Homeless in Arizona

In the "Odd Couple" TV show Tony Randall played nut job Felix Unger.

Welfare for religious colleges in Mesa, Corporate welfare Tempe Town Toilet

Source

Richardson: The good news going along with the bad in East Valley of late

Posted: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 6:12 am

Commentary by Bill Richardson

Last week there was some good news and some not so good news for East Valley cities.

First, the good news.

[If you ask me this is bad news, because it involves mixing religion and government with the city of Mesa giving corporate welfare to these Christian Colleges which is a violation of both the US and Arizona Constitutions.]

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith and Grand Canyon University officials announced the university would build a new 120-acre campus in Mesa’s fast growing educational and technical corridor. GCU’s new campus will grow to educate 10,000 students.

Mesa currently hosts the Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus and A. T. Stills Medical School in the corridor area. Smith told Fox News GCU will be the sixth new college to call Mesa home, including “five of them this year alone. This is unprecedented.” Mesa is fast becoming a major player in post high school and college level programs that will supply an educated workforce to the valley and state.

SNIP

Now for the bad news.

[Technically this was good news for the royal Tempe rulers because they get to accept boatloads of bribes, oops I mean campaign contributions from the special interest groups building the Marina Heights project in exchange for giving them $37.4 million in corporate welfare.]

While Tempe officials were taking bows and slapping backs at the Marina Heights festivities, it was less ceremoniously announced Tempe’s mayor and city council decided at a council meeting, with restricted public input, to stick Tempe residents, and not developers, with the $37.4 million cost to build a new dam on the west end of the Town Lake. That works out to about $225.00 in dam debt for each of Tempe’s 166,000 residents.

Along with the cost of the dam being dumped on Tempe residents, who are already weary of a steady stream of tax and fee increases, reduced services and higher costs, the mayor and city council, the highest paid in the East Valley, gave a generous incentive package to developers that goes beyond the tens of millions of dollars in dam costs.

According to the Arizona Republic’s July 31 story, “Tempe OKs controversial lake plan”, developers will now pay a lower annual “holding fee” and a lower annual interest rate on their share of lake construction.

Tempe city hall continues to charge residents plenty to do the people’s business.

Once again developers in Tempe get the proverbial gold mine while residents continue to get the shaft from city hall.

SNIP

Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.

Government nannies in Tempe say 82 is too hot!!!!!

Call 12: Broken AC left tenant steaming

Tempe ordinance: Apartments’ temperature can’t pass 82 degrees

By Veronica Sanchez Call 12 for Action Sat Aug 10, 2013 7:43 PM

Adrienne Lachman used to be a very active woman. Competing in various marathons, the Tempe resident enjoyed exercising outdoors. But all that came to an end when she took a nasty spill off a bicycle. After that accident, she had to have hip-replacement surgery.

These days Lachman is disabled and living in a tiny apartment complex in Tempe. She has a hard time getting around, but her stay at the Marianna Apartments was — for the most part — pleasant until a few weeks ago. She spent four miserable nights without air-conditioning after her unit broke in the middle of the night.

“It was just awful,” Lachman said. “Miserable!”

When her unit broke down, Lachman first complained to her apartment manager. She said she got nowhere. “First of all, they don’t answer their phone. All you get is just an answering machine,” she said.

Frustrated, she then complained to housing officials at the city of Tempe. Lachman said they told her about the city’s ordinance — which states no rental home or apartment can be warmer than 82 degrees indoors on a hot day. When city officials visited Lachman’s apartment complex, she said her apartment was 98 degrees inside. Lachman said city officials suggested she move into a hotel until the situation was resolved. Frustrated, she reached out to Call 12 for Action.

A day after that happened, Lachman said her broken air-conditioning unit was replaced with a brand-new one.

Spokesman Lynette Fleming with Infinity Wealth Real Estate, the company that manages the Marianna Apartments, said mangers at the complex were more than willing to help out Lachman after her air-conditioning unit broke down. Fleming said Lachman’s unit broke on a Sunday and they called her the following Monday to see how they could get her a new unit.

“We did reach out to Adrienne as soon as she complained and we were in compliance.” Said Fleming. “But we were at the mercy of an air-conditioning vendor, and these things take time.”

