Homeless in Arizona

Valley Metro: CEO approved lack of minimum service

By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com

Sat Aug 3, 2013 8:51 PM

Valley Metro is saying CEO Steve Banta approved the decision not to require that the bus company provide residents minimum southeast Valley service at all times, including in the event of a strike, a contract provision that The Arizona Republic has learned is currently mandated under Phoenix bus-service contracts.

As of late Saturday, the three-day-old bus strike was ongoing and negotiators for bus company First Transit and for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433, which represents about 400 drivers, remained at the bargaining table, aiming to broker a compromise on a new contract and get buses rolling again.

Banta previously told the Republic that he was not on the contract procurement team and that he did not know why the team decided not to include a minimum-bus-service provision.

On Saturday, following a Republic story about the lacking requirement, that has left tens of thousands of residents without bus service, Valley Metro spokeswoman Hillary Foose said, in an e-mailed statement to the Republic, that Banta approved the decision.

“What he (Banta) said…is that, while he was not part of the procurement team, Steve did approve the decision,” Foose wrote. Banta did not return a request for further comment or reaction to the company statement.

That provision may have been the key to helping prevent the ongoing strike that has shut down all bus service in the southeast Valley, Tempe Councilman Kolby Granville told the Republic on Saturday.

The 40 routes not operating account for nearly half of the total Phoenix-area bus routes. Valley residents, who endured the Phoenix and Tempe bus strike last year - which because of the minimum-service requirement maintained some bus service - waited at bus stops this week wondering why they were left without the safety net this time.

Granville said that he is among the council members who were “surprised” to find out in the days leading up to the strike that the contract approved in January for a new company to run southeast Valley bus services lacked the requirement.

The Tempe City Council and the Valley Regional Public Transportation Authority board of directors, which includes appointed representatives from Phoenix-area cities, approved the contract with First Transit. Granville and Tempe Councilman Joel Navarro said that it was a glaring oversight not to inform Tempe council members, prior to that approval, of the decision not to include the requirement.

Navarro told the Republic Friday that he has called for an internal review into why the decision was made and if the city can still make changes to the contract to include the requirement.

Tempe City Councilwoman Shana Ellis, who is Tempe’s representative on the Valley Metro board, did not return repeated requests for comment.

The Republic asked Valley Metro for names of the individuals who served on the procurement board.

“As for the names of the evaluation panel, this information is privileged,” Foose said in an e-mailed statement. “I can tell you that the panel was comprised of representatives from Valley Metro, Tempe, Mesa and Scottsdale. We also had an outside transit perspective from Denver.”

The provision, Granville said, was in Veolia’s bus contract, which operated Tempe service before it was unified with other southeast Valley cities under the First Transit contract, which took effect July 1.

Marie Chapple, a Phoenix Public Transit spokeswoman, told Republic Saturday, that if a strike was to happen against Phoenix bus companies, residents could count on some service because the city requires the safety net in its contracts with First Transit and Veolia.

“Just talking with passengers, yes, it did help (during last year’s strike,” Chapple said. “People were still able to try and find a way (to get to their destination),” she said. “We wanted that in there (because) the most important thing is to serve the people the people.”

The contract requirement isn’t just vital because it reassures Valley residents, desperate to get to work and appointments, that a regardless of a strike, and as long as they are willing to put up with longer waits, the bus company must keep some buses rolling, Granville said.

The minimum-service requirement also is tied to a hefty fine if service is not provided, he said.

Granville said the fines for not providing minimum service and the cost of flying in drivers from other properties to provide minimum service can serve as a deterrent to allowing contract negotiations to deteriorate to the point of a strike and give a bus company a significant monetary incentive to ending a strike.

“When people run the numbers, when they see how much money a strike is going to cost,” he said, “If it’s (the fine) is high enough, it would make everyone think long and hard before dealing with that punishment.”

Banta has said that there are drawbacks to requiring minimum service, including safety concerns tied to using outside drivers who are unfamiliar with the community’s bus routes.

“It’s unsafe to expect outside operators to safely use new equipment and operate routes/on roadways without training or experience,” Foose wrote.

Granville refuted that concern, saying, “I certainly wouldn’t want an untrained bus driver but if they are certified to drive a bus in Denver, they can certainly drive a bus in Phoenix.”

Chapple said that there were no safety issues tied to outside drivers operating buses during last year’s strike.

Banta also has said that although Phoenix and Tempe required Veolia to provide minimum service, which was to equate to the amount of bus service provided on Sundays, during last year’s strike Veolia was unable to meet that level.

Granville and Navarro agreed that some service is better than no service.

“I think it’s a mistake that should not be repeated in the future,” Granville said of the oversight, adding that residents who depends on public transportation and the cities that earns revenue from transit services are paying the price.

Residency of new legislator Begay questioned

Residency of new legislator Begay questioned

By Mary Jo Pitzl The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Aug 6, 2013 10:33 PM

Arizona’s newest state senator was sworn into office Tuesday amid a brewing controversy over his qualifications for the seat.

Carlyle W. Begay replaces fellow Democrat Jack Jackson Jr. for the Senate seat representing District 7, which covers a vast swath of northeastern Arizona, including the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Jackson left office to join the U.S. State Department.

But attorney Tom Ryan said he intends to ask both Attorney General Tom Horne and Apache County Attorney Michael Whiting to investigate Begay’s residency.

Ryan contends the new senator lives in Gilbert, not Ganado, based on Begay’s service on the Gilbert Development Authority, as well as Begay’s appointment to the Greater Arizona Development Authority. Also, Begay was registered to vote in Gilbert until July 22, two weeks ago, when he reregistered in Apache County.

“One-third of Arizona now, in terms of land mass, is without a sitting senator,” said Ryan, who represents Sen. Albert Hale, R-St. Michaels, who also applied for the Senate appointment. “But the town of Gilbert now has two.”

Begay brushed off questions about his residency Tuesday, saying he is a resident of Ganado. He added that he is “very familiar” with statutes and previous legal interpretations of lawmakers’ residency issue and that he is comfortable his appointment will stand.

The state Constitution requires an individual to live in the district he or she represents for one year prior to election. How that applies to Begay is unclear because he was not elected, he was appointed based on a 2-1 vote of the Apache County Board of Supervisors.

State law also limits any voter to one address for voting purposes. Ryan argues that Begay is trying to claim residency in two counties: Apache and Maricopa.

Ryan suggested Begay is a Republican plant put up to the job by Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert. But Biggs’ spokesman said the Senate president had never met Begay until his installation Tuesday as a senator.

“The first time they met was this morning,” spokesman Mike Philipsen said. “He doesn’t even know his politics.”

After the swearing-in, Begay attended President Barack Obama’s speech in Phoenix to talk up housing policy, hardly a hot spot for Republican partisans, Philipsen said.

“If he’s a Republican plant, we’re not doing very well,” he said.

FBI hacking squad used in domestic investigations

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FBI hacking squad used in domestic investigations, experts say

Suzanne Choney NBC News

The FBI is using its own hacking programs for installing malware and spyware on the computers of suspected terrorists or child pornographers, a tactic that is drawing attention in the wake of disclosures about the domestic online surveillance of Americans.

Among the programs is one known by various names, including the Remote Operations Unit and Remote Assistance Team, which uses private contractors to do the actual hacking of suspects. The contractors can send a virus, worm or other malware to a suspect's computer, giving law enforcement control of a wide range of activities, from turning a computer's webcam on and off to searching for documents on the machine, says Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

"In the last few years the FBI has created a team that has solely focused on delivering what we call malware — viruses and worms — to people's computers to get control of them," he told NBC News.

The FBI was contacted Monday by NBC News for comment, but has not yet responded. If we hear back, we will update this story. The agency, believed to be behind a recent large-scale malware attack, declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal about the hacking issue. Meanwhile, CNET reports that the FBI has reportedly developed software to help intercept "metadata" — information like the websites visited and email addressed used by an individual — and it wants Internet providers to allow the agency to install the software, but is meeting with resistance.

Mark Rasch, former head of the Department of Justice's Computer Crimes Unit who has worked with the FBI in the past, said the existence of the hacking team is well-known, and that there are other similar teams, coordinating with private contractors.

"There's a whole bunch of groups in the FBI that do this," Rasch, now an independent consultant, told NBC News. "There's one that interfaces with telephone companies, another with Internet providers. These guys make 'critters' — malware, a bug, virus, a worm — that can infect the computer, the cellphone ... any kind of communication device."

However, he said, the FBI is obtaining court-approved warrants or wiretap orders to do the surveillance.

"If I'm going to turn on your camera on your laptop, I'm going to need to go through the same legal process that I would need in order to install a camera in your house," he said. "There are exceptions to the warrant requirement, but I would be surprised if they were doing this without a warrant or some kind of legal process."

Soghoian said he is not so sure that is the case. "We don't know much about what legal standards they follow," he said.

Earlier this year, he said, "we learned that the FBI had gone to a federal magistrate in Texas to ask for a warrant authorizing the delivery of malware that would take over a target's webcam, and download files from their computer. That judge said no, because he believed that covert webcam use required a wiretap order not just a warrant. The judge was also concerned that the government hadn't identified how it would make sure that only the court-approved target of the surveillance would be spied on, and not anyone else."

Alan Butler, appellate advocacy counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told NBC News that while the "government's access to hacking tools has been known for some time," until recently it "was not clear that they were being used in domestic criminal investigations."

"I don't think it is clear that a warrant or judicial order is sufficient to support the use of intrusive hacking tools," he said in an email. "These tools can cause damage to hardware and software, and allow the monitoring of personal communications and even audio-visual surveillance surrounding electronic device."

Butler believes the FBI's "authority to use these hacking tools has not been clearly established, and there should be a public review of the legality of this program."

Soghoian agrees. "What I'm focused on is that we haven't had a proper debate on this. There was no law giving the FBI authority to do this."

Rasch says the "real problem isn't the FBI or the law; it's technology," and the nature of malware, or "critters" that are "hard to control."

Malware does not discern who is using a device and the innocent may wind up getting hurt, or having their privacy invaded as collateral damage in cyber-spying.

"It's hard for me to write a virus that will only capture your actions on a computer without also capturing your kids using it to do their homework or your daughter getting undressed in front of a Web camera," he said.

Check out Technology and TODAY Tech on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

FBI informants authorized to break the law 5,600 times

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Licensed criminals: FBI informants authorized to break the law 5,600 times in one year

Published time: August 05, 2013 00:55

Edited time: August 06, 2013 09:30

In at least 5,658 cases in a single year alone, the FBI authorized its informants to commit crimes varying from selling drugs to plotting robberies, according to a copy of an FBI report obtained by USA Today.

After much redacting by the authorities, the watered-down FBI's 2011 report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that agents had been authorizing 15 crimes a day on average, in order to get the necessary information from their informants.

The document does not indicate the severity of the crimes authorized by the agency, nor does it include material about violations that were committed without the government's permission. It just sites a number of 5,658 Tier I and II infractions committed by criminals to help the bureau battle crime.

According to the Department of Justice Tier I is the most severe and includes “any activity that would constitute a misdemeanour or felony under federal, state, or local law if engaged in by a person acting without authorization and that involves the commission or the significant risk of the commission of certain offenses, including acts of violence; corrupt conduct by senior federal, state, or local public officials; or the manufacture, importing, exporting, possession, or trafficking in controlled substances of certain quantities.”

The Tier II includes the same range of crimes but committed by informants acting without authorization from a federal prosecutor but only from their senior field manager in FBI.

In the past, the newspaper revealed, the violations ranged from drug dealing to bribery.

As an example of severe crime committed by an authorized informant, the newspaper references the case of James Bulger, a mobster in Boston who was allowed by the Federal government to run a gang ring in exchange for insider information about the Mafia. Since then, the US Justice Department ordered the FBI to track and record the wrongdoings of the informants, results of which are due annually.

The FBI remains secretive about its informants. It is known that in 2007, the FBI estimated that around 15,000 confidential sources were employed by the bureau.

The Justice Department has requirements in place which spell out the rules of engagement with informants and “otherwise illegal activity.” Authorization of violent crimes are not allowed by field agents and serious offenses must first be approved by federal prosecutors. But as the publication notes, the FBI’s Inspector General concluded in 2005 that the agency routinely failed to abide by those rules.

The FBI’s scheme to gather information using such methods is believed to be only the tip of the iceberg as other local, state and federal agencies also reportedly engage in similar practices. The FBI’s share of criminal prosecutions in court only amount to 10 percent of all criminal cases.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the FBI, Denise Ballew, declined to comment the report saying only that the circumstances in which the bureau allows its informants to break the law are "situational, tightly controlled.

Threats Test Obama’s Balancing Act on Surveillance

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Threats Test Obama’s Balancing Act on Surveillance

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

Published: August 9, 2013

WASHINGTON — President Obama has said he wants eventually to scale back drone strikes and steer the country away from a single-minded focus on counterterrorism. But in response to a vague yet ominous terror warning in recent days, his administration shut down nearly two dozen American embassies and consulates and waged an intense drone campaign in Yemen.

The Obama administration on Friday released documents related to the legal rationale for surveillance efforts.

American officials speak of the need for vigorous debate about controversial National Security Agency programs revealed by Edward J. Snowden, and Mr. Obama on Friday promised greater accountability to keep the surveillance state in check. Yet his underlying message was clear: the expansive monitoring of telephone and electronic communications would continue because the safety of the country depended on it.

America’s war on terrorism may one day end, as Mr. Obama said in a speech in May, but until that happens the president has given every indication that it will be fought in much the same way it has for nearly 12 years. Even Mr. Obama’s promise of more transparency appeared to fail an instant test during his Friday news conference. Asked about the flurry of American drone strikes in Yemen, which have been reported by every news outlet, Mr. Obama demurred.

“I will not have a discussion about operational issues,” he said.

Mr. Obama, who ran for office in 2008 against what he described as the excesses of counterterrorism under President George W. Bush, has occasionally expressed ambivalence about drone strikes and aggressive surveillance. But with Republicans ever ready to pounce with accusations that he has made the country less safe, he has declined to abandon any of the tools used by his predecessor, with the sole exception of the brutal interrogation methods once used by the C.I.A.

The government’s striking response to the reported terror threat in recent days has coincided with a wave of unprecedented skepticism about the N.S.A.’s sweeping surveillance programs since Mr. Snowden’s disclosures.

When Mr. Snowden began releasing secret documents two months ago, Mr. Obama said he welcomed a debate on the trade-offs of N.S.A. surveillance and privacy. But the debate has grown far larger than administration officials anticipated, with lawmakers of both parties in Congress and half of Americans in polls calling for curbs on the agency.

On Thursday, two small companies providing secure e-mail to customers added their voices. Lavabit and Silent Circle announced that they would shut down their e-mail services rather than give in to what they suggested was government pressure to make customers’ messages available to the N.S.A.

In a message on his Web site, Ladar Levison, the founder of Lavabit, said he was forced “to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.”

He said he was prohibited by law from explaining what had happened over the last six weeks, but the suggestion was that he was fighting a government demand for access to the e-mail of one or more customers.

Mr. Snowden’s disclosures have had a continuing, even escalating impact as journalists have continued to pore over them. On Thursday, for instance, The New York Times wrote that the N.S.A. was examining all e-mail messages in and out of the country and searching them for clues associated with terrorism or foreign intelligence.

On Friday, The Guardian, the British newspaper that has published many of Mr. Snowden’s revelations, wrote about a clause in N.S.A. rules that permits the agency to search for Americans’ names and identifying information in data about foreign targets gathered from large Internet companies.

