. "How the hell am I going to be a cop?"
"Calm down," the young man said. "We gotta be careful. Our buddy just got busted. How much do you want?"
Corrales walked away with another $20 worth of marijuana. And his officers made their second buy-bust arrest of the day.
This Bay Citizen is part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. E-mail: swalter@baycitizen.org
In this article Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio defends his
vote to give Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos a
33 percent raise of
$78,000
bumping his salary from
$237,000 to $315,000 a year.
Here are some
articles
about that $78,000 pay raise the members of the Phoenix
City Council voted to give to Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos.
Into the mind of ... Sal DiCiccio
Dec. 22, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Phoenix City Council member [Sal DiCiccio] explains why City Manager David Cavazos deserved a large raise.
Your vote for City Manager David Cavazos' 33 percent raise was a surprise. How much flak are you getting?
Some. David has been an outstanding manager. The council knew this would be a tough decision, but it was correct. Citizens have every right to seek answers; it's their money.
Look what we accomplished last year, the plan for the future, and then decide if it was right. The pay increase was partially based on his accomplishments, but more importantly we created specific performance measures ensuring structural change and reforms.
It is no secret government reform is my No. 1 priority. For Phoenix to compete in a global economy, a new structure is required. We need the right quarterback who can move the ball. David is Phoenix's franchise player.
You made your mark looking for every possible cut. Why did you think the pay increase was justified?
Significant government waste has been cut, and we are going to do more. Here are specific reforms and savings passed this year alone: We created a best-in-the-country 24-hour model -- businesses big and small can get permits and begin operations within 24 hours. Other cities take 6 to 8 months. We had no property-tax or rate increase, no water/sewer increase, while other governments raised them.
Phoenix was the first government to adopt zero-based budgeting, guaranteeing transparency. We have the largest-ever "rainy-day fund" ($41 million) and cut $59 million per year, including significant red tape.
Those were great accomplishments, but the future demands more, and performance measures for David will ensure long-term structural changes:
1. Save: $100 million per year. 2. Job creation: Cut more red tape by expanding the 24-hour model. 3. Customer service: All departments move to 24/7 operations and be known for it nationally. 4. Personnel reform: Move from entitlement structure to pay for performance. 5. Continue increasing the rainy-day fund.
What do you say to people who note the median household income in Phoenix is barely more than half the additional pay Cavazos will receive?
With $41 million in the rainy-day fund, $59 million saved through innovations and efficiencies and $277 million deficit erased, we have seen a $377 million shift since David took over.
You've pushed to reduce red tape at City Hall. How is it going?
We're winning big! Big and small businesses can now start operations in Phoenix in 24 hours, in what took 6-8 months, making Phoenix the best place nationally for business.
This summer, we will move to electronic and instantaneous permitting.
What else is on your plate?
Council members Thelda Williams, Michael Nowakowski and I are working together to make domestic violence a top priority for Phoenix, as it was when I was on the council in the 1990s. We want to make Phoenix the best nationally.
Nowakowski and I have been working on a plan to improve trade with Mexico, our biggest and underexplored partner.
Cavazos, Councilman Jim Waring and I are working to change Phoenix's culture to be customer-focused and be the first nationally to adopt a 24/7 model for our departments.
I have been working hard with Valley cities promoting the 24-hour job-creation model. Imagine if our entire region was known for this.
I am too lazy to cut and past all the text so here are some links to the articles:
Tiny URLs:
It's not about a fair trial, it's about making cops look like heroes!!!!
Review of FBI forensics does not extend to federally trained state, local examiners
By Spencer S. Hsu, Published: December 22
Thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape and other felonies.
The forensic experts in these cases were trained by the same elite FBI team whose members gave misleading court testimony about hair matches and later taught the local examiners to follow the same suspect practices, according to interviews and documents.
In July, the Justice Department announced a nationwide review of all cases handled by the FBI Laboratory’s hair and fibers unit before 2000 — at least 21,000 cases — to determine whether improper lab reports or testimony might have contributed to wrongful convictions.
But about three dozen FBI agents trained 600 to 1,000 state and local examiners to apply the same standards that have proved problematic.