Despite the fact that Fleming said the decision to replace the air-conditioning unit was already in the works, Lachman is thankful to Call 12 for Action and believes our volunteer expedited the resolution. “It’s just so nice that someone cares. I just felt so helpless in this situation,” Lachman said.

Most people are in prison for victimless drug war crimes

After victimless drug war crimes most people are in prison for weapons violations

Victimless drug and gun crimes are why most people are in Federal prisons.

51 percent of federal prison inmates are there for victimless drug war crimes. In the above graph the second highest number of people are in federal prisons for weapons violations. The article didn't give a percent for weapons violations.

Source

Eric Holder is cutting federal drug sentences. That will make a small dent in the U.S. prison population.

By Dylan Matthews, Published: August 12 at 2:50 pm

Populations at federal prisons have grown, but state prisons are the real problem.

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Monday that the Justice Department will no longer charge nonviolent drug offenders with serious crimes that subject them to long, mandatory minimum sentences in the federal prison system. As my colleague Sari Horwitz explains, Holder “is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences.”

He’s also expected to call for the expanded use of prison alternatives, such as probation or house arrest, for nonviolent offenders and for lower sentences for elderly inmates. And he’ll endorse legislation by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would increase federal judges’ flexibility in sentencing nonviolent drug offenders.

The changes Holder wants will likely make a big difference at the federal level. But that won’t be enough to solve America’s mass incarceration problem.

Focusing on drug offenses is a smart way to go about reducing the federal incarceration rate. According to data in Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?, a new book by UC – Berkeley’s Steven Raphael and UCLA’s Michael Stoll, the most serious charge for 51 percent of federal inmates in 2010 was a drug offense. By comparison, homicide was the most serious charge for only 1 percent, and robbery was the most serious charge against 4 percent.

Tougher drug sentencing accounts for much of the increase in the incarceration rate. “If you go back and decompose what caused growth in the federal prison system since 1984, a large chunk can be explained by drug offenses, around 45 percent,” Raphael says. The other big category accounting for the federal increase is weapons charges, such as the five-year mandatory minimum faced by drug offenders caught with guns. Raphael estimates that that accounts for 18 to 19 percent of the increase.

There’s also been an increase in incarcerations on immigration charges, with the rest of the increase in other areas. But there’s no doubt that the biggest category of crime behind the increase in the federal incarceration rate is drugs. Easing up on drug sentencing would make a big dent.

The states are different

But the federal system isn’t really where the action is. The most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) estimates find that there are 1,353,198 people incarcerated at the state level and 217,815 incarcerated federally. So about 13.9 percent of U.S. prisoners are in federal institutions; the other 86.1 percent are in state facilities. And most prisoners at the state level are not there for drug crimes.

In 2004, about 20 percent of state-level inmates were incarcerated on drug convictions, Raphael and Stoll find. Compared with the federal population, those incarcerated at the state level are much likelier to have committed violent offenses. In 2004, 14 percent were in prison for homicide, 9 percent for rape or sexual assault, 12 percent for robbery and 8 percent for aggravated assault. In 2011, it was much the same, according to BJS stats on state inmates serving sentences of a year or more. Fifty-three percent of inmates were in prison for violent offenses, 18.3 percent for property crimes, 10.6 percent for “public order” offenses such as drunk driving, weapons possession or vice offenses, and 16.8 percent for drug convictions.

Bjs state breakdown

Raphael and Stoll’s estimates of what’s accounting for the higher incarceration rates suggest that violent crimes are a big part of the state-level story. They find that harsher sentencing for violent offenders explains 48 percent of growth in incarceration rates, compared with about 22 percent attributable to increases in drug sentencing, and 15 percent due to increases in property crime and other sentences.

Then again, most people who go through state criminal justice systems do so on drug offenses. If you look at admission rates, rather than incarceration rates, at the state level, drugs become a much bigger part of the picture. For admissions, Raphael and Stoll find “relatively modest increases for violent crimes and property crimes and pronounced increases for drug offenses, parole violations, and other less serious crime.” And while higher admissions for less serious crimes with shorter sentences don’t affect the incarceration rate as much as increases in sentencing for serious crimes, they do dramatically affect the lives of those admitted, who have to find work as ex-offenders and live with the sundry restrictions states impose upon those who’ve served time.