In his remarks on Friday, Mr. Obama said he was satisfied that the N.S.A. programs were both necessary and respectful of Americans’ privacy. He acknowledged the “instinctive bias of the intelligence community to keep everything very close.” But he said he had urged America’s spies to err on the side of making more details public.

“Let’s just put the whole elephant out there, and examine what’s working,” he said.

On Friday evening, the State Department announced that nearly all of the embassies and consulates that had been closed this week would reopen on Sunday — with only the American Embassy in Sana, Yemen, remaining closed. The consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, will also stay closed, the result of what American officials said is a different threat from the one that had forced the closing of the other diplomatic posts.

With intelligence agencies try trying to piece together information about a terror plot allegedly discussed in recent weeks between senior Qaeda operatives, American drones delivered a flurry of missile strikes throughout Yemen.

Eight strikes have been carried out in Yemen in the past two weeks, a ferocious rate of drone attacks rivaled only by the two-week period after a suicide bomber killed seven C.I.A. employees at a base in Afghanistan in December 2009.

During his speech at National Defense University in May, President Obama said that targeted killing operations needed to be tightly constrained. The United States only carries out strikes against terrorists who pose a “continuing and imminent threat” to Americans, the president said, and only when it is determined it would be impossible to detain them, rather than kill them.

And, Mr. Obama said, “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injure — the highest standard we can set.”

It is yet unknown who exactly was killed in Yemen during the past two weeks. Therefore, it is hard to judge the recent strikes against those standards the president laid out in May. Specifically, did the dozens of people reportedly killed all pose a “direct and imminent threat”? And, with American officials fearing that an attack could happen at any moment, just how much care was taken before each strike to determine that no civilians were in the missiles’ path?

At the very least, this extraordinary period of killing operations in Yemen has revealed just how much the president’s stated inclination to be more judicious about drone strikes is tested in a period of perceived crisis.

Striking a balance between liberty and security is a leitmotif in many of President Obama’s speeches, and on Friday he spoke of “rebalancing” the ledger after the demands of more than a decade of war.

But the changes he announced on Friday were incremental rather than radical — more of what he referred to as “tightening the bolts” rather than dismantling the machine itself.

2 E-Mail Services Close and Destroy Data Rather Than Reveal Files

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2 E-Mail Services Close and Destroy Data Rather Than Reveal Files

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

The shutdown of two small e-mail providers on Thursday illustrates why it is so hard for Internet companies to challenge secret government surveillance: to protect their customers’ data from federal authorities, the two companies essentially committed suicide.

Lavabit, a Texas-based service that was reportedly used by Edward J. Snowden, the leaker who had worked as a National Security Agency contractor, announced the suspension of its service Thursday afternoon. In a blog post, the company’s owner, Ladar Levison, suggested — though did not say explicitly — that he had received a secret search order, and was choosing to shut the service to avoid being “complicit in crimes against the American people.”

Within hours, a fast-growing Maryland-based start-up called Silent Circle also closed its e-mail service and destroyed its e-mail servers. The company said it saw the writing on the wall — while also making it plain that it had not yet received any court orders soliciting user data.

Mike Janke, the chief executive, said the company’s customers included heads of state, members of royalty and government agencies. The company will continue its encrypted phone and text messaging service. Mike Janke, left, and Phil Zimmermann of Silent Circle, who saw the writing on the wall.Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post, via Getty Images Mike Janke, left, and Phil Zimmermann of Silent Circle, who saw the writing on the wall.

In effect, both businesses destroyed their assets — in part or in full — to avoid turning over their customers’ data. Such public displays are far more difficult for large companies to make, and help explain why the most public efforts to challenge secret government orders have come from small companies and nonprofits.

“Providers are in a bind,” observed Orin Kerr, a law professor who specializes in surveillance law at George Washington University. “They need to respect the privacy rights of customers in order to keep customers, but they also have an obligation to comply with the law. A small company can say, ‘Rather than comply with the law, we will go under.’ But Verizon is not going to do that.”

He added: “The government usually has an easier time with large companies because they have more of a long-term need to have good relations with the government.”

Large Internet companies have moved more quietly and cautiously, addressing consumers’ concerns about government requests only after information about secret orders was leaked by Mr. Snowden. This week, technology industry executives and lobbyists attended meetings at the White House.

In an effort to address public concern about the government’s surveillance programs, President Obama on Friday announced the creation of a task force to advise the government about how to balance security and privacy. He also said he supported a proposal to change the procedures of the secret court that approves electronic spying under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The level of secrecy appeared to be a particular frustration for Mr. Levison. On the Lavabit site Thursday afternoon, Mr. Levison said he was legally prohibited from explaining why he had been compelled to suspend operations. “I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot,” he wrote.

“This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without Congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States,” he added.

Silent Circle’s chief executive, Mr. Janke, said executives at his company — the founders include Philip R. Zimmermann, who created the original e-mail encryption protocol known as Pretty Good Privacy — had opted to follow Lavabit’s example, even before being served with a government order.

He said the incident was a reminder of a fundamental flaw with e-mail technology. An “aggressive” government, he said, can extract e-mail data from any company, no matter how good the company’s encryption tools. Keys to unlock its customers’ encrypted communications had been stored on the company’s servers. Silent Circle destroyed that data, the digital equivalent of a library setting fire to its membership records to keep the government from knowing who checked out what books.

Silent Circle’s text and phone service uses somewhat different technology. The encryption keys are generated between two users as they are communicating and then destroyed. It is aptly called ephemeral encryption.

Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer, applauded Lavabit’s decision, pointing out that its self-destruction was made possible because it had no shareholders to answer to.

“Could you imagine what would happen if Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page decided to shut down Facebook or Google rather than answer National Security Letters? They couldn’t. They would be fired,” Mr. Schneier wrote on his blog. “When the small companies can no longer operate, it’s another step in the consolidation of the surveillance society.”

Before Lavabit, there was Calyx Internet Access, a small Internet service provider and Web hosting company, that challenged the constitutionality of a secret National Security Letter in 2004. Four Connecticut librarians likewise won their gag order challenge under a so-called National Security Letter in 2006. And a similar challenge was brought by a nonprofit digital library, called the Internet Archive; the government had sought information about one of its users, and it won its challenge to a gag order in 2008.

The most closely watched ruling on secret orders came this year. The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation appealed to a United States District judge to lift a gag order issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation through a national security letter. The court said the gag order was unconstitutional.

Large companies have pushed back more quietly. Yahoo is the only company known to have challenged a gag order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And a coalition of companies, including Google and Microsoft, which sit on a trove of personal communications, have appealed to the Obama administration to be able to disclose just how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court orders they receive.

According to Justice Department figures, in 2012, government authorities made 1,856 data requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the vast majority for electronic surveillance, and another 15,229 requests through National Security Letters.

Nicholas Merrill, the owner of Calyx, received one such letter in early 2004 under the Patriot Act. He closed his business within months. “I was terrified they were going to drag me away,” he said Friday.

It took him years to challenge the court order. He still cannot discuss its contents, he can only acknowledge its existence. His actions, he said, were possible only because his company was small and he was not beholden to shareholders. “In a way being a small company is quite liberating,” he said.

Mr. Merrill said he immediately empathized with Mr. Levison’s plight. “I would imagine he feels so strongly about this that he’s willing to sacrifice his own business and he’s willing to risk angering all his client base for this basic principle,” he said. “I can totally relate to where he’s coming from.”

Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the nature of a gag order at issue in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s federal court appeal. The order was issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation through a national security letter, not by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

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

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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.

Legal fight brews on impairment in medical-marijuana DUIs

Arizona's medical marijuana law says people with medical marijuana prescriptions or recommendations are they are called can't be arrested for DUI simply because they have marijuana metabolites in their body, but the cops have decided to ignore Prop 203 and arrest medical marijuana patients for DUI solely because they have microscopic traces of marijuana in their body.

I believe Arizona's DUI/DWI laws are among the strictest in the nation and if even a microscopic trace of marijuana is detected in your body you are consider guilty of drunk driving according to ARS 28-1381 and ARS 13-3401

28-1381.A. It is unlawful for a person to drive or be in actual physical control of a vehicle in this state under any of the following circumstance

3. While there is any drug defined in section 13-3401 or its metabolite in the person's body.

13-3401. Definitions

4. "Cannabis" ...

ARS 36-2802.D Operating, navigating or being in actual physical control of any motor vehicle, aircraft or motorboat while under the influence of marijuana, except that a registered qualifying patient shall not be considered to be under the influence of marijuana solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment.

Source

Legal fight brews on impairment in medical-marijuana DUIs

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Aug 7, 2013 10:54 PM

Medical-marijuana cardholders in Arizona who drive after using the drug may face a difficult legal choice: their driver’s license or their marijuana card. If they use both, they could be charged with DUI.

Valley prosecutors say that any trace of marijuana in a driver’s blood is enough to charge a motorist with driving under the influence of drugs [per ARS 28-1381.A and ARS 13-3401] and that a card authorizing use of medical pot is no defense. [per ARS 36-2802.D - "a registered qualifying patient shall not be considered to be under the influence of marijuana solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment"]

But advocates of medical marijuana, which voters approved in November 2010, argue that the presence of marijuana in a person’s bloodstream is not grounds for charging drivers who are allowed to use the drug. [again per ARS 36-2802.D]

The legal battle over the rights of medical-marijuana cardholders to drive while medicating is being fought in the state’s court system. Motorists convicted in municipal courts, which typically rule it unlawful for a driver to have any trace of marijuana in his or her blood, are appealing cases to Superior Court, where judges’ decisions could set precedents for how the medical-marijuana law applies to Arizona drivers.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia authorize the use of marijuana for medical purposes, making marijuana-related DUIs an issue for police, prosecutors and politicians nationwide.

The biggest issue is deciding what blood level of marijuana makes a driver impaired, similar to the way blood-alcohol levels determine when a person is legally drunk. [Arizona's DUI laws say any microscopic trace of an illegal drug is an automatic conviction for DUI, but Arizona's medical marijuana law says this does not apply to people with medical marijuana prescriptions or recommendations]

In Arizona, the confusion over interpretation of the Medical Marijuana Act stems from its inception because prosecutors and police didn’t have the chance to weigh in before it went to voters in 2010. [it's not confusion, police and prosecutors have decided to ignore Prop 203 which says - "a registered qualifying patient shall not be considered to be under the influence of marijuana solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment"]

Prosecutors say Arizona law allows motorists who are not impaired to drive with prescription drugs in their system if they are using them under doctors’ orders.

The problem for marijuana cardholders is that pot can’t be prescribed, only recommended, offering no legal grounds for a motorist to drive with even trace amounts of the drug in their system, according to prosecutors. [wrong Prop 203 very specifically excludes people with medical marijuana prescriptions - "a registered qualifying patient shall not be considered to be under the influence of marijuana solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment"]

For most driving-under-the-influence-of-marijuana cases, the drug charge is secondary to the charge of driving while impaired. Arizona’s DUI laws have three aspects: driving while impaired to the slightest degree, driving under the influence of alcohol and driving under the influence of drugs.

The handful of cases making their way through the courts grew out of traffic stops, where drivers are typically cited for both driving while impaired to the slightest degree and driving under the influence of drugs.

Attorneys for the accused say they are willing to argue about impairment, which would allow a drug expert hired by the defense to counter testimony from a police drug-recognition expert, but that a suspect’s legal participation in the state’s medical-marijuana program should provide a defense to the DUI-drug charge if there is no evidence of impairment.

Prosecutors in Mesa and other jurisdictions have successfully argued to keep juries from hearing information about a suspect’s medical-marijuana card, which could be appealed.

“They can make that argument (about impairment) and I think it’s a fair one to make. What they can’t do is preclude a jury from hearing that he has a medical-marijuana card,” said Craig Rosenstein, an attorney representing a DUI-drug suspect in Mesa. “The idea that he would be able to beat the (DUI-drug) charge is impossible unless the jury can hear that they have a medical-marijuana card. Otherwise, he’s just a kid smoking weed and he got caught.”

Morgan Jackson Doyle, 24, was coming back from the Salt River on Memorial Day 2012 when he was stopped at a sobriety checkpoint by Mesa police near Power Road and the Red Mountain Freeway.

An officer said Doyle had reddened eyes and a raspy voice, which prompted him to ask whether Doyle had recently smoked marijuana, according to police.

Rosenstein, Doyle’s lawyer, said Doyle gave the officer his medical-marijuana card with his driver’s license, “out of an abundance of truth.”

Doyle was put through a series of field-sobriety tests, some of which indicated impairment while others did not, before a trained drug-recognition officer was called to put Doyle through more thorough tests that look for clues of drug use.

The drug-recognition expert determined it was not safe for Doyle to drive, police said. He was cited for driving while impaired to the slightest degree and driving under the influence of drugs.

Blood tests later showed Doyle had the psychoactive component of marijuana in his blood, but in an amount that falls below levels some scientists consider the threshold for impairment.

A judge in Mesa refused to allow Doyle to introduce the card at his trial, prompting his lawyer to seek a ruling in Superior Court, which sent the case back to Mesa. If the court rules as expected, attorneys said the case will be appealed.

“I think it’s ridiculous. Voters in Arizona adopted the Medical Marijuana Act, whether politicians agree, or not,” Rosenstein said. “My concern was, if this isn’t isolated to Mesa, in theory that could make bad law for the entire state.”

Phoenix prosecutors have taken the same stance on drug DUIs for marijuana cardholders, in part, because the drug does not come with any of the same controls as a standard prescription, said Beth Barnes, the city’s traffic-safety resource prosecutor.

The potency of marijuana can vary among dispensaries that sell to patients, and doctors’ recommendations do not have dosage limits and warning against operating heavy machinery that prescriptions usually carry, she said.

Those and other factors mean possession of a card is not relevant in DUI cases, Barnes said.

Aaron Carreón-Ainsa, Phoenix’s chief prosecutor, said he understands it is legal for authorized patients to use medical marijuana, but that right can infringe on other privileges they might enjoy.

“For those people who have medical-marijuana cards, OK, it’s legal. Fine,” Carreón-Ainsa said. “But don’t come to this building because you’ve been driving. Just take it and don’t drive.”

Blood concentration

Though some states have tried to attach a number to impairment, experts say the practice is complicated by a number of factors including the patient’s metabolism and smoking frequency.

A 10-year study of more than 8,700 DUI-drug cases in Sweden led researchers to conclude that zero-tolerance policies were probably most effective because they help identify suspects whose concentration-level might have fallen below an arbitrarily set limit while waiting to give a blood sample.

“Scientists have found it virtually impossible to agree upon the concentration of a psychoactive substance in blood that leads to impairment in the vast majority of people,” the researchers wrote.

Colorado legislators consistently rejected proposals to link impairment with a particular amount of marijuana in a driver’s blood, but this year passed a law allowing prosecutors to presume impairment if that level is above 5 nanograms per milliliter. Defense attorneys argue that 5 nanograms is an arbitrary amount that has no bearing on impairment.

“We need to stop looking at a meaningless number, and in the case of Arizona, not only a meaningless number but a cruel and unusual application of it: you punish somebody on a Monday morning for them killing their pain on a Friday night,” said Lenny Frieling, a Colorado attorney and medical-marijuana advocate.