None of the local cases is included in the federal review. As a result, legal experts say, although the federal inquiry is laudable, the number of flawed cases at the state and local levels could be even higher, and those are going uncorrected.
The FBI review was prompted by a series of articles in The Washington Post about errors at the bureau’s renowned crime lab involving microscopic hair comparisons. The articles highlighted the cases of two District men who each spent more than 20 years in prison based on false hair matches by FBI experts. Since The Post’s articles, the men have been declared innocent by D.C. Superior Court judges.
Two high-profile local-level cases illustrate how far the FBI training problems spread.
In 2004, former Montana crime lab director Arnold Melnikoff was fired and more than 700 cases questioned because of what reviewers called egregious scientific errors involving the accuracy of hair matches dating to the 1970s. His defense was that he was taught by the FBI and that many FBI-trained colleagues testified in similar ways, according to previously undisclosed court records.
In 2001, Oklahoma City police crime lab supervisor Joyce Gilchrist lost her job and more than 1,400 of her cases were questioned after an FBI reviewer found that she made claims about her matches that were “beyond the acceptable limits of science.” Court filings show that Gilchrist received her only in-depth instruction in hair comparison from the FBI in 1981 and that she, like many practitioners, went largely unsupervised.
Federal officials, asked about state and local problems, said the FBI has committed significant resources to speed the federal review but that state and local police and prosecutors would have to decide whether to undertake comparable efforts.
FBI spokeswoman Ann Todd defended the training of local examiners as “continuing education” intended to supplement formal training provided by other labs. The FBI did not qualify examiners, a responsibility shared by individual labs and certification bodies, she said.
Michael Wright, president of the National District Attorneys Association, said local prosecutors cannot simply order labs to audit all or even a sample of cases handled by FBI-trained examiners, because such an undertaking might be time- and cost-prohibitive for smaller agencies.
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Here are some more articles on how corrupt or incompetent forensic technicians help cops make themselves look like heroes by framing almost everybody the cops accuse of a crime.
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/forensic-analysis-methods
If marijuana was legal, NONE of these problems would exist. Marijuana farmers would be growing their pot in farms near the city, the same farms they grow tomatoes and lettuce in. Not secret farms out in the boondocks, which are needed to keep the cops from finding them.
Pot farms wreaking havoc on Northern California environment
By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times
December 23, 2012
EUREKA, Calif. — State scientists, grappling with an explosion of marijuana growing on the North Coast, recently studied aerial imagery of a small tributary of the Eel River, spawning grounds for endangered coho salmon and other threatened fish.
In the remote, 37-square-mile patch of forest, they counted 281 outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses, containing an estimated 20,000 plants — mostly fed by water diverted from creeks or a fork of the Eel. The scientists determined the farms were siphoning roughly 18 million gallons from the watershed every year, largely at the time when the salmon most need it.
"That is just one small watershed," said Scott Bauer, the state scientist in charge of the coho recovery on the North Coast for the Department of Fish and Game. "You extrapolate that for all the other tributaries, just of the Eel, and you get a lot of marijuana sucking up a lot of water.… This threatens species we are spending millions of dollars to recover."
The marijuana boom that came with the sudden rise of medical cannabis in California has wreaked havoc on the fragile habitats of the North Coast and other parts of California. With little or no oversight, farmers have illegally mowed down timber, graded mountaintops flat for sprawling greenhouses, dispersed poisons and pesticides, drained streams and polluted watersheds.
Because marijuana is unregulated in California and illegal under federal law, most growers still operate in the shadows, and scientists have little hard data on their collective effect. But they are getting ever more ugly snapshots.
A study led by researchers at UC Davis found that a rare forest carnivore called a fisher was being poisoned in Humboldt County and near Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada.
The team concluded in its July report that the weasel-like animals were probably eating rodenticides that marijuana growers employ to keep animals from gnawing on their plants, or they were preying on smaller rodents that had consumed the deadly bait. Forty-six of 58 fisher carcasses the team analyzed had rat poison in their systems.
Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in eastern Humboldt who worked on the study, is incredulous over the poisons that growers are bringing in.
"Carbofuran," he said. "It seems like they're using that to kill bears and things like that that raid their camps. So they mix it up with tuna or sardine, and the bears eat that and die."