It’s not hopeless

Holder is taking a fairly plausible approach to reducing the U.S. incarceration rate at the level where he can effect it. But that’s not the level that matters most, and if we were to get serious about reducing the state-level incarceration and admissions rates, we need to talk not just about reducing sentences for drug crimes but also about reducing prison admissions for drug offenses, and perhaps also lowering sentences for property crime and even violent offenses, particularly robbery.

There has been growing enthusiasm for reforming state sentencing laws, even backed by many conservatives. The American Legislative Exchange Council has joined the cause, creating model legislation for loosening state mandatory minimum laws. Especially if it’s not just limited to drug offenses, that kind of reform could greatly reduce the state incarceration rate.

Blockwatch grants - A big waste of money!!!!

Blockwatch grants - a government welfare program for cops???

Source

Phoenix Block Watch allocations draw questions

Youth programs get portion of crime-prevention money

by Connie Cone Sexton - Aug. 8, 2012 11:01 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

Since 2008, more than $1.5 million of taxpayer money for Phoenix neighborhood crime prevention that could have been awarded to traditional Block Watch programs was given to programs designed to steer youths from crime, even though some question whether the latter is effective.

An Arizona Republic analysis of the past five years of Phoenix Neighborhood Block Watch grant awards found that more than one in five grants benefited youth programs, including Wake Up Clubs, sports or academic programs.

The money was used to take children to Lake Pleasant, the Arizona Science Center, Kartchner Caverns and other destinations as a reward for participating in a Phoenix police-led after-school program and for completing community-service projects.

Meanwhile, at least 15 traditional Block Watch grant applicants initially received no funding this year from the annual pool of $1.2 million, despite requests for items such as security lighting and cameras to catch graffiti vandals. However, at least three of those groups were later granted at least partial funding on appeal. The Phoenix City Council is expected to vote on final allocations in the next few weeks.

Crime-prevention specialists, while acknowledging the benefits of teaching children values like respect for police officers and community service, question whether the emphasis -- to deter children from a life of crime -- is effective. [So one of the things these Blockwatch grants do is brainwash the kiddies into worshiping cops! I bet Hitler and Stalin's Blockwatch grants did the same thing]

Voters created the Phoenix Neighborhood Block Watch Grant Program with Proposition 301, a sales-tax increase passed in 1993. Today, those who oversee it are divided over the best way to fight crime. For some, it's getting neighbors to monitor their streets, installing security lighting or Block Watch signs, using walkie-talkies for neighborhood patrols and holding community events to promote crime prevention. For others, it means continuing to invest in programs for youth.

Since 2008, more than $36,000 paid for youth sports at Granada East School in central Phoenix. In May, the City Council approved $7,600 for 2012-13 to pay coaches, referees, league fees and transportation for boys and girls to participate in basketball, soccer, baseball and softball. [Sounds like the money we were told was going to prevent crime is used for sports programs.]

In 2011, the Wilson Coalition neighborhood in southeast Phoenix received $9,800 to pay for after-school playground, library and gym supervisors for students at Wilson Elementary School.

Phoenix officials said there is anecdotal evidence that youth programs curb crime but could not provide research to back that up. [Translation - trust us, we know what we are doing even if it doesn't look like it.] Some members of the city Block Watch Oversight Committee question the investment.

"They sound like good programs, but do they really prevent crime? An argument can be made that it's not," said John Schroeder, a member of the City Council-appointed Block Watch Oversight Committee, which reviews grant applications and makes recommendations.

Every year, neighborhood groups in Phoenix may apply for up to $10,000 for a crime-prevention project. The Phoenix Police Department, which administers the Block Watch program, presents the committee's recommendations to the City Council. The newest round of grants were approved in May without discussion.

For the fiscal year that began July 1, about $224,000 has been designated for 24 Wake Up Clubs. That's 18.6 percent of total funding.

Of the 211 applications, 25 groups were initially unfunded. Among the rejections: Tatum Park Neighborhood Block Watch in northeast Phoenix, which requested $6,100 for projects that included solar lights for security; and Discovery at Villa de Paz in southwest Phoenix, which sought $9,800 for a flashlight camera to catch vandals. Funding questioned

Most of the youth money has supported about two dozen Wake Up Clubs.