“I don’t want impaired drivers on the road. The key in my mind is looking at whether somebody really is or is not impaired. If they’re impaired, I don’t care which drug impaired them.” [but Arizona's DUI laws in ARS 28-1381 say that anybody with a detectable amount of an illegal drug is considered guilty of DUI even if they ARE NOT impaired - and a person can have marijuana metabolites in their body weeks after using marijuana]

Frieling is developing a mobile test that gauges factors, including memory and balance, that could help determine impairment, but without years of clinical trials and research about marijuana concentrations that equate to impairment, the issue often relies on police drug-recognition experts and interpretation of state laws.

Courts within the same states have been inconsistent in applying the law.

A Michigan man was charged with driving a car with a prohibited substance in his system after he told an officer during a traffic stop that he was an authorized medical-marijuana cardholder and had smoked five hours earlier.

A judge concluded that the state’s medical-marijuana law protected him from prosecution unless police could prove he was impaired. Another court agreed before the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the judge’s order and determined that legislators deemed it unsafe for a motorist to drive with any amount of marijuana in their system.

The Michigan Supreme Court reversed that Appeals Court decision earlier this year and found that the state’s medical-marijuana law authorized participants to have traces of marijuana in their bloodstream so long as they were not impaired while driving.

The Michigan driver’s blood contained 10 ng/ml of the active marijuana metabolite — twice the limit adopted in Colorado — but the justices said the amount was not enough to constitute driving under the influence without evidence of impairment.

“The MMMA (Michigan Medical Marihuana Act) shields registered patients from the internal possession of marijuana,” the court ruled. “The MMMA does not define what it means to be ‘under the influence’ but the phrase clearly contemplates something more than having any amount of marijuana in one’s system and requires some effect on the person.”

Arizona’s medical-marijuana users should be afforded similar protections when they are not impaired, say the law’s supporters.

Andrew Myers, campaign manager for the organization that got the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act on the 2010 ballot, said law enforcement should not base an arrest solely on the presence of marijuana in a cardholder’s system.

“The presence of metabolites alone shall not constitute impairment under the law — period,” he said. He said the program’s language was “very mindfully” written to avoid cases such as the Mesa case.

“There’s absolutely no way that, if challenged in court, that a conviction would stand — the law is absolutely clear on this point,” Myers said. “You could medicate on a Friday and get pulled over on a Monday two weeks later. It’s that ridiculous — it would absolutely preclude any medical-marijuana cardholder from operating a motor vehicle at any time if they were an active patient. And that’s ridiculously onerous and it’s not reflective of reality for a person who medicates.”

Myers said law enforcement should propose legislation to establish a legal standard of impairment: “Until that point, I think the law needs to favor the citizenry,” he said. [Arizona's medical marijuana law clearly says it is illegal to drive when stoned on marijuana, but it also says that you are not considered guilty of DUI simply because you have marijuana metabolites in your body.]

Santa Ana to pay new city manager more than $500,000 annually

Santa Ana to pay new city manager more than $500,000 annually

David Cavazos, who was hired away from Phoenix, will be one of the highest paid city employees in California. 'You get what you pay for,' one councilwoman says.

By Paloma Esquivel

August 7, 2013, 9:29 p.m.

Santa Ana has hired away Phoenix's city manager and has agreed to an annual salary and benefits package of more than half a million dollars, instantly making him one of the highest paid city employees in California.

David Cavazos, a longtime Phoenix employee who rose through the ranks from intern to city manager during his 26-year tenure, would have a total compensation package of $558,625 in his first year in Santa Ana.

Only the city manager in tiny Indian Wells is listed as having a higher salary and benefits package at $677,172, according to the state controller's office, which most recently released data for 2011. That paycheck included a severance payout to the city manager, who was stepping down .

In Santa Ana, Cavazos will earn a base salary of $315,000, the same basic salary he made as the chief executive in Phoenix, which has a population of 1.47 million. Santa Ana has a population of about 330,000.

With benefits, the city expects to pay Cavazos $558,625 in the first year of his contract, with the figure dropping to $515,000 in his second and third year, according to a report prepared for the City Council.

Among the benefits Cavazos will receive are $36,000 for housing in the first year and $24,000 per year after that. In addition, he will receive $7,500 in moving expenses, several sick and vacation days, and insurance benefits.

In an interview with The Times, Cavazos said he doubts he'll reap all of the benefits allotted to him in his contract.

"I haven't taken a sick day in 10 years. Some of those costs are not going to occur," he said.

"I'm not leaving for the money. I'm not going there for the money. Just like I came here for an opportunity, I'm going to Santa Ana for an opportunity."

Though much smaller than Phoenix, Santa Ana is the county seat in Orange County and a political power base. But the densely packed city has struggled with budget problems in recent years.

Cavazos noted that he helped Phoenix emerge from a $277-million budget deficit and that it now has "the highest contingency fund in city history."

Santa Ana leaders praised Cavazos for his experience and said they believe he will help bring in economic development and federal dollars.

"You get what you pay for," Councilwoman Michele Martinez said. "We wanted the best and we didn't want to shortchange our city. He's very qualified; we didn't want to nickel and dime."

Phoenix officials gave Cavazos a $78,000 pay raise late last year, boosting his base salary to $315,000. The raise sparked controversy there. Defenders argued it would help retain a talented manager and put his pay in line with cities similar in size to Phoenix.

Santa Ana was hard-hit by the recession and housing market crash and in recent years faced steep budget cuts. At one point, there was talk of possible bankruptcy. Last year, it passed its first balanced budget after years of fiscal turmoil.

Earlier this year, the city pushed out Manager Paul Walters, who was earning a base salary of $265,000 and had previously been Santa Ana's longtime police chief. Walters was hired to help resolve the multimillion-dollar budget shortfall and was seen as an ally of longtime Mayor Miguel Pulido, who has become a minority voice on the council

"Right now we're in a much better condition than we were a couple of years ago," Councilman Vincent Sarmiento said. "We see this as bringing on somebody who has resources that were not available here in the city."

Cavazos began his career with the city as an intern in 1987. He was appointed manager in 2009. He announced he would be leaving Phoenix last week. The Santa Ana City Council approved his agreement Tuesday.

"I'm confident that with his experience in business attraction and business retention we'll be able to make up tenfold the first year the difference in salary compared to what we were paying our previous city manager," Councilman David Benavides said.

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

What’s a city manager worth?

Posted on August 9, 2013 3:43 pm by Robert Robb

What’s a city manager worth?

In the wake of David Cavazos’ departure as Phoenix city manager, there’s handwringing around city hall about whether Phoenix pays enough for the position.

In such discussions, the point is often made that someone who headed up a comparably-sized operation in the private sector would make considerably more than the $315,000 Phoenix was paying Cavazos.

I don’t know what Phoenix should pay its city manager. But that’s a terribly-flawed analogy and benchmark. A city manager has, at best, half the job that a private-sector CEO of a similarly-sized operation does.

Phoenix is a big operation: $3.5 billion in revenues, nearly 15,000 employees. [I suspect most members of organized crime would drool at being able to steal $3.5 BILLION a year. Who says crime doesn't pay. In government stealing certainly does!!!] But the city manager doesn’t have one of the principal jobs of a private-sector CEO: convincing consumers to part with their money voluntarily to purchase the company’s products or services rather than the products or services of a competitor.

For the most part, a city manager has monopoly services and captive customers. Customers don’t voluntarily purchase city services. The city collects involuntary taxes and fees to cover its costs.

A city manager is also considerably less vital to the success of the overall enterprise than a private sector CEO. Because of competition and hierarchical corporate decision-making, a company with a mediocre to poor CEO will likely experience a loss of market share quickly.

If the City of Phoenix had a mediocre city manager, chances are residents wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The water would undoubtedly still flow when you turn on the tap. The garbage would still get picked up, the streets repaired. The police and firefighters would still respond to emergencies.

A mediocre city manager would impede the city’s progress in small and subtle ways that would take years to manifest and be noticeable –probably in higher taxes and fees from inefficiency, less responsiveness to the public and a disgruntled work force. But the city wouldn’t be in danger of going out of business.

This isn’t to say that a city manager isn’t important and shouldn’t be paid well. But the job is not remotely comparable to being the CEO of a similarly-sized private sector company.

Phoenix man seeks to recall Rep. Kyrsten Sinema

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema supports the police state Patriot Act???

Kyrsten Sinema when she was in the Arizona legislator tried to flush Arizona's medical marijuana laws down the toilet by introducing a bill to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

When I first met Kyrsten Sinema it was in the anti-war movement.

But it seems that Kyrsten Sinema has sold out the anti-war movement and now supports the police state and military industrial complex.

When I knew Kyrsten Sinema she was also a gun grabber.

Last in almost every election when Kyrsten Sinema has run for office her campaign signs say she is supported by the police unions. I guess that is a good indication that Kyrsten Sinema has sold out to the police state.

Source

Phoenix man seeks to recall Rep. Sinema

By Erin Kelly Gannett Washington Bureau Fri Aug 9, 2013 3:26 PM

WASHINGTON -- A Phoenix man has applied to circulate a petition to recall U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema from office because he does not like how she voted on a measure to prevent the National Security Agency from collecting phone data on Americans as part of its intelligence-gathering efforts.

However, a spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Bennett said the secretary of state’s office would not order a recall election in Sinema’s case even if thousands of signatures are collected because the congresswoman is not bound by the state’s recall law.

In Arizona, some federal officials have signed a voluntary pledge through the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office agreeing to accept the results of any recall election, if one is called. Sinema never signed that pledge.

“Sinema didn’t sign the pledge so the entire process would end without a recall being ordered,” said Matt Roberts, Bennett’s spokesman.

No member of Congress from Arizona, even those who signed the pledge, has ever been recalled.

On Thursday, Phoenix resident Michael David Shipley applied to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, stating his intent to circulate and file a recall petition against Sinema, a freshman Democrat. He listed himself as treasurer of an organization called the “Nullify Sinema Alliance.” Another Phoenix man, Thane Eichenauer, was listed as chairman of the group.

The application objects to the fact that Sinema voted against an amendment to a defense spending bill.

That amendment, which failed after a close vote, was introduced by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and would have prevented the National Security Agency from collecting most telephone data under the Patriot Act anti-terrorism law. The agency would have been able to collect data only from people under investigation and could not have conducted broader intelligence-gathering efforts in the United States.

Shipley’s application says that Sinema “has broken her oath” to defend the U.S. Constitution by voting against the legislation.

“On July 24th, 2013, (Sinema) chose not to stand with 205 other U.S. House members in placing a limit on government snooping,” the application says. “Kyrsten Sinema chose to reject limits on NSA data collection. In doing this, she supports a ‘Big Brother’ government with no limits. We call on our fellow Arizona residents to support the recall of Kyrsten Sinema.”

Sinema, in a press release issued on the day of the vote, said she voted against Amash’s amendment because it was too broad and she feared it would interfere with the NSA’s efforts to thwart terrorist plots.

“I believe, while well intentioned, that the text of this amendment could interfere with legitimate and appropriate efforts to keep our citizens safe from harm,” Sinema said. “The broad language we considered today could have limited the ability of our national security and law enforcement community to prevent the bombing plot against the New York subway system or to quickly respond to events like the Boston bombing.”

Instead, Sinema voted for an alternative amendment by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., that prevents the NSA from storing the content of Americans e-mails and phone calls. It would allow the NSA to continue storing phone metadata. It passed 409-12.

“I believe this (Pompeo’s amendment) is a good step forward and that we can find stronger ways to protect our individual liberties,” Sinema said.

If Shipley disagrees with Sinema’s vote, he should run against her rather than trying to recall her, said Sinema campaign spokesman Rodd McLeod. Sinema is up for re-election in November 2014.

“The entire House of Representatives is up for re-election next fall, and if this gentleman wants to run against Kyrsten, it’s a free country,” McLeod said. “He should run.”

Shipley, a 38-year-old Libertarian and local activist, said opponents of Sinema’s vote shouldn’t have to wait until the regular election.

“I definitely haven’t ruled out myself or somebody else I’ve organized with running against her,” Shipley said Friday. “But why wait? Why should we sit and be unhappy and see our wishes thrown under the bus? The time to act is now, not later.”

Under Arizona law, a candidate for the U.S. Senate or U.S. House “may” file with the secretary of state a statement that says, “If elected, I shall deem myself responsible to the people and under obligation to them to resign immediately if not re-elected on a recall vote.”

Federal candidates who sign that pledge and are elected to office “shall be subject to the laws of the state relating to recall of public officers,” according to the Arizona statute.

But Sinema did not subject herself to any state recall laws since she did not sign the Arizona pledge. And a January 2012 report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service says that members of Congress are not subject to recall.

“The United States Constitution does not provide for nor authorize the recall of United States officers such as Senators, Representatives, or the President or Vice President, and thus no Member of Congress has ever been recalled in the history of the United States,” the CRS report says.

Refunds for people with bus passes effected by the bus strike

Broken water main to slow down Mesa traffic

Broken water main to slow down Mesa traffic

By Matthew Longdon The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Aug 8, 2013 8:42 PM

Mesa drivers should expect slow traffic along Broadway Road all day Friday as construction crews repair a broken water main, according to the Mesa Water Resource Department.

The water main broke late Thursday afternoon and crews were on scene that night trying to determine the extent of the damage, city spokesperson Kimberly Nelson said.

Broadway Road will be restricted Friday to one lane in both directions between Dobson Road and the Price Freeway. City officials say the restrictions could last through the weekend.

Nelson said the pipe appears to be from the 1950s or 1960s and broke from wear and tear. When it broke, it damaged the pavement, which is causing the lane restrictions, she said.

Nelson said two businesses appear to be without water due to the break. No homes reported water loss, she added.

Dealing with the government sucks!!!

Source

Lawmakers push Obama administration on customer service

Aug. 8, 2013

WASHINGTON — Dealing with the federal government can be a frustrating experience fraught with lengthy wait times and forms and seemingly unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles in all manner of programs, from Social Security to Veterans affairs to the Internal Revenue Service.

According to the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index, the federal government scored a meager 68, four points lower than the worst private industry, the information sector.

But now some lawmakers are determined to change that, including Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. He is cosponsoring the Government Customer Service Improvement Act, a bipartisan measure that passed the House last week by unanimous consent and is working its way through the Senate.

The legislation would require the administration to develop government-wide standards for customer service, a customer feedback system and regular reports on how agencies stack up with the public.

“By embedding the concept of customer service into government operations, agencies will ultimately become more efficient and effective,” Johnson said. “This is just common sense.” Difficult practice

But putting such measures into practice can be difficult. President Bill Clinton issued orders in the mid-1990s designed to improve service to levels that matched or exceeded the private sector. Congress passed a law requiring agencies to institute performance measures, including for customer service, in 2010. And President Barack Obama issued his own customer-service improvement order in 2011.

Still, the results have been mixed at best. With each agency basically setting its own customer service goals and rolling them in with overall performance standards, the measurements can be all over the board and difficult to find.

And some of the targets themselves are less than ambitious. Over at the Homeland Security Department, officials set a goal of 97 days or fewer, on average, to resolve complaints from travelers seeking redress after being improperly delayed or denied boarding at airports. The agency met that goal in 2012 with a 93-day resolution average.

“That to me is not customer service,” said Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, a cosponsor of the House version of the new legislation who added that the current system is “woefully inadequate.” ‘’There’s no consistency, there’s no standards, and that’s what we’re trying to do is to have standards.”

The American Customer Satisfaction Index, which assesses everything from expectations to complaints and loyalty, is one of the few government-wide measures of public satisfaction. Low rating

In the 2012 index, the Department of the Interior, the steward of National Parks, got the highest rating at 81, while the Treasury Department — which includes the IRS — got the lowest at 59. The overall rating is up slightly from previous years. It hit an all-time low of 65 in 2010. The highest rating was 72.3 in 2006.