The insecticide is lethal to humans in small doses, requires a special permit from the EPA and is banned in other countries. Authorities are now regularly finding it at large-scale operations in some of California's most sensitive ecosystems.
It is just one in a litany of pollutants seeping into the watershed from pot farms: fertilizers, soil amendments, miticides, rodenticides, fungicides, plant hormones, diesel fuel, human waste.
Scientists suspect that nutrient runoff from excess potting soil and fertilizers, combined with lower-than-normal river flow due to diversions, has caused a rash of toxic blue-green algae blooms in the North Coast rivers over the last decade.
The cyanobacteria outbreaks threaten public health for swimmers and kill aquatic invertebrates that salmon and steelhead trout eat. Now, officials warn residents in late summer and fall to stay out of certain stretches of water and keep their dogs out. Eleven dogs have died from ingesting the floating algae since 2001.
The effects are disheartening to many locals because healthier salmon runs were signaling that the rivers were gradually improving from the damage caused by more than a century of logging.
"Now with these water diversions, we're potentially slamming the door on salmon recovery," said Scott Greacen, director of Friends of the Eel River.
In June, Bauer and other agency scientists accompanied game wardens as they executed six search warrants on growers illegally sucking water from tributaries of the Trinity River. At one, he came upon a group of 20-somethings with Michigan license plates on their vehicles, camping next to 400 plants. He followed an irrigation line up to a creek, where the growers had dug a pond and lined it with plastic.
"I started talking to this guy, and he says he used to be an Earth First! tree-sitter, saving the trees," Bauer said. "I told him everything he was doing here negates everything he did as an environmentalist."
The man was a small-timer in this new gold rush. As marijuana floods the market and prices drop, many farmers are cultivating ever bigger crops to make a profit. They now cut huge clearings for industrial-scale greenhouses. With no permits or provisions for runoff, the operations dump tons of silt into the streams during the rainy season.
Scanning Google Earth in his office recently, Bauer came upon a "mega grow" that did not exist the year before — a 4-acre bald spot in the forest with 42 greenhouses, each 100 feet long.
Figuring a single greenhouse that size would hold 80 plants, and each plant uses about 5 gallons of water a day, he estimated the operation would consume 2 million gallons of water in the dry season and unleash a torrent of sediment in the wet season.
"There has been an explosion of this in the last two years," he said. "We can't keep up with it."
Every grow has its own unique footprint. Some farmers on private land avoid pesticides and poisons, get their water legally, keep their crops small and try to minimize their runoff. Urban indoor growers might not pollute a river, but they guzzle energy. A study in the journal Energy Policy calculated that indoor marijuana cultivation could be responsible for 9% of California's household electricity use. Other producers, like the Mexican drug trafficking groups who set up giant grows on public lands right next to mountain streams, spread toxins far and wide and steal enough water to run oscillating sprinkler systems.
But it's not just the big criminal groups skirting the rules. Tony LaBanca, senior environmental scientist at Fish and Game in Eureka, said less than 1% of marijuana growers get the permits required to take water from a creek, and those who do usually do it after an enforcement action.
Responsible growers could easily get permits, with no questions asked about what type of plant they're watering, LaBanca said. They just need to be set up to take their water in the wet season and store it in tanks and bladders.
Fish and Game wants to step up enforcement, but the staff is overwhelmed, he said. The agency has 12 scientists and 15 game wardens in the entire four counties on the North Coast, covering thousands of mountainous square miles.
Until the last few years, dealing with marijuana cultivation was usually a minor issue. Now, LaBanca said, it is "triage."
On a recent day, Higley, the Hoopa wildlife biologist, took a reporter and photographer to some of the damage he finds in the most remote mountains, where bears, fishers, martens, rare salamanders and spotted owls live in cloud-mist forests. With his colleague Aaron Pole at the wheel, Higley headed north up the Bigfoot Highway and then up a dirt logging road 13 miles into the snow-peaked Trinities.
They were going to a grow that the sheriff had raided by helicopter in August. Deputies cut down 26,600 plants in eight interconnected clearings along Mill Creek, which flows into the Trinity River.