The programs are held one hour a week after school and for about five weeks during the summer. Phoenix police officers serve as class leaders -- some making $60 or more an hour -- working with children on community-improvement projects or homework. [So the Blockwatch grants are also a jobs program for cops - some who are getting paid $60/hr which is about $120,000 a year]

During the past four years, each club was given $3,000 to $5,000 to pay for police officers to operate an individual program. Another $3,000 to $5,000 was awarded to fund admission and transportation costs to various attractions or to travel to community-service projects. The field trips, sometimes done in summer, are for children who participate in Wake Up Club meetings during the school year.

Phoenix police Officer Robin Ontiveros, who oversees the Wake Up Clubs, said she has seen the difference they make in the lives of children. "It's very effective because it's run by the Police Department. It's like a mentoring program." [Translation - I'm getting paid $60 and hour to brainwash kids into loving cops. I love my high paying do nothing job as a police officer]

Wake Up Clubs were started in 1995 by the department's Community Effort to Abate Street Crime, after a drive-by shooting of a 4-year-old in south Phoenix spurred residents to ask for help.

Critics say funding for Wake Up Clubs may benefit the community in the long run but hurt groups seeking money for crime-fighting programs. Schroeder questions the money going to youth programs and wants to see research and statistics on their impact.

The first year northeast Phoenix resident Jerry Cline was on the Block Watch Oversight Committee, he noticed all Wake Up Club applications were identical, seeking the same amounts of money to take kids to the same places. By the second year, he started asking questions. This year, he said there were a lot of "conversations" about whether the clubs should continue to be funded through Block Watch.

"When you get close to running out of money, you start thinking whether you should use the money to fund other projects," Cline said.

This year, for the first time since 2010, most Wake Up Club requests were not fully funded. Still, the oversight committee didn't make drastic cuts, except in the case of one school, Simpson Elementary, which last year sent kids on 30 field trips with Block Watch funds.

For fiscal 2012-13, Simpson's Wake Up Club was given $6,198 of their $10,000 request. Most clubs saw their $8,900 to $10,000 requests trimmed by only $100 or $200.

'Faith' and fairness

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said he believes children's programs "pay long-term dividends" and said he takes the oversight committee's recommendations on "faith" that it knows what's best for the community. [Translation - Trust your government masters, we know what we are doing. Even if we don't have an facts to verify that we are producing results]

Judy Welch, captain of the Villa de Paz Block Watch, near Camelback Road and 102nd Avenue, disagrees. She said her group's request for a flashlight camera to catch graffiti violators was denied. She doesn't think it's right that funding instead went to Wake Up Clubs.

"What do they have to do with crime prevention?" she asked. "Block Watch money is about graffiti and vandalism. ... You'd have to have a lot of research into following these kids for years to find out if it helped."

Abby Dunton, coordinator for the Farmington Park Block Watch near 91st Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road, said her group was denied $10,000 for an audio, solar-powered, bilingual flashing-beacon system to help pedestrians at a busy crosswalk. During an appeal to the oversight committee last week, her project was approved.

For Cline, of the oversight committee, the question about Wake Up Clubs remains, "How does it deter crime?"

Early intervention

Crime prevention takes many forms, including Wake Up Clubs, said Phoenix police Officer Deb Iodice, the Block Watch Program coordinator. Officers talk to the kids about things like bullying and drugs. [More of those $60/hr jobs for cops to brainwash the kiddies????]

"You can see the wheels in their head turning," Iodice said. [Yea, and you can also see the dollars signs dancing around in the head of Phoenix police Officer Deb Iodice]

Iodice acknowledges that the city can't quantify how many crimes are prevented this way. "There's no great way to track it. I think that's a disservice, but we're here to educate people," Iodice said. [Yea, I think it great that I am getting paid $60 and hour for a job where I don't have to document that I am producing results]

She understands the criticism of using crime-prevention money for an after-school program. "Sometimes the program kind of gets a negative vibe because it costs a lot of money, but I think it's a fantastic program," Iodice said. [Yea, and she isn't even going to address the question of does it make sense to pay cops $60 and hour for programs that don't do anything other then fatten the wallets of the cops that give them.]