But it has never really come close to meeting or exceeding private sector satisfaction.

“It’s still low, and it’s low relative to the private sector and that has been the norm over time,” Forrest V. Morgeson III, ACSI research director, said in an interview.

Johnson points to a lack of competition, saying the federal government doesn’t have to worry about someone else providing the same service. His viewpoint is backed up by the index, where the highest scoring industries are those with high levels of competition, such as the soft drink and automobile industries, which scored 84.

“Companies that have to succeed in the free market have an incentive to constantly improve customer service,” Johnson said. “Bad customer service means reduced profits and the risk of failure. Government agencies simply don’t have to respond to competition the way private companies do.”

Some say the goal itself is unrealistic, however, since the federal government does things a private company wouldn’t, such as regulate, prosecute and in the case of the IRS, collect taxes.

“As citizens, we all want to be treated well as customers, but our relationship with government is more complicated than just being a customer,” said Don Moynihan, a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president-elect of the Public Management Research Association.

And he says that despite conventional thinking, few Americans pay attention to customer service ratings, short of looking for schools for their children or hospitals when they need surgery.

“When you really have skin in the game, I think people feel motivated to seek out performance scores,” he said. “But for most of government activity, it seems too distant and unrelated to actually motivate people to pay attention.”

Cash-grab ‘Marketplace Fairness Act’ fails to live up to its name

Source

Davis: Cash-grab ‘Marketplace Fairness Act’ fails to live up to its name

Posted: Saturday, August 10, 2013 8:12 am | Updated: 8:21 am, Sat Aug 10, 2013.

Guest commentary by Drex Davis | 4 comments

A triumvirate composed of cash-hungry state legislatures, "Big Retail" led by Walmart and Amazon, and sales tax software providers have coalesced around support for the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) and have small online retailers in their crosshairs.

The MFA would compel small online sellers like me to become unpaid tax collectors for states where we have no physical presence, no representation, and no voting rights.

It imposes huge compliance costs on us and makes us vulnerable to expensive and time-consuming tax audits from 46 states, six territories, and over 500 Native American Tribal Nations.

State governments say that if the MFA passes they’ll collect an additional $23 billion in revenue. The truth is that most of that $23 billion is already collected.

According to James Gilmore III, the former Chairman of the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, 83 percent of online sales are made by big box retailers, and, therefore, collecting tax. Moreover, the remaining 17 percent of those online sales (less than 1 percent of total retail sales) are taxed through state use taxes, but the states usually choose to not collect them.

Big Retail says this law is necessary to “level the playing field” and has worked hard to convince small brick and mortar mom and pops that the Big Box down the street isn’t putting them out of business, but rather small online sellers are. Online small businesses are not at odds with small brick and mortar stores. In fact, many of us are hybrid businesses that sell both online and in-store and started selling online to survive when Walmart or Home Depot moved in down the street.

The states say they’ll provide online sellers with “free” software to help them handle the enormous compliance burden. But software doesn’t integrate itself and integration is expensive. Moreover, the software is inflexible and inadequate.

For example, it doesn’t handle multi-channel selling, an absolute necessity for online sellers. It also doesn’t integrate with many order management systems or common accounting programs, forcing us to pay for expensive upgrades. In fact, compliance costs to small online sellers range from about $20,000 to $300,000 in the first year, and remain high in the following years. For some of us, these costs are higher than our annual profits and could put us out of business.

Then there are the coming audits. Audits are time consuming, costly, and stressful. Most audit penalties result from judgment calls made incorrectly or other honest mistakes. We printed out the tax rates and exemptions we’ll have to learn and know it was 811 pages and was confusing and contradictory.

Many sales tax laws make responsible parties, not businesses, liable for tax bills, penalties, and interests, so an honest mistake and a resulting unfavorable judgment could personally bankrupt some sellers.

We’d be regulated without representation. To whom would we turn for help if a remote state follows recent IRS patterns and subjects us to an abusive audit? Who is our representative who could help protect us? No one.

Senator Jeff Flake and Representatives Matt Salmon, Dennis Schweikert, and Ann Kirkpatrick have been principled and aggressive opponents of the MFA. Representative Trent Franks also sees that the bill is flawed.

I recently met with Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors that is aggressively lobbying for the MFA because it sees it as a way to increase municipal tax receipts. We are hopeful he will also oppose the MFA. It would be wise.

According to a recent Gallup poll, a large majority of American adults oppose the MFA, including 73 percent of adults between the ages of 18-29.

Continuing to push for the MFA as it now stands not only threatens small businesses everywhere but it also puts politicians at odds with those they have been elected to represent.

• Drex Davis is a co-owner of Mesa’s Scrapbook.com and co-founder of the eMainStreet Alliance, a grassroots organization consisting of more than 650 small, online retailers. Connect with him at eMainStreet.org.

Most NY voters embarrassed by Weiner, Spitzer

Source

Most NY voters embarrassed by Weiner, Spitzer

Associated Press Mon Aug 12, 2013 6:46 AM

ALBANY, N.Y. — Most New Yorkers watching Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer in political races dominated by sex scandals want to forget about them, according to a poll released Monday.

The Siena College poll found that 68 percent of state voters and 62 percent of New York City voters are embarrassed by the national attention to the men’s candidacies.

Sixteen percent of voters statewide say the attention is “no big deal.” Just 8 percent find it entertaining.

Weiner is running for mayor and is dogged by a sexting scandal that drove him from Congress. Spitzer seeks a comeback as city comptroller. He resigned as governor in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal.

The survey found that Weiner set a record for a Siena poll, but it’s nothing to tweet home about.

Eighty percent of state voters gave him an unfavorable mark, including three-quarters of New York City voters, according to the poll. That 80 percent is the highest unfavorable rating the Siena College poll has registered. It’s higher now than when Spitzer resigned as governor and higher than the worst marks for his successor, David Paterson, who nose-dived in the polls while issuing layoffs and cutting programs during a fiscal crisis.

Spitzer isn’t doing much better. He is viewed unfavorably by 59 percent of registered voters statewide, including most New York City Democrats. Spitzer hit a 79 percent unfavorable rating shortly after he resigned while he was embroiled in the prostitution scandal.

The telephone poll questioned 814 registered voters in the state from Aug. 4-7. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

U.S. angry over release of Mexican drug lord

Hell, the American government doesn't think people in this country deserve fair trials!!!

Source

U.S. angry over release of Mexican drug lord

By Adriana Gomez Licon and Mark Stevenson Associated Press Sat Aug 10, 2013 7:46 AM

MEXICO CITY — U.S. law enforcement officials expressed outrage over the release from prison of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and vowed to continue efforts to bring to justice the man who ordered the killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

Caro Quintero was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena but a Mexican federal court ordered his release this week saying he had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes.

The 60-year-old walked out of a prison in the western state of Jalisco early Friday after serving 28 years of his sentence.

The U.S. Department of Justice said it found the court’s decision “deeply troubling.”

“The Department of Justice, and especially the Drug Enforcement Administration, is extremely disappointed with this result,” it said in a statement.

The Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents in the United States said it was “outraged” by Caro Quintero’s early release and blamed corruption within Mexico’s justice system.

“The release of this violent butcher is but another example of how good faith efforts by the U.S. to work with the Mexican government can be frustrated by those powerful dark forces that work in the shadows of the Mexican ‘justice’ system,” the organization said in a statement.

The DEA, meanwhile, said it “will vigorously continue its efforts to ensure Caro-Quintero faces charges in the United States for the crimes he committed.”

Mexican authorities did not release the full decision explaining the reasoning of the three-judge panel in the western state of Jalisco, but some experts said the ruling may have been part of a broader push to rebalance the Mexican legal system in favor of defendants’ rights, from both law-enforcement officials and the independent judicial system. Mexico’s Supreme Court has issued several recent rulings overturning cases while saying due process wasn’t followed.

However, Mexican and current and former U.S. officials alike expressed deep skepticism that correct procedures were followed in the decision to free Caro Quintero.

Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the First Appellate Court had “completely ignored” Supreme Court precedent in dismissing the case instead of referring it to the state courts that appellate judges believe should have heard it in the first place.

He said his office would get involved in the case but offered no details.

Former DEA officials familiar with the Camarena case said they doubted that Caro Quintero walked free simply due to a legally well-founded reexamination of his case. They noted a history of bribery in Mexico and a continuous need for U.S. pressure on Mexican authorities to keep Camarena’s killers behind bars.

Edward Heath was the DEA’s regional director for Mexico at the time of the Camarena killing and was present during the identification of the agent’s body from dental records.

He said Caro Quintero’s release reflected a broader lack of cooperation with the U.S. from the new Mexican government, a contrast with the policy of former President Felipe Calderon.

“You had a president that was working very close with our government in a quiet way. These people come in and so, boom, the curtain comes down,” said Heath, now a private security consultant. “It means a disrespect for our government … This is only six, seven months into their tenure and all of a sudden things are happening, not necessarily for the good.”

He said he was skeptical of the explanation that there was a justifiable legal rationale for Caro Quintero’s release.

“There’s some collusion going on,” he said. “This guy is a major trafficker. This guy is bad, a mean son of a gun.”

Caro Quintero was a founding member of one of Mexico’s earliest and biggest drug cartels. He helped establish a powerful cartel based in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa that later split into some of Mexico’s largest cartels, including the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels.

But he wasn’t tried for drug trafficking, a federal crime in Mexico. Instead, Mexican federal prosecutors, under intense pressure from the United States, put together a case against him for Camarena’s kidnapping and killing, both state crimes.

“What we are seeing here is a contradiction between the need of the government to keep dangerous criminals behind bars and its respect of due process,” said Raul Benitez, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

“The United States wants Mexico to comply with due process but it is likely that due process was not followed when many criminals were caught 10 or 15 years ago.”

Mexican courts and prosecutors have long tolerated illicit evidence such as forced confessions and have frequently based cases on questionable testimony or hearsay. Such practices have been banned by recent judicial reforms, but past cases, including those against high-level drug traffickers, are often rife with such legal violations.

Mexico’s relations with Washington were badly damaged when Caro Quintero ordered Camarena kidnapped, tortured and killed, purportedly because he was angry about a raid on a 220-acre (89-hectare) marijuana plantation in central Mexico named “Rancho Bufalo” - Buffalo Ranch - that was seized by Mexican authorities at Camarena’s insistence.

Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, a major drug trafficking center at the time. His body and that of his Mexican pilot, both showing signs of torture, were found a month later, buried in shallow graves. American officials accused their Mexican counterparts of letting Camarena’s killers get away. Caro Quintero was eventually hunted down in Costa Rica.

Caro Quintero still faces charges in the United States, but Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said it was unclear whether there was a current extradition request.

The U.S. Department of Justice said it “has continued to make clear to Mexican authorities the continued interest of the United States in securing Caro Quintero’s extradition so that he might face justice in the United States.”

Samuel Gonzalez, Mexico’s former top anti-drug prosecutor, said the U.S. government itself has been promoting, and partly financing, judicial reforms in Mexico aimed at respecting procedural guarantees for suspects, an approach Gonzalez feels has weighted the balance too far against prosecutors and victims.

“This is all thanks to the excessive focus on procedural guarantees supported by the U.S. government itself,” Gonzalez said.

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema takes a junket to Israel

Atheist Kyrsten Sinema sells out to the Jewish Christian lobbyists???

Even though US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema is an atheist in this article see seems to have sold out to the Jewish Christian lobbyists. And of course she also seems to have sold out to the military industrial complex which supplies Israel with weapons that they use to terrorize the Arabs.

"Sinema and other Democratic lawmakers were in Israel on a previously scheduled trip paid for by an arm of a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group."

Last but not least US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema attempted to flush Arizona's medical marijuana law down the toilet by introducing a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

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Political Insider: Irate Goldwater refuses to answer senator’s questions on its ties to ALEC

The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Aug 10, 2013 10:17 PM

Another assault on freedom ... Or so the Goldwater Institute believes, as it sent an indignant retort to a U.S. senator who asked the conservative think tank if it is associated with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

Specifically, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wanted to know if Goldwater served as an ALEC member, if it funded ALEC this year and if it backed ALEC’s support of model legislation promoting “stand your ground” gun laws.

The reason for the Illinois senator’s snoopiness? Durbin wrote that he needs the information as he readies a congressional hearing on the self-defense law. He’s also reaching out to other groups that have been identified as ALEC funders.

Goldwater officials fired off a letter that effectively told Durbin to stuff it.

“Simply put, especially in the wake of IRS intimidation and harassment of conservative organizations, your inquisition is an outrage,” wrote Goldwater president Darcy Olsen, litigation director Clint Bolick and policy director Nick Dranias.

They refused to answer, because, they wrote, “as free Americans, that is our right.”

For the record, media reports have identified Goldwater as an ALEC donor.

Sorry, can’t make it, I had other plans ... Wendy Rogers, the tough, bike-riding, Republican Air Force mom who’s hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in the midterm elections, was outraged that her potential Democratic rival missed President Barack Obama’s Phoenix speech this week.

“Disrespectful. Self-serving. In it for herself,” Rogers, who ran unsuccessfully in the primary last year, blustered on her Facebook page. “Today the president of the United States came to our AZ-09 district, yet our congresswoman didn’t even show perfunctory respect by at least showing up.”

Sinema and other Democratic lawmakers were in Israel on a previously scheduled trip paid for by an arm of a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group.

Arizona’s Republican members of Congress were in town. And none of them was at Obama’s speech, either.

He’s the president. ’Nuff said ... The state’s congressional delegation may have missed Obama’s speech, but the Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer’s office were well represented.

The GOP gaggle waiting to get inside the Desert Vista High School auditorium wasn’t exactly thrilled to see Insider and offered different reasons for stepping into the swarm of swooning Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader John McComish said his district includes the Ahwatukee Foothills school, so he was representing his constituents. Senate Majority Whip Adam Driggs said the commander in chief, no matter their party, is a big deal: “It’s out of respect for the office.”

Brewer chief of staff Scott Smith, general counsel Joe Sciarrotta and spokesman Andrew Wilder also attended the speech. But given Brewer’s rather scathing prepared statement that followed — “Our recovery has been made possible in spite of the president’s policies — not because of them” — they apparently weren’t impressed.

State schools Superintendent John Huppenthal arrived early and grabbed a VIP seat with a passel of Democratic lawmakers. He’s the state’s top education official, and the speech was at a school, so that’s a handy excuse if he needs one.

But, really, does anyone need an excuse to see the president?

No resign if I run ... House Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, is eying a run for the Congressional District 1 seat. And while he won’t say if he’s in, plenty of others in the political-gossip echo chamber are saying it for him.

Tobin said if he decides to take the plunge, he won’t jump out of the pool that is the Arizona Legislature. Tobin said he intends to remain speaker through the 2014 session, which would coincide with the eight-year limit on his term.

It’s bad form to abandon one office to seek another, he said.

Early prediction: If Tobin does jump into the CD1 race, look for a short session. It’s hard to campaign across a vast chunk of rural Arizona when you’re tied up in Phoenix.

Compiled by Republic reporters Mary Jo Pitzl, Mary K. Reinhart and Rebekah L. Sanders. Get the latest at politics.azcentral.com.

Arizona pension system gave out bonuses

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Arizona pension system gave out bonuses

By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Aug 11, 2013 2:05 AM

The state’s Public Safety Personnel Retirement System gave performance and retention bonuses to its highest-paid staff along with guaranteed pay raises and additional compensation the past five years, as taxpayers were bailing out the financially troubled pension trust.