They parked the truck and started threading down precipitous slopes, through thick wet brush and forest. They stepped over bear scat, slippery roots and coastal giant salamanders.
Crossing a 2-foot-wide creek, they came across a black irrigation line. Vague footpaths emerged, empty Coors cans began glinting in the mud, more water pipes spidered out.
After another 40 minutes, they reached a clearing in the bottom of the canyon — a field of stumps, holes of dark potting soil and hacked-down stalks of marijuana. Dead gray brush and logs ringed the site. A few heavily pruned trees were left standing, to help mask the marijuana grove from the air.
Deputies had severed the irrigation lines during the August raid, but when Higley returned in September to study the environmental impact, some of the line had been reconnected to sprinklers and plants had re-sprouted. He saw a wet bar of soap on an upturned bucket and realized workers were hiding nearby.
On this return visit, the site was empty, and he started picking through the rubbish. "That's d-CON rat poison right there, 16 trays."
At a dump pile next to the creek, he found propane tanks, more rat poison, cans of El Pato tomato sauce, and empty bags of Grow More fertilizer, instant noodles and tortillas.
A lot of the trash had been removed during the sheriff's eradication — dozens of empty bags accounting for 2,700 pounds of fertilizer and boxes for 10 pounds of d-CON (enough to kill 21 spotted owls and up to 28 fishers), as well as two poached deer carcasses and the remains of a state-protected ringtailed cat.
"It wouldn't matter if they were growing tomatoes, corn and squash," he said. "It's trespassing, it's illegal and it borders on terrorism to the environment."
joe.mozingo@latimes.com
Previous
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
More
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
Easing of pot laws a scary sign of U.S. path
Jim White doesn't realize it, but that is how it used to be.
Court tells Bill Montgomery to take a walk!!!!
But don't count on marijuana hater Bill Montgomery to stop wasting our tax dollars on this issue.
He will probably appeal this.
20,000 murders caused by Mexico's war on drugs???
Remember that war on drugs in Mexico is being financed by the American government.
Air Force asks ESPN for help in analyzing drone footage
Source
Military turns to ESPN to help analyze drone footage
Source
Feds cover up DEA murder??? Probably!!!!
LAPD says DEA not cooperating on probe into suspect’s death
Source
San Francisco moves to ban hollow-point bullets
San Francisco moves to ban hollow-point bullets
"Ammunition designed especially for law enforcement and the military has no reason to be in our homes and on our streets"
Source
EJ Montini accuses Bill Montgomery of getting high???
Source
NRA - Largest gun control organization in America???
Many people have called the NRA the largest gun control organization in the USA.
Marijuana, Not Yet Legal for Californians, Might as Well Be
Source
Obama sold out the Mexican and Latino community
Obama broke his promise to the Mexican community!
BioWatch - another huge waste of government money
Of course the Homeland Security Department disagrees with my statement and thinks the BioWatch program is a huge success.
President Enrique Peña Nieto continues Felipe Calderon insane "drug war"
Looks like things are not going to get better in Mexico and that the new Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto will continue Felipe Calderon insane "drug war" which has been financed by the American government.
"Peña Nieto is also unlikely to jeopardize the generous security assistance provided by the United States, which helped design the kingpin strategy. The U.S. is intimately involved in carrying it out, providing intelligence on drug leaders' whereabouts and spending millions to strengthen the Mexican security forces who act on that intelligence"
Source
San Francisco cops crack down on pot in Haight
San Francisco narcotics agent Captain Greg Corrales is proud to arrest harmless people for the victimless crime of selling marijuana
Phoenix City Council member Sal DiCiccio - Phoney baloney Libertarian
Phoenix City Council member Sal DiCiccio likes to paint himself
as a conservative Libertarian,
but he isn't any more of a Libertarian then Hitler.
Washington Post articles on guns & gun control
After this weeks shooting in Connecticut
on Sunday, December 23, 2012 the Washington Post ran a number of articles on guns and gun control.
Corrupt lab techs guarantee you won't get a fair trial
Review of FBI forensics does not extend to federally trained state, local examiners
You're going to get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!
Pot farms wreaking havoc on Northern California environment
Again government is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.