Daniel Morales, a prevention coordinator at Touchstone Behavioral Health, a non-profit organization that works to help young people lead productive lives, said getting kids to feel better about themselves can help keep them from underage drinking, drug use and getting into trouble. [Wile it is a non-profit organization, I bet Daniel Morales is getting paid big bucks for his part in the program. Just like the cops are]

Miguel "Mickey" Villarreal, 14, said he took his Wake Up Club experience in middle school seriously. "It helped me open up and be more accepting of others. And they teach you the consequences of drugs and getting into trouble. I've seen my older brother grow up and make the wrong decisions." [Translation - the police brainwashing worked on Miguel "Mickey" Villarreal]

Villarreal, now a freshman at Trevor Browne High School in west Phoenix, returned this summer to volunteer with a Wake Up Club.

Republic reporters Ofelia Madrid, Matt Dempsey and Samantha Bush contributed to this article.

NSA Surveillance - Lady Liberty Raped

NSA Surveillance - TSA goons destroying America

Sacrifice a politician????

Files show NSA cracks, weakens Internet encryption

1) I have always suspected that the NSA can use it's supercomputers to crack PGP and other public key encrypted messages. But I suspected it took some effort to decrypt the messages. Is that still true??? Or it is now a trivial inexpensive task for NSA to read messages that are encrypted with PGP and other public key??

2) Just what are these "secret portals" or "hooks" that the NSA has created??? I suspect they are hooks that tell the encryption software used by HTTPS encryption to create encrypted data that is easily decrypted by NSA and other government agencies.

3) This shows that it is really not safe to put ANYTHING that you would like to keep secret from anybody, especially the government on the internet. Same goes for putting the data on telephone lines, radio waves or any public communication method.

Files show NSA cracks, weakens Internet encryption

By Michael Winter USA Today Thu Sep 5, 2013 4:51 PM

U.S. and British intelligence agencies have cracked the encryption designed to provide online privacy and security, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show.

In their clandestine, decade-long effort to defeat digital scrambling, the National Security Agency, along with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have used supercomputers to crack encryption codes and have inserted secret portals into software with the help of technology companies, the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica reported Thursday.

The NSA has also maintained control over international encryption standards.

As the Times points out, encryption "guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world."

The NSA calls its decryption efforts the "price of admission for the U.S. to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace."

A 2010 memo describing an NSA briefing to British agents about the secret hacking said, "For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies. Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable."

The GCHQ is working to penetrate encrypted traffic on what it called the "big four" service providers ---Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook, the Guardian said.

Who needs back up files when you have the NSA????

Don't think of it as the government flushing the Bill of Rights down the toilet!!!

Think of it as a free file backup service run by government goons!!!!

N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web

The article says the NSA has been getting makers of ICs or integrated circuits to put back doors into their products so the NSA can read or listen to your data before the chip encrypts it.

The article says the NSA is also working with software vendors like Microsoft getting them to put back doors in their software products, again so the NSA can grab the data before the software encrypts it.

The DEA, CIA, FBI and NSA were reading my email

Of course I was paranoid and wonder was someone else really reading my email.

Of course my first guess was that it was one of my enemies like David Dorn.

And of course the second guess was that it was the government.

Of course now after Edward Snowden released his information that the government was spying on it that I realized that the government probably was involved with illegally reading my emails several times.

I also wondered why on Earth government would waste their time cracking my passwords.

Well again from the recently released information about government spying it turns out that the government wasn't cracking my passwords.

The NSA was simply twisting the arms of Google and Yahoo and getting them to give the government the passwords and email addresses of people the government considers to be criminals like me.

Of course the government's definition of a criminal seems to be any body that "thinks they have Constitutional rights" or anybody that expects the government to obey it's own laws.

And I guess by those definitions I am a criminal because I do think I have "Constitutional Rights" and I do expect the government to obey it's laws.

Of course I an not a criminal by the standards most normal people think of criminals being.

I don't steal stuff. I don't vandalize stuff. I don't destroy property.

Kolby Granville - a Felix Unger on the Tempe City Council???