The five- and six-figure bonuses and additional pay were awarded to managers and investment staff even when the pension trust posted financial losses in 2008, 2009 and 2012, The Arizona Republic has found.

The trust primarily funds police and firefighter pensions, but it also provides benefits for elected officials and correctional officers.

The state’s largest pension fund, the Arizona State Retirement System, reported only minimal bonuses over the same time period.

Last year, the contract for the public-safety system’s chief investment officer guaranteed a pay raise of $14,000, bringing his annual base pay to $254,000.

At the same time, the deputy chief investment officer received a $5,670 investment/incentive bonus after having been disciplined for admitting — in writing — that he made a sexually suggestive comment to a female employee. That bonus, in addition to a pay raise, brought that executive’s total compensation to $187,702.

Roughly $1.4 million in bonuses and additional compensation — things like retention pay, retroactive salary adjustments and relocation reimbursements — went to 14 employees between 2008 and 2012. The annual base pay for nine of those employees exceeded $100,000, while three received more than $250,000 a year in total pay. One relocation payment was for nearly $15,000, an amount not customary in state government.

The extra pay came during a time when state employees saw their pay frozen and were forced to take unpaid furlough days to help balance Arizona’s fragile budget. Alan Ecker, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Administration, said it is not typical for state employees, even executives, to receive bonuses or have employment contracts that guarantee raises.

Communities across the state have not been filling vacant police and fire department positions recently because their payments to the public-safety pension trust to offset the trust’s investment losses escalated over the last few years.

David Leibowitz, a spokesman for the more than 6,500-member Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona, said the union is not familiar with details of the trust’s bonus structure, but he said it sounded “problematic.”

“It bears some scrutiny. On the surface, it doesn’t sound right that someone would earn a bonus when the fund is losing money,” Leibowitz said.

Bonuses draw ire

The pension fund’s financial payments drew a rebuke from Gov. Jan Brewer’s office and the ire of key politicians.

Andrew Wilder, Brewer’s spokesman, said it was the governor’s view that “lucrative bonuses and payouts by state agencies are not good public policy.”

The pension system’s trust is governed by a seven-member volunteer board, which sets compensation policies and is appointed by the governor.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Kavanagh said he was astounded to learn of the pension-system bonuses, prompting him to wonder if the public-safety pension trust should be placed under the control of the Legislature.

“When you have an agency that has minimal oversight and a whole lot of money, these kinds of things can happen,” Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said. “You would like to think that government, especially in difficult economic times, would be tightening the belt, not engorging their bellies. ... It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good at all.”

Kavanagh directed legislative staff to investigate the bonus payments after learning of them from The Republic.

Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, who has pushed pension reform through the Legislature since 2011, said legislators would be shocked to learn about the bonuses and pay increases.

“There is a time and a place and circumstances for people to be entitled to bonuses for extraordinary performance,” Yarbrough said. “But I have some reservations in how it appears to be structured in these circumstances.”

Payouts defended

Michael Sillyman, one of the trust’s private attorneys, said the board has not decided whether to grant bonuses this year. The trust posted a roughly 11 percent return.

Brian Tobin, chairman of the trust and brother of Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, defended his organization’s pay structure.

“In order to attract the best talent, you have to provide the best compensation program,” said Tobin, a Phoenix Fire Department deputy chief. “We want to stay competitive and attract the best personnel.”

Sillyman’s firm, Kutak Rock, has had a long relationship with the trust. Sillyman was directed by the trust to act as one of its point people to answer questions from The Republic and to gather and review records. Sillyman said a study conducted for the trust showed that half of all public-trust funds provide bonuses based upon investment results.

“The concern is that if we were to eliminate such (compensation) programs and not make up the difference in base salary increases, we might lose critical staff and not be able to retain superior investment professionals in the future,” Sillyman wrote in an e-mail to The Republic.

The Arizona State Retirement System, whose trust is more than four times as large as the roughly $7.2 billion public-safety system’s, has provided five-figure retention bonuses only to its top administrator. No other ASRS employees were given bonuses.

Documents detailing the bonuses and related policies were obtained through the Arizona Public Records Law. The ASRS quickly responded to the newspaper’s request and released the contract of Director Paul Matson.

The public-safety trust, under Administrator Jim Hacking, fought The Republic’s request to obtain employment contracts and bonus payments made to employees. Officials initially asserted that the state Department of Administration had advised them not to release the records. When DOA officials debunked that assertion and advised pension-fund officials to release the records, they eventually relented.

Taxpayers offset losses

The board and staff for the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System also are responsible for the Corrections Officer Retirement Plan and the Elected Officials’ Retirement Plan.

Collectively, the three pension plans are part of a trust, which has a portfolio that includes investments in foreign and U.S. stocks, private equity and real estate.

The trust provides retirement benefits for more than 52,000 members of the three systems, with slightly more than 31,000 members being current, vested or retired police officers and firefighters.

All three plans are significantly underfunded when it comes to meeting current and future pension obligations. Since the Great Recession began in December 2007, the trust — like most government pension funds — has relied on hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded government entities to cover investment losses over the past few years.

Even in 2010 and 2011, fiscal years when the trust posted healthy gains, substantial payments were needed from government entities to offset previous losses.

Trust records compiled by The Republic show that between fiscal 2008 and 2012, Arizona taxpayers, on average, covered $382.7 million in annual payments to the trust. In fiscal 2007, the collective payment was $213 million.

Thousands in extra pay

From 2008 to 2012, the public-safety trust’s bonus and additional compensation payments averaged $293,891 a year.

The high-water mark came in 2008, when eight employees split $595,673. The low point came last year, when 10 employees together received $81,967 in additional pay.

Bonuses are based, in part, on a written plan and are triggered when the system’s investment returns equal or exceed specified investment benchmarks and the system’s assumed rate of return on investments, according to the trust. Bonuses also are paid based upon historical returns on investments and the opinion of management.

Records show that more than half of bonuses and additional compensation went to Chief Investment Officer Ryan Parham and Deputy Chief Investment Officer Marty Anderson.

Parham received $480,997 in extra pay from 2008 to 2012, while Anderson received $265,470.

Anderson received a $5,670 bonus last year after being disciplined in May 2012 for making comments with a “sexual overtone” to a female colleague when he told her to “sit on the copy machine.”

Doug Cole, a trust lobbyist acting as its spokesman, said Anderson received a lower score on his annual review because of the “offensive remark” and that lowered his bonus potential that year.

Anderson is recovering from a medical condition and was not available to answer questions, Sillyman said.

Anderson and Parham also have employment contracts with the trust.

Parham’s calls for a retention bonus next year of $75,000 should he stay employed through Sept. 19, 2014. Anderson’s calls for a $60,000 retention bonus next year should he be employed through March 1, 2014.

Parham draws a base salary of $254,000, and is guaranteed a raise of 5.5 percent to $268,000 on Sept. 20, according to his contract. The chief investment officer at the much larger ASRS earns $185,000 a year and has received no bonuses.

Anderson’s contract, meanwhile, calls for him to be paid $180,000 a year.

Parham was not allowed by the trust to answer questions and did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Tobin, however, said Parham and Anderson have done their jobs well, diversifying the trust’s assets so that it is not vulnerable to major swings in the stock markets.

“They did a great job exercising that strategy,” Tobin said.

Public-safety trust less healthy

Records reviewed by The Republic, however, show the public-safety trust has had mixed investment results when compared with the much larger Arizona State Retirement System.

For example, investment losses as a percentage of the total fund for the public-safety trust were not as deep as ASRS’ in fiscal 2008 and 2009, when pension funds across the country were blistered by recession-fueled losses.

But investments at ASRS outperformed the public-safety trust in fiscal 2010, 2011 and 2012 and are projected to do the same in the fiscal year that ended June 30. And the larger retirement system made money in fiscal 2012, while the public-safety trust lost value.

The ASRS trust also is much healthier than the three pension systems operating through the public-safety trust.

The ASRS trust expects a funding ratio of 74.8 percent for the most recent fiscal year, meaning its assets are sufficient to cover 74.8 percent of total benefit liabilities for current retirees and those now working toward retirement.

The Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, Corrections Officer Retirement Plan and Elected Officials’ Retirement Plan have not released their funding ratio for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The funding ratios for those plans at the end of the previous fiscal year were less healthy — between 58 and 68 percent.

A trust is considered “healthy” if it is funded at 80 percent or higher. The closer to 100 percent a trust is funded, the less money it needs from members and public employers because investment returns cover new obligations.

Matson, the ASRS director, said his investment staff has not received bonuses because the political climate has not been right. But Matson said he is considering creating a system that would provide bonuses in order to motivate and retain staff.

The nine-member ASRS board increased Matson’s base pay on June 28 to $232,451 from $225,000. Matson has received retention bonuses of $50,000 for each of the past three years. His retention bonus will increase to $60,000 a year for each of the next three years should he stay on the job, according to his new contract. No other ASRS employees have retention bonuses.

Hacking, the public-safety trust administrator, has a base salary of $234,000, and did not receive any investment-incentive bonuses from 2008 to 2012. Hacking did receive a $56,250 retention bonus in 2010.

Kevin McCarthy, an ASRS board member and president of the Arizona Tax Research Association, said Matson has put the trust for teachers and state and municipal employees on solid ground. McCarthy also said Matson is so well respected around the country that he could be recruited to another job.

“As a board, they think he (Matson) is worth every bit of what he’s being paid, and the amount he was paid was below market,” said McCarthy, whose organization acts as a taxpayer watchdog.

Kavanagh, the House appropriations chairman, called Matson’s retention bonuses as well as those at the public-safety trust “obscene” and “unbelievable.”

“This may be standard for the industry, but one has to ask: Is the industry ridiculously overpaid?” Kavanagh said.

Reach the reporter at craig.harris@arizonarepublic.com

Southeast Valley bus strike has commuters scrambling

"drivers were welcome and have the right to show up for work, although under the union agreement, they are not allowed to drive a bus"

Also that clause forced Valley Metro to indirectly support the strike by forcing them to pay drivers who are on strike, but per the contract not allowed to drive buses.

Sadly while the people vote for our elected officials, it seems these elected officials end up working for the government employees that are supposed to work for them.

I say that because in most elections the voter turnout is so small that when government employees all show up at the polls and vote for more government pork, they can and do swing elections to their side.

A good example of that is the City of Phoenix. The 3,000+ Phoenix Police officers get about 40 percent of the Phoenix budget. If the Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton shovels the pork to the cops, those 3,000 votes can easily help him win an election when the turnout is very small. After the cops, the Phoenix firemen get about 20 percent of the Phoenix budget. Again if Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton shovels government pork to the firemen, that will allow him to pick up another 1,500 votes.

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Southeast Valley bus strike has commuters scrambling

By Chris Cole, Haley Madden and Brennan Smith The Republic | azcentral.com

Thu Aug 1, 2013 8:51 AM

A bus strike hit tens of thousands of southeast Valley commuters hard Thursday morning as they scrambled to find other modes of transportation to work, appointments or health care.

At 6 a.m., the Tempe Transportation Center, a large bus hub, the whir of engines was replaced by silence. Bus benches were empty as Metro light-rail riders filed on and off their trains, which are not affected by the strike.

At 7:30, normally prime commuting time, the Chandler Park and Ride at Germann Road and Hamilton Street, the Superstition Springs Park and Ride at U.S. 60 and Power Road in Mesa, the Gilbert Park and Ride at Oak Street and Page Avenue, and the Sycamore Street Park and Ride at 1806 West Main St. in Mesa, all were empty. That was a recurring theme at bus stops across the southeast Valley.

A few riders, however, unaware that the strike is on, went to stops waiting for a bus that wasn’t coming.

Maria Garcia, 31, was waiting at Thompson Peak Parkway and Raintree Drive in Scottsdale for Route 81 to commute to Phoenix when a reporter informed her that the route was among those affected by the strike.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Garcia said. “This is going to affect and disappoint a lot of people. I can’t believe they’re doing this again.

“How do they expect us to get to work?”

Others began checking the internet on cellphones at bus stops as word spread that the strike is on.

“I didn’t know they were on strike and now I don’t know how I am going to get to work,” said Cory Painter of Phoenix. “I would want to tell them (the union drivers) that other people have to get to work, too. It’s unfair that they’ve done this twice now.”

Painter said he has been taking the bus to work because his car is broken and he does not have the means to get it repaired.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433, which represents about 400 southeast Valley bus drivers, went on strike at midnight after failing to reach agreement on a new contract with First Transit, which operates buses in the southeast Valley for Valley Metro Regional Public Transportation Authority.

Late Wednesday, First Transit said it sent union officials a last-minute offer to address a sticking point in hopes of averting the strike. A union official said he was meeting with a federal mediator to discuss returning to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, operations have ceased on 40 of Valley Metro’s 101 Phoenix-area bus lines serving Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert and Tempe, as well as parts of Scottsdale and Ahwatukee. Express routes to downtown Phoenix and Scottsdale Airpark also shut down.

Transit officials said the 40 routes average 57,000 weekday boardings. Phoenix transit officials said that the strike affects nine local routes and nine express routes and advised residents to visit the city’s transit website for a list of alternative routes.

Express bus lines to downtown Phoenix and the Scottsdale Airpark are considered major Valley transit arteries for workers who commute from the southeast Valley.

Valley Metro advised those who depend on buses to get to work, appointments and health care to look for alternative transportation and to visit the company’s website to search for carpool options. They said Metro light rail may have increased train service if demand warrants.

This is the second transit work stoppage in the Valley in 18 months. In March 2012, one of two transit companies serving the Valley at the time went on a limited six-day strike, providing only skeleton service in Phoenix and Tempe.

Tempe resident Devon Blake said he rides the bus almost every day and that he is “embarrassed” by the strike.

“I really don’t like striking. Nobody can get to work and nobody can get where they have to go,” Blake said.

Blake said he was planning on heading to the picket line at the center manned by several striking drivers to “try to talk some sense” into them.

“I want to talk to them and see what we can work out and if we can have service by tomorrow,” Blake said. “They said a week, two, to three weeks, or it could be a month, I don’t know.”

“I hope the boss understands,” said Mesa resident Tariq Rogers, who takes the bus to work at Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard. “This is not a good time for that to happen right now. I’m trying to call people, but none of my people are answering their phones. They’re all asleep.

“I think that these guys need to work this stuff out, man. Whatever it is, they need to work this out because this is ridiculous. They don’t realize the people they’re hurting out here that don’t have other ways to work or might work far away and can’t get a ride to work. Now we’re stuck, now we have to go on strike. We could lose our jobs because you knuckleheads are fighting over petty stuff. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mesa resident Emmanuel Santillan said he rides the bus from his home in Mesa to work in Tempe.

“These buses were going to be a lot of help to get to work and back, now I’m just going to have to resort to other means, most likely a bike to get there,” Santillan said.

He called the strike a threat to his livelihood.

In Scottsdale, there was confusion over which routes are running and which are not running, given that some lines still in operation share stops with those that have ceased.

Those not running in Scottsdale are Routes 72 and 81, and Express Routes 511 and 514.

Those still running in Scottsdale are Routes 17, 29, 41, 50, 76, 106, 154 and 170.

Michael Brown, who had just gotten off his overnight shift at Jack in the Box at Thunderbird Road and Scottsdale Road, said he would have to call a cab to get home. He plans to arrange for a carpool during the duration of the strike.

“I depend a lot on the bus transportation,” Brown said. “I hope they can come to an understanding soon.”

Ernest Miller, 46, heard about the bus strike this morning but decided to come to the bus stop anyway to see if anything had changed.

“I’m supposed to be at work right now,” Miller said. “I might just go back home.”

Miller, who was standing at the bus stop on Scottsdale Road north of Shea Boulevard at 6:20 a.m., said he understands the bus drivers’ reason for striking, but isn’t sure how he’s going to get to work if the strike continues.

Joel Santeramo, 38, said he’s only been taking the bus this week because his car broke down on Friday. The strike is only a temporary inconvenience to him.

“I’m going to be an hour late to work at least and it’s going to cost me $20 for a cab ride,” Santeramo said.

He was sitting at the bus stop on Scottsdale Road north of Shea Boulevard and works only four miles away.

“They’re using (the heat) to their advantage,” Santeramo said. “They timed it right. ... It was a smart move.”

The central issue in the dispute does not involve wages, union officials say. Rather, it involves “management rights” with First Transit’s operating contract with the Valley Metro RPTA. The union fears that Valley Metro could order First Transit to violate the union’s labor agreement by unilaterally reducing driver wages or cutting work hours.

First Transit spokesman Nick Promponas told the Republic late Wednesday that the company has sent changes tied to the management-rights provision in the hopes of averting a strike. First Transit wanted drivers to consider not walking so that the sides may return to the table this morning.

“Our goal is to not disrupt the community, especially those folks who rely on the service,” Promponas said. [What a lie!!! This is the main purpose of a strike. Unions use strikes to disrupt their employers bossiness, hoping to force them bend to their demands.]

First Transit says that drivers were welcome and have the right to show up for work, although under the union agreement, they are not allowed to drive a bus. It is not known if any drivers who might cross the picket line would be assigned other duties during the strike.

Jen Biddinger, a bus company spokeswoman, confirmed that the company has no backup transit plans for Valley residents, adding that “passengers will need to consider other travel arrangements.”

Lead union negotiator Michael Cornelius said that “the bottom line is we want it to end quickly.”

“We want to be there for the passengers,” Cornelius said. “Unfortunately, there’s a huge foreign multinational company standing in the way.”

Biddinger apologized to commuters.

“First and foremost, we are disappointed in the decision by the union and regret that we are unable to reach an agreement,” she said, adding that First Transit laments “the uncertainty this is causing passengers.”

Source

Offer rejected; bus workers to vote on strike proposal

By Brennan Smith The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 26, 2013 6:31 PM

Southeast Valley transit-union leaders rejected a final offer from the bus company Friday and will suggest a strike after negotiations on a new operating contract unraveled during the afternoon, setting the stage for an indefinite halt in public transportation on Aug. 1.

Michael Cornelius, lead union negotiator for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433, said that First Transit, which operates buses in the southeast Valley for the Valley Metro Regional Public Transportation Authority, presented the union with a “last, best and final” offer Friday afternoon.

Cornelius said union leadership “will not endorse” the proposed deal and will set up a vote next week with union members and recommend a strike.

“We will take it to our membership for their vote, but we will not endorse as it strips years of history and worsens current working conditions,” Cornelius told The Republic via text message.

Friday was the final scheduled negotiation as the clock ticks down on a 30-day extension that ends at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. If the extension expires without a new agreement, the union could strike, stopping service on 40 routes in Tempe, Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert, as well as some routes in Scottsdale and Ahwatukee Foothills, and express service from those southeast Valley communities to downtown Phoenix and Scottsdale.

Negotiations resumed Friday with both a federal mediator and former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor sitting in as an independent observer to move talks along and cool tempers at an increasingly contentious bargaining table.

Cornelius said First Transit officials arrived to negotiations late Friday and sent an initial proposal that would give RPTA greater rights to determine termination of union members rather than the operating company, something Cornelius said “we will not accept under any circumstances.”

Repeated calls were made to First Transit officials, but they could not be reached for comment by Friday evening.

McGregor had been asked by Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and the Phoenix City Council to assume a similar role as a disinterested third party during a six-day strike in March 2012. She worked with the union and Veolia Transportation Services, which then was the bus operator. McGregor was credited with helping end the strike.

Cornelius said McGregor was “great,” but ultimately union leaders rejected the final deal from First Transit.

On Monday, Cornelius said several bus drivers were complaining that they had not been paid at all during July and that the union was considering filing a civil suit against First Transit in response. The union represents about 400 southeast Valley drivers.

However, First Transit spokesman Maurice Harris said the company had paid all of its employees on July 5 and July 19, satisfying a state law that requires payment at least two times per month, no more than 16 days apart.

Employees who attended a voluntary training program prior to First Transit taking over operations received an additional paycheck on July 5, Harris said.

First Transit, part of United Kingdom-based FirstGroup, took over southeast Valley operation from Veolia for Valley Metro on July 1.

These government idiots are again part of the PROBLEM!!!!

The current contract that Valley Metro has with First Transit says that if there is a strike, that non-striking bus drivers can't cross the picket lines and drive buses!!!! They have to be put to work twiddling their thumbs or doing anything but driving a bus.

From a prior article I posted that clause says:

"drivers were welcome and have the right to show up for work, although under the union agreement, they are not allowed to drive a bus"

And its probably elected officials like Mesa City Councilman Scott Somers who sold out to the unions and allowed the clause in the contract.

Without that clause there would be at least a few buses rolling the the east valley making the strike less severe!!!

Source

Public officials decry SE Valley bus strike

By Gary Nelson The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com Thu Aug 1, 2013 11:18 AM

Public officials are angry that tens of thousands of their constituents are scrambling for rides in triple-digit heat because of a bus strike.

“This was a nuclear option that wasn’t necessary,” Mesa City Councilman Scott Somers said.

Somers is chairman of the Valley Metro Regional Public Transportation Authority, which oversees bus operations in the Valley. First Transit operates buses in the southeast Valley for Valley Metro. [he was almost certainly one of the people that approved the contract that says non-striking bus drivers are not allowed to drive buses]

The strike began at midnight Wednesday, affecting mostly the southeast Valley but also some routes in Phoenix and Scottsdale. Some of the approximately 57,000 people who board the buses every day got up Thursday morning unaware of the strike, and found themselves stranded.

“I feel for the thousands of people who rely on bus service in the Southeast Valley on a daily basis,” Mesa Mayor Scott Smith said. [although he was almost certainly one of the people that approved the contract that says non-striking bus drivers are not allowed to drive buses]

Smith said sometimes the reality of a strike can jar both sides into seeking a quick settlement, but there’s no guarantee in this case.

“Who knows what it will take?” Smith said. “We’re hoping that they quickly resolve their differences and we can get back to business as usual.”

Although elected city officials are deeply involved in establishing overall transportation policy in the region, Smith and Somers said they have little power to intervene. [That is misleading. Our elected officials that approved the contract, could have, and should have put a clause in the contract that forbid strikes. And they really screwed up by approving the current contract that said non-striking drivers are not allowed to drive buses]

The buses are publicly owned, but the labor dispute involves two private entities: Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433, representing the drivers, and their employer, First Transit. First Transit is a part of FirstGroup, based in the United Kingdom.

“It’s a private-sector spat that’s influencing public services,” Somers said. “We gain a lot of benefit out of public-private partnerships and contracting, but there are downsides. And this is one of them.” [Again Somers is trying to blame the private sector for a very poorly written contract between the city of Mesa and First Transit. Somers, it's YOUR fault, don't blame the private sector]

Somers said RPTA officials had hoped the union would avoid calling a full-blown strike after rejecting the company’s offer this week, perhaps limiting bus service but not shutting it down altogether.

“Unfortunately, calmer heads did not prevail,” he said. “And what’s bothering me is it is the working class of folks who are in those hourly jobs and really depend on public transportation are the ones that get hurt.”

Somers said he had received an e-mail from a man who lives in Mesa and takes the bus to his job in Ahwatukee.

“This strike is going to really affect his ability to go to work and make a living,” Somers said.

Chandler City Councilman Jack Sellers, who was recently named vice chair of the Maricopa Association of Governments transportation policy committee, said the strike could hurt the Valley’s efforts to develop better transit options. [And Chandler City Councilman Jack Sellers is probably part of the problem too. Chandler approved the same contract with First Transit that Mesa did]

“I feel like one of the things that we really need to improve here in the Valley is our transit offerings as well as expanding transit ridership,” Sellers said, “and these kind of things create a terrible setback because the thing that causes people to rely on transit is the idea that it’s going to be there when they need it.” [Sounds like Sellers is doing some heavy shoveling of the BS here!!!!]

“It is certainly frustrating,” Sellers said about the strike. “I would say it’s going to have a pretty serious impact, if it goes on, particularly.”

Other mayors called for a quick end to the strike.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton told The Republic he does not know yet how many city employees were impacted by the strike, but believes many heading to downtown Phoenix were.

“When our public transit system has a work stoppage, it hurts the entire region and particularly downtown Phoenix, because many of the people utilizing public transit, especially the express routes, are coming downtown,” he said.

Stanton spent Wednesday night talking to both sides of the dispute hoping to encourage a solution. [Mayor Stanton seems to be sleeping with the Phoenix Police and Phoenix Fire Department unions and he will almost certainly sell out to the bus driver unions]

“I’m frustrated that it got to this point of a work stoppage and I expect both sides to roll up their sleeves and get right back to the table today as soon as possible and announce that this strike is over,” he said. “That’s my demand and expectation.”

Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane said he is “always concerned about” a bus strike. [Then why did you approve a contract that allows them to strike????]

“This situation comes up with some regularity at contract time,” he said. “There is not a great deal that can be done in the way of replacement that I’m aware of. [That is rubbish. You could have written a contract with a no strike clause in it!!!]

“It means we’re at the mercy of MAG’s metro lines. I hope they would be able to resolve it in some reasonable amount of time. In the meantime, alternatives are going to be the product of their own ingenuity.”

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny termed the strike “an unfortunate situation and a very extreme inconvenience for many of our residents that depend on that service.”

“I just think it’s ill-timed and not productive,” Tibshraeny said. [Thanks for all the hot air and no action. That and a $1 will buy you a cup of coffee]

Chandler is working to get the word of the strike out to residents, he said.

“Any influence we can have we will certainly exert on the negotiations,” Tibshraeny said. “Obviously we’re encouraging them but at the end of the day, we’re not the ones signing the contract.”Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell, quoted in a Valley Metro press release, said, “It is imperative that ATU and First Transit work together in good faith to achieve a fair and equitable solution to this labor dispute for the good of our transit passengers.” [And now we have Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell shoveling the BS]

He urged the company and union to “quickly resolve this issue to avoid impacting thousands of passengers and their essential travel.”

Eugene Scott and Michelle Mitchell contributed to this report.

Routes threatened by bus drivers' strike

Routes threatened by bus drivers' strike

The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Aug 1, 2013 6:42 AM

These 40 Valley Metro are expected to be shut down after drivers went on strike at midnight:

30 University in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa: Serves South Mountain Community College, 32nd St./Broadway Road, 52nd St./University Drive, Mill Ave./University Drive, University Drive/Price Road, Main St./Sycamore, University Drive/Country Club Drive, University Drive/Gilbert Road, University Drive/Greenfield Road, University Drive/Power Road and University Drive/Sossamon Road.

40 Apache/Main Street in Tempe and Mesa: Serves Apache Blvd./Price Road, Main St./Sycamore/ Country Club Drive/Main St., Main St./Mesa Drive, Main St./Gilbert Road, Main St./Greenfield road, Main St./Power Road and Superstition Springs Center.

45 Broadway in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa: Serves 19th Ave./Southern Ave., Broadway Road/19th Ave., Central Ave./Broadway Road, Broadway Road/24th St., 48th St./Broadway Road, Hardy Drive/Broadway Road, Broadway Road/Rural Road, Broadway Road/Price Road, Main St/Sycamore, Mesa Drive/Broadway Road, Gilbert Road/Broadway Road, Broadway Road/Greenfield Road, Banner Baywood Medical Center, Superstition Springs Center.

48 48th Street/Rio Salado in Phoenix and Tempe: Serves Arizona Mills Mall, Priest Drive/Baseline Road, 48th Street/Broadway Road, 52nd St./University Drive, Tempe Center for the Arts, Tempe Transportation Center.

56 Priest Drive in Phoenix and Tempe and Guadalupe: Serves 48th St./Chandler Blvd., 48th St./Warner Road, Priest Drive/Baseline Road, Arizona Mills Mall, Priest Drive/Southern Ave., Priest Drive/University Drive, Priest Drive/Washington St.

61 Southern Ave. in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa: Serves 43rd Ave./Southern Ave., 19th Ave./Southern Ave., Central Ave./Southern Ave., Southern Ave./24th St., Southern Ave./48th St., Southern Ave./Rural Road, Southern Ave./Price Road, Southern Ave./Dobson Road, Southern Ave./Country Club Drive, Southern Ave./Gilbert Road, Southern Ave./Greenfield Road and Superstition Springs Center.

62 Hardy/Guadalupe in Tempe: Serves Guadalupe Road/Price Road, Kyrene Road/Guadalupe Road, Hardy Drive/Baseline Road, Hardy Drive and University Drive, Tempe Transportation Center, Tempe Marketplace.

65 Mill/Kyrene in Tempe: Serves Hardy Drive/Warner Road, Kyrene Road/Guadalupe Road, Mill Ave./Baseline Road, Mill Ave./Broadway Road, Tempe Transportation Center.

66 Mill/Kyrene in Tempe., Chandler, Gila River Indian Community: Serves Lone Butte Casino, Kyrene Road/Warner Road, Kyrene Road/Guadalupe Road, Mill Ave./Baseline Road, Mill Ave./Baseline Road, Mill Ave./Broadway Road, Tempe Transportation Center.

72 Scottsdale/Rural in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe and Chandler: Serves Chandler Fashion Center, Rural Road/Chandler Blvd., Rural Road/Ray Road, Elliot Road/Rural Road, Rural Road/Southern Ave., Tempe Transportation Center, Scottsdale Road/McDowell Road, Scottsdale Road/Lincoln Drive, Scottsdale Road/Shea Blvd., Scottsdale Road/Thunderbird Road, Scottsdale Road/Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd., Scottsdale Healthcare Drive.

77 Baseline Road in Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa: Serves Baseline Road/75th Ave., Baseline Road/51st Ave., 27th Ave./Baseline Road, Central Ave./Baseline Road, 24th Street/Baseline Road, South Mountain Community College, 48th St./Baseline Road, Arizona Mills mall, Priest Drive/Baseline Road, Rural Road/Baseline Road, Baseline Road/Price Road, Dobson Road/Baseline Road.

81 Hayden/McClintock in Scottsdale, Tempe and Chandler: Serves Chandler Fashion Center, McClintock Drive/Chandler Blvd., McClintock Drive/Warner Road, ASU Research Park, McClintock Drive/Guadalupe Road, McClintock Drive/Southern Ave., McClintock Drive/Apache Blvd., Tempe Marketplace, Hayden Road/McDowell Road, Hayden Road/Camelback Road, Hayden Road/McCormick Parkway, 90th Street/Shea Blvd., Raintree Drive/Northsight Blvd.

96 Dobson in Mesa and Chandler: Serves Basha Road/Fulton Ranch Blvd., Dobson Road/McQueen Road, Dobson Road/Pecos Road, Dobson Road/Chandler Blvd., Elliot Road/Dobson Road, Dobson Road/Baseline Road, Mesa Community College, Main St./Sycamore, Dobson Road/University Drive, Mesa Riverview.

104 Alma School in Mesa and Chandler: Serves Boston St./Washington St., Alma School Road/Chandler Blvd., Alma School Road/Elliot Road, Fiesta Mall, Alma School Road/Broadway Road, Main St./Sycamore, Alma School Road/University Drive, Mesa Riverview.

108 Elliot Road in Tempe ,Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert: Serves Priest Drive/Elliot Road, Elliot Road/Rural Road, ASU Research Park, Elliot Road/Dobson Road, Arizona Ave./Elliot Road, Guadalupe Road/Val Vista Drive, Guadalupe Road/Power Road, Sunland Village East, Super Springs Center.

112 Country Club/Arizona Ave. in Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert: Serves Hamilton St./Morelos St., Arizona Ave./Chandler Blvd., Arizona Ave./Ray Road, Arizona Ave./Elliot Road, Country Club Drive/Guadalupe Drive, West Mesa Park and Ride, Country Club Drive/Juanita Ave., Southern Ave./Country Club Drive, Country Club Drive/Main St., Center St./McKellips Road.

120 Mesa Drive in Mesa: Serves Lewis Court/Coury Ave., Mesa Drive/Broadway Road, Mesa Drive/University Drive, Center/8th Street.

128 Stapley in Mesa: Serves Inverness Ave./Stapley Drive, Stapley Drive/Southern Ave., Stapley Drive/Broadway Road, Stapley Drive/University Drive, Stapley Drive/McKellips Road.

136 Gilbert in Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert: Serves Gilbert Road/Germann Road, Gilbert Road/Chandler Blvd., Gilbert Road/Civic Center Drive, Elliot Road/Gilbert Road, Gilbert Park and Ride, Gilbert Road/Baseline Road, Gilbert Road/Broadway Road, University Drive/Gilbert Road, Gilbert Road/McDowell Park and Ride, Lindsay Road/Brown Road.

156 Chandler/Williams Field in Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert: Serves Chandler Blvd./54th St., Rural Road/Chandler Blvd., Chandler Blvd/Chandler Village Drive, Dobson Road/Chandler Blvd., Arizona Ave./Chandler Blvd., Gilbert Road/Chandler Blvd., Gilbert Mercy Hospital, Williams Field Road/Higley Road, ASU Polytechnic.

184 Power Road in Mesa and Gilbert: Serves ASU Polytechnic, Guadalupe Road/Power Road, Superstition Spring Center, Banner Baywood Medical Cente4r, University Drive/Power Road, Red Mountain Community College, Power Road Park and Ride.

BUZZ in Mesa: Serves downtown Mesa, the Mesa Post Office (First/Center streets), Country Club Drive/Brown Road, Alma School Road/University Drive, Brown Road/Mesa Drive, and the Mesa Multi-generational Center.

Express 511 Tempe/Scottsdale Airpark in Scottsdale, Tempe, Salt River Indian Community: Serves Tempe Transportation Center, Scottsdale Community College, 90th Street/Shea Blvd., Scottsdale Airpark.

Express 514 Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Phoenix, Paradise Valley, Fountain Hills, Salt River Indian Community: Serves La Montana Drive/Palisades Blvd., 92nd St./Shea Blvd., Scottsdale Community College, Scottsdale/Road/McDowell Road, Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave. Jefferson St.

Express 520 Tempe in Phoenix and Tempe: Serves Broadway Road/Price Road, McClintock Drive/Alameda Drive, Rural Road/Southern Ave., Southern Ave./Mill Ave., Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

Express 521 Tempe in Phoenix and Tempe: Serves Baseline Road/Price Road, McClintock Drive/Baseline Road, Southshore Drive/Lakeshore Drive, Mill Ave./Baseline Road, Central Ave./Van Buren Street, 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

Express 522 Tempe in Phoenix and Tempe: Serves Elliot Road/Country Club Drive, Warner Road/Rural Road, 48th St./Elliot Road, Tempe Sports Complex, Priest Drive/Elliot Road, Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

Express 531 Mesa/Gilbert in Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert: Serves Gilbert Park and Ride, Gilbert Road/Ash St., West Mesa Park and Ride, Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

Express 533 Mesa in Phoenix and Mesa: Serves .Superstition Springs Park and Ride, Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

Express 535 Red Mountain/Downtown in Phoenix and Mesa: Serves Power Road Park and Ride, Gilbert Road/McDowell Road Park and Ride, Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

Express 541Chandler in Phoenix, Mesa and Chandler: Serves Arizona Ave./Ray Road, Alma School Road/Elliot Road, West Mesa Park and Ride, Central Ave., Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St..

Express 542 in Phoenix and Chandler: Serves Chandler Park and Ride, Central Ave./Van Buren St., 17th Ave./Jefferson St.

FLASH Back in Tempe: Serves Rio Salado at ASU Lot 59, ASU campus.

FLASH: McAlister in Tempe: (not currently operating while Arizona State is in summer session) Serves Spence Ave./Rural Road, Rio Salado at ASU Lot 59.

Link Arizona Ave. in Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert: Serves Chandler Park and Ride, Arizona Ave./Chandler Blvd., Arizona Ave./Elliott Road, Southern Ave./Country Club Drive, Main St./Sycamore.

Link Main Street in Mesa: Serves Main St./Sycamore, Country Club Drive/Main St., Main St./Gilbert Road, Main St./Greenfield Road, Main St./Power Road, Superstition Springs Center.

Orbit Earth in Scottsdale and Tempe: Serves Tempe Transportation Center, College Ave./Curry Road, Scottsdale Road/Continental Drive, North Tempe Multi-Generational Center, Tempe Marketplace.

Orbit Jupiter in Tempe: Serves McClintock High School, Tempe Public Library, College/Southern Ave., Forest/Gammage, Tempe Transportation Center.

Orbit Mars in Tempe: Serves Southern Ave./Evergreen St., McClintock High School, Dorsey/Broadway Road, Tempe Transportation Center.

Orbit Mercury in Tempe: Serves Tempe Transportation Center, 8th St./McClintock Drive, Escalante Community Center.

Orbit Venus in Tempe: Serves Tempe Transportation Center, Broadway Road/Roosevelt St., Priest Drive/University Drive, 5th St./Farmer Ave.

Phoenix suggests options for riders during bus strike

Phoenix suggests options for riders during bus strike

The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 31, 2013 9:15 PM

To help passengers understand which Valley Metro bus routes continue to operate, Phoenix has posted an overview map of affected routes, a list of those bus routes and suggestions for alternate routes and travel options in Phoenix at http://phoenix.gov/publictransit/index.html.

Phoenix continues to operate 45 Valley Metro bus routes within the city and to West Valley cities and Scottsdale.

Phoenix bus routes may be able to provide another way to a passenger’s destination via Phoenix transit centers: Ed Pastor Transit Center at Central Avenue and Broadway Road; Central Station Transit Center at Central Avenue and Van Buren Street; Paradise Valley Mall Transit Center on the north side of the mall; and Desert Ridge Marketplace at Loop 101 and Tatum Boulevard.

Passengers may be able to combine bus travel with a ride from family and friends or a taxi and use those passenger facilities as pick-up and drop off points.

Passengers in south and southeast Phoenix are most impacted because Baseline Road and Southern Avenue are serviced by the southeast Valley contract, where drivers are striking.

Phoenix-operated bus service will continue on north-south roads with some east-west service. Passengers may be able to reach their destination using another route.

Bus passengers are also urged to take caution as they wait for a bus in the summer heat. Phoenix urges them to drink plenty of water and carry portable shade, such as an umbrella, during the wait and when walking to and from bus stops.

More personal-cooling tips are available at http://phoenix.gov/publictransit/index.html under the Rider Information link.

Updated information on the progress of labor negotiations for southeast Valley bus service is available at http://www.valleymetro.org/ or 602-253-5000.

Southeast Valley buses back on streets after 4-day strike

Southeast Valley buses back on streets after 4-day strike

By Brennan Smith The Republic azcentral.com Mon Aug 5, 2013 8:17 AM

Public buses began rolling again across the southeast Valley on Monday morning, just in time for the first day of school in many districts.

While the bus strike that shut down service in the region for four days involved public-bus drivers and not school-bus drivers, thousands of students, especially in Tempe, rely on public buses.

“I was really worried that they weren’t going to start back up and not being able to get to school,” said Shania Davis, who lives in Phoenix, and was catching a bus at the Tempe Transportation Center to Compadre High School for opening day of her senior year.

“It’s a relief that you can get back and forth again. It’s a lot easier. You can’t really walk in this heat. I’m just happy the bus is back and running.”

Sue Taaffe, a Tempe transit employee, said that on average about 4,500 Tempe students have a free bus pass each year.

The strike, which ended with a contract agreement early Sunday afternoon between Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433 and First Transit, which operates buses in the southeast Valley for Valley Metro Regional Public Transportation Authority, already had inconvenienced tens of thousands of riders who rely on service to get to work, appointments and health care.

The agreement, which came after a marathon negotiating session that lasted nearly 24 hours, will be put to a vote of the nearly 400 southeast Valley bus drivers represented by Local 1433 within a week, union officials said. Meanwhile, the union ordered drivers off the picket lines and back to work.

Service resumed in time for this morning’s commute in Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler and parts of Scottsdale, Ahwatukee Foothills and south Phoenix, as well as all service from the southeast Valley communities to Phoenix and Scottsdale. In all, 40 of Valley Metro’s 101 Phoenix-area bus lines that average 57,000 weekday boardings shut down.

Phoenix resident Roy Hardwick, who works at Embassy Suites in Tempe, made a 40-minute walk to work during the service shutdown.

“I use the bus to go to work every day,” Hardwick said. “I basically had to walk to work while the strike was going on. I was kind of upset about it and they should have had emergency buses for people that work up and down Scottsdale Road.”

Hardwick said that he has friends who at Mayo Clinic and could not get to work without the buses.

“I don’t really know what happened, if they lost their jobs or not, but the strike affected people that had to go to work,” Hardwick said. “A lot of people can’t afford to take off work for a strike.

“I’m glad it’s over with. When you think about Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale, Gilbert, all those, the east Valley has a lot of people. They have thousands and thousands of people who ride the bus. It’s hard to get a grip on that.”

The sky is falling - We need a police state!!!!

Feds pay millions for border-agent housing in Ajo

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Feds pay millions for border-agent housing in Ajo

By Brenna Goth The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Aug 11, 2013 11:39 PM

AJO - A cluster of yellow, blue and salmon-colored homes recently sprouted in the desert here, just west of the Spanish Colonial Revival-style plaza and north of the New Cornelia mine lookout.

And taxpayers paid millions of dollars for it.

The federal government spent, on average, more than $600,000 apiece to plan and build the 21 two- and three-bedroom houses and develop the surrounding area to attract U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to live in this small former mining community. The new homes range in size from 1,276 to 1,570 square feet.

Most similar-size homes in Ajo sold last year for less than $100,000, according to a database maintained by the Arizona Daily Star.

Altogether, the government has paid $15 million for the homes plus 20 park-model trailers in Ajo, according to documents examined by The Arizona Republic.

The homes and trailers are available for CBP personnel and their families to rent at “market rates,” though the agency declined to answer how much that is, citing privacy concerns.

A Border Patrol station is located about 11 miles away in Why, and the Lukeville Port of Entry border crossing is about 38 miles away. Both the Border Patrol and Customs personnel work for the CBP.

The buildup of federal agents on the border over the past several years has caused housing shortages in cities and towns throughout the Southwest, said Doris Meissner, who was commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. But private industry has filled most needs, making the Ajo project — and the funding it received — atypical, she said.

“There may be a way to understand that,” Meissner said. “On the face, it looks quite startling.”

Tina West, a member of the Western Pima County Community Council, was even more blunt about the more than $2 million the government spent on the trailers.

“You could buy any house in town for $100,000,” West said. “It’s just another multimillion-dollar waste.”

The CBP refused repeatedly to answer The Republic’s questions about the projects. However, in a letter to a local real-estate agent, the agency said the construction cost of the homes was “approximately $167,000 apiece” and the remainder of the money was spent on “acquisitions of various parcels and 12 existing homes; buyout of four life leases; relocation of the private homeowners and rents; excessing or selling the existing homes; design of the new homes and property and infrastructure improvements.”

In a statement to the newspaper, the CBP said the project gives personnel the option to rent “affordable, high-quality, and energy efficient housing.” Housing is not a recruitment tool, the statement said.

Search for housing

Mountains and mine tailings surround this unincorporated area of Pima County, about 40 miles north of the U.S.-Mexican border. Ajo thrived in the early 1900s during the copper boom but was primarily marketed as a retirement community after the New Cornelia copper mine closed in the 1980s because of plummeting prices.

Now, about 4,400 people live here. Most newcomers are teachers, contractors or border-enforcement agents, residents said.

The median sale price for a single-family home in Ajo is $70,598, according to the Pima County Assessor’s Office valuation chart, which used home sale prices from 2010 to 2012 adjusted for current market conditions. Nearly 30 percent of area houses were vacant from 2007 to 2011, according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Fewer than 30 percent of CBP employees assigned to the area rented housing from the Ajo market before the construction, according to a U.S. General Services Administration assessment for the Sahuaro Street housing project. Many live in Phoenix, Tucson or Gila Bend and commute an hour or two to the border, which affects staff retention, according to the report.

CBP officials said in letters and reports that there is not enough quality housing for agents to live in the area and ramped up efforts to provide its own.

The most recent project is the development that opened in January on South Sahuaro Street. The GSA awarded Tempe-based Sundt Construction Inc. a contract in 2011 for $10,356,331 to build an enclave of 21 energy-efficient houses, as well as streets and sidewalks.

The houses received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating, according to the GSA. The site is about 11.6 acres and is zoned for an additional 25 houses.

Construction cost more than $11 million in all, according to an analysis of contracts by The Republic. About $325,000 of the extra expenses went toward problems in developing the land, including rock removal and unforeseen soil conditions, and other funding went to upgrading appliances and improving aesthetics.

That total rises to about $13 million including all costs “spent or obligated to this project,” wrote Robin Coachman, a CBP housing and project manager based in California, in a 2012 letter to the editor published in the Ajo Copper News.

Not all of that went to building the houses themselves. The project also included an environmental assessment, purchasing houses already on the land, buying out life leases as well as relocating homeowners. Sundt also constructed a small common area. Sundt referred all questions to the CBP.

Early objections

In 2011, the GSA started leasing land at an RV court less than a mile from the Sahuaro Street project for 20 CBP-owned park-model trailers, which are built for longer stays compared with other mobile homes.

Each trailer cost about $82,000 after the installation of appliances, ceiling fans and other items, according to information that the GSA released to local real-estate agent Linda Sharp under a Freedom of Information Act request. The land lease will cost $436,800 for five years — or about $365 per month per trailer lot.

The CBP would not provide square footage for the trailers or answer how many are occupied to protect the privacy of personnel, the agency said in a statement.

The housing complex is active and was used as temporary housing for CBP personnel displaced by the Sahuaro Street construction, according to a 2013 letter to Sharp from Eugene Schied, assistant commissioner of the CBP Office of Administration.

Plans for the Sahuaro Street project drew a slew of objections early on from local leaders and residents when federal officials asked for public input in 2010. Some were worried that new housing would not fit with the character of the area while others questioned how the construction would affect local landlords who depend on border-personnel business.

But the new housing could be a real incentive for CBP employees to move to Ajo full time — and the area could use their business, said Bety Allen, executive director of the Ajo District Chamber of Commerce. Allen moved to Ajo from Montana with her husband, who is a Border Patrol agent, and said finding suitable rental housing was stressful.

“If those houses would have been there, it would have been so much easier,” Allen said.

There may have been a cheaper way to provide better options, said U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose district includes Ajo. He said his office suggested renovating homes already in the area.

“I thought it would be good for agents coming in to be integrated into that part of the community,” Grijalva said. “It would revitalize part of Ajo.”

CBP officials considered renovating 21 separate properties within the community but said it would be more expensive than starting from scratch after the cost of environmental assessments and appraisals, according to Coachman’s letter to the editor. He also wrote that not enough homes were available, based on a market survey completed before the project.

Coachman did not respond to interview requests. Arizona’s U.S. senators, Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake, also did not respond to requests for comment.

New homes wanted

CBP’s presence in the area has grown substantially in the last several years. The Ajo station was built in Why in 1987 for about 25 agents, according to the CBP. A new station opened last year that can accommodate 500.

Ajo has more than enough housing, but it might not be what agents are looking for, said Mari Zimmermann, the designated broker for Ajo Realty. Some houses are ready for moving in, but others need fixing up — and most are old.

“Mostly the younger people who come to town want new houses,” Zimmermann said. “We don’t have builders. Houses that are new are built by people who live in them.”

The Sahuaro Street property is zoned and designed for 46 homes but there is no funding or plan to build the additional 25 homes yet, Schied wrote to real-estate agent Sharp.

Immigration reform could change that, former INS commissioner Meissner said. Housing problems are likely to increase if more agents are sent to the border under the current proposal being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives, which could double the number of Border Patrol agents if passed.

“It’s going to be a big, new factor,” Meissner said. “Nothing along those lines has been discussed.”

But not everyone is sure newer properties are enough to draw agents to the area.

Sharp, 63, who rents to several CBP employees, said many agents lease cheap properties close to the border and live full time elsewhere, looking for better schools for their kids, job opportunities for their spouses and the energy of a city.

“Most of them are young,” Sharp said. “They want a nightlife, and there’s no life in Ajo.”

Federal judge orders NYPD stop-frisk monitor

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Federal judge orders NYPD stop-frisk monitor

Associated Press Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:06 AM

NEW YORK— A federal judge appointed an independent monitor Monday to oversee changes to the New York Police Department’s contentious policy known as stop and frisk after finding it intentionally discriminates based on race, a significant judicial rebuke for what the mayor and police commissioner have defended as a life-saving, crime-fighting tool.

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin said in a ruling that Peter L. Zimroth, a onetime city lawyer and a former chief assistant district attorney, has been appointed as the monitor. In both roles, Zimroth worked closely with the NYPD, the judge said.

The judge accused the police department’s senior officials of violating law “through their deliberate indifference to unconstitutional stops, frisks and searches.”

“They have received both actual and constructive notice since at least 1999 of widespread Fourth Amendment violations occurring as a result of the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices. Despite this notice, they deliberately maintained and even escalated policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread Fourth Amendment violations,” she wrote in a lengthy opinion.

She also cited violations of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

“Far too many people in New York City have been deprived of this basic freedom far too often,” she said. “The NYPD’s practice of making stops that lack individualized reasonable suspicion has been so pervasive and persistent as to become not only a part of the NYPD’s standard operating procedure, but a fact of daily life in some New York City neighborhoods.”

Four men had sued, saying they were unfairly targeted because of their race. There have been about 5 million stops during the past decade, mostly black and Hispanic men. Scheindlin issued her ruling after a 10-week bench trial for the class-action lawsuit, which included testimony from top NYPD brass and a dozen people — 11 men and one woman — who said they were wrongly stopped because of their race.

Scheindlin concluded that the plaintiffs had “readily established that the NYPD implements its policies regarding stop and frisk in a manner that intentionally discriminates based on race.”

The case was the largest and most broad legal action against the policy at the nation’s biggest police department, and may have an effect on how other police departments make street stops, legal experts said.

City lawyers argued the department does a good job policing itself with an internal affairs bureau, a civilian complaint board and quality assurance divisions.

The city had no immediate response to the ruling.

Attorney General Holder blows hot air on fixing American police state

I suspect this is mostly hot air coming from Eric Holder and almost none of the issues he talks about will be fixed. That's because only Congress has the power to make the fixes. It's all propaganda to make the voters think the Obama gang is doing something great.

The article does admit that almost half of the people in prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes. I think that number is low because other federal government statistics say OVER half the people in American prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes.

"More than 219,000 federal inmates are behind bars, and almost half of them are serving time for drug-related crimes"

Holder seeks to avert mandatory minimum sentences for some low-level drug offenders

By Sari Horwitz, Published: August 11 E-mail the writer

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is set to announce Monday that low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no ties to gangs or large-scale drug organizations will no longer be charged with offenses that impose severe mandatory sentences.

The new Justice Department policy is part of a comprehensive prison reform package that Holder will reveal in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, according to senior department officials. He is also expected to introduce a policy to reduce sentences for elderly, nonviolent inmates and find alternatives to prison for nonviolent criminals.

Justice Department lawyers have worked for months on the proposals, which Holder wants to make the cornerstone of the rest of his tenure.

“A vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities,” Holder plans to say Monday, ­according to excerpts of his ­remarks that were provided to The Washington Post. “However, many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem rather than alleviate it.”

Holder is calling for a change in Justice Department policies to reserve the most severe penalties for drug offenses for serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers. He has directed his 94 U.S. attorneys across the country to develop specific, locally tailored guidelines for determining when federal charges should be filed and when they should not.

“Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for no good law enforcement reason,” Holder plans to say. “We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation.”

The attorney general can make some of these changes to drug policy on his own. He 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. Under certain statutes, inflexible sentences for drug crimes are mandated regardless of the facts or conduct in the case, reducing the discretion of prosecutors, judges and juries.

Some of Holder’s other initiatives will require legislative change. Holder is urging passage of legislation with bipartisan support that is aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimum sentences to certain drug offenses.

“Such legislation will ultimately save our country billions of dollars,” Holder said of legislation supported by Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable.”

The cost of incarceration in the United States was $80 billion in 2010, according to the Justice Department. While the U.S. population has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison population has grown by about 800 percent. Justice Department officials said federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity.

Federal officials attribute part of that increase to mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana, under legislation passed in the 1980s. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, for example, a minimum sentence of five years without parole was mandated for possession of five grams of crack cocaine, while the same sentence was mandated for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine, law enforcement officials said, pointing to discrepancies that they say have led to higher levels of incarceration in poorer communities.

“Sentencing by mandatory minimums is the antithesis of rational sentencing policy,” American Bar Association lawyer James E. Felman said in testimony three years ago before the U.S. Sen­tencing Commission.

Although the United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners are incarcerated in American prisons, according to the Justice Department. More than 219,000 federal inmates are behind bars, and almost half of them are serving time for drug-related crimes.

An additional 9 million to 10 million people cycle through local jails in the United States each year. About 40 percent of former federal prisoners and more than 60 percent of former state prisoners are rearrested or have their supervision revoked within three years after their release, often for technical or minor violations of the terms of their release.

Holder will say he has also revised the department’s prison policy to allow for more compassionate releases of elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes, have served significant portions of their sentences and pose no threat to the public.

Over the next weeks, Holder and his deputies plan to visit cities to promote their prison agenda and point to examples of the type of change the attorney general is advocating.

New legislation in Kentucky, for example, has reserved prison beds for only the most serious criminals, focusing resources instead on community supervision and other alternatives. The state is projected to reduce its prison population by more than 3,000 over the next 10 years, saving more than $400 million, according to Justice Department officials.

Investments in drug treatment for nonviolent offenders and changes to parole policies helped Arkansas reduce its prison population by more than 1,400 inmates, U.S. officials said, and led to a reduction in the prison population of more than 5,000 inmates last year in Texas.

Holder does not plan to announce any changes in the Justice Department’s policy on marijuana, which is illegal under federal law. Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized marijuana in November. Supporters of the measures argued that hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on a failed war against marijuana that has filled American prisons will low-level offenders.

Supporters also contended that decriminalization would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue that could be used for education, health care and other government services.

But the legalization measures directly violate the federal Controlled Substances Act, which prohibits the production, possession and sale of marijuana and classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, putting it in the same category as LSD and heroin. The Justice Department has not said how it will respond to the measures in Colorado and Washington, leaving state and local officials confused about exactly how to proceed. A Justice Department spokesman said the matter is still under review.

Stop-and-Frisk Practice Violated Rights, Judge Rules

Stop-and-Frisk Practice Violated Rights, Judge Rules

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Published: August 12, 2013 149 Comments

In a repudiation of a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy, a federal judge has found that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in New York, and called for a federal monitor to oversee broad reforms.

In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision.

These stop-and-frisk episodes, which soared in number over the last decade as crime continued to decline, demonstrated a widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, according to the ruling. It also found violations with the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Judge Scheindlin found that the city “adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data.” She rejected the city’s arguments that more stops happened in minority neighborhoods solely because those happened to have high-crime rates.

“I also conclude that the city’s highest officials have turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner,” she wrote.

Noting that the Supreme Court had long ago ruled that stop-and-frisks were constitutionally permissible under certain conditions, the judge stressed that she was “not ordering an end to the practice of stop-and-frisk. The purpose of the remedies addressed in this opinion is to ensure that the practice is carried out in a manner that protects the rights and liberties of all New Yorkers, while still providing much needed police protection.”

City officials did not immediately comment on the ruling, or on whether they planned to appeal. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg scheduled a news conference at 1 p.m. to discuss the decision.

To fix the constitutional violations, the judge designated an outside lawyer, Peter L. Zimroth, to monitor the Police Department’s compliance with the Constitution.

Judge Scheindlin also ordered a number of other remedies, including a pilot program in which officers in at least five precincts across the city will wear body-worn cameras in an effort to record street encounters. She also ordered a “joint remedial process” — in essence, a series of community meetings — to solicit public input on how to reform stop-and-frisk.

The decision to install Mr. Zimroth, a partner in the New York office of Arnold & Porter, LLP, and a former corporation counsel and prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, will leave the department under a degree of judicial control that is certain to shape the policing strategies under the next mayor.

Relying on a complex statistical analysis presented at trial, Judge Scheindlin found that the racial composition of a census tract played a role in predicting how many stops would occur.

She emphasized what she called the “human toll of unconstitutional stops,” noting that some of the plaintiffs testified that their encounters with the police left them feeling that they did not belong in certain areas of the cities. She characterized each stop as “a demeaning and humiliating experience.”

“No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life,” the judge wrote. During police stops, she found, blacks and Hispanics “were more likely to be subjected to the use of force than whites, despite the fact that whites are more likely to be found with weapons or contraband.”

The ruling, in Floyd v. City of New York, follows a two-month nonjury trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan earlier this year over the department’s stop-and-frisk practices.

Judge Scheindlin heard testimony from about a dozen black or biracial men and a woman who described being stopped, and she heard from statistical experts who offered their conclusions based on police paperwork describing some 4.43 million stops between 2004 and mid-2012. Numerous police officers and commanders testified as well, typically defending the legality of stops and saying they were made only when officers reasonably suspected criminality was afoot.

While the Supreme Court has long recognized the right of police officers to briefly stop and investigate people who are behaving suspiciously, Judge Scheindlin found that the New York police had overstepped that authority. She found that officers were too quick to deem as suspicious behavior that was perfectly innocent, in effect watering down the legal standard required for a stop.

“Blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites,” she wrote.

She noted that about 88 percent of the stops result in the police letting the person go without an arrest or ticket, a percentage so high, she said, that it suggests there was not a credible suspicion to suspect the person of criminality in the first place.

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.

Scottsdale defends corporate welfare to golf course

Scottsdale defends aid to golf course

By Beth Duckett The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Aug 11, 2013 10:05 PM

Scottsdale is fighting a lawsuit filed by two residents who claim the city’s contribution toward improvements at the McDowell Mountain Golf Club constitutes an illegal subsidy.

Scottsdale City Attorney Bruce Washburn has asked the court to throw out the complaint, filed against Scottsdale and its top officials in mid-June.

John Washington, a former Scottsdale mayoral candidate, and Mark Stuart, a business owner, sued Scottsdale after the City Council signed off on a deal to contribute $1.5 million toward renovations at the north Scottsdale clubhouse.

The city issued $1.5 million in bonds, or $2 million with principal and interest. The renovations were completed in January.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation owns most of the land beneath the 18-hole golf course and the clubhouse in the McDowell Mountain Ranch community. Scottsdale has a contract with the bureau to use the land.

A private entity, White Buffalo Golf LLC, bought the course’s operating rights from SunCor Development Corp. of Tempe in April 2012, paying $2.2 million. White Buffalo includes PGA Tour pro Phil Mickelson, and Steve Loy, his former golf coach at Arizona State University.

In court filings, Washington and Stuart argued that the city’s contribution toward club upgrades violates the state Constitution’s gift clause and the Scottsdale charter.

The gift clause prohibits giving public money to private parties without getting a fair return.

Similarly, Scottsdale’s charter bans subsidies unless there is a clear public purpose and the city receives a return equal to its costs.

“If this isn’t a subsidy, then, short of just forking over money for nothing in return, I don’t know what is,” Washington said.

The deal, finalized a year ago, allowed for partial city funding of the project.

In exchange, White Buffalo agreed to pay Scottsdale a larger percentage of its gross sales — 3 percent instead of 2 percent — for 20 years. The change was expected to generate an extra $30,000 or more a year for the city.

Under a prior contract, White Buffalo had to pay for all improvements at the club and clubhouse.

Washington argued that the change in the contract “drastically shifts the cost and risk from White Buffalo to the taxpayers.”

In June, he and Stuart filed suit against Scottsdale, Mayor Jim Lane and City Council members, and the city manager.

On July 8, Washburn filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in Maricopa County Superior Court.

He declined to comment on the pending litigation.

The $2 million investment serves a public purpose, and “when the government is pursuing a public purpose, it does not have to get a return on its investment,” Washburn wrote in the filing.

Scottsdale will repay the bonds with proceeds from a fee on golf-course revenue, said Lee Guillory, Scottsdale acting city treasurer.

The revenue typically goes into a “Basin Management Fund,” used for course improvements.

The fund also gets revenue from a fee charged on rounds of golf.

For that reason, “the only taxpayer funds that were used to fund the clubhouse improvements were from issuing bonds,” Washburn said in a court filing.

He argued that Stuart and Washington, as taxpayers, don’t have standing in the case. The cost of improvements is ultimately covered by golf fees, not tax revenue.

But without the city’s guarantee to repay the bonds from sales taxes, the bonds could not be issued, Stuart said.

The Basin Management funds “belong to the taxpayer, per existing city policy,” Stuart said.

“Once funds are collected by the city, no matter from what source, they cannot be given away,” he said. “That’s the essence of the gift clause.”

White Buffalo was obligated to pay for $353,000 of the project, plus a loan of $500,000 repaid by future golf fees from the Basin Management Fund, according to a 2012 report.

Former Scottsdale City Treasurer David Smith, who wrote the report, recommended that White Buffalo abide by the original contract to pay for improvements, unless the company paid additional fees for the city to have an “acceptable return on investment.”

By tapping the fee revenue to pay debt service on the bonds, the city is eliminating that cash flow into the Basin Management Fund, Smith said.

Republic reporters Michael Clancy and Peter Corbett contributed to this article.

Valley Metro Bus Strike Lawsuit

Here is the bus pass I purchased, but which I could not use on August 1 thru 4 in the cities of Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert which had all of their bus service stopped by the bus strike.

Some of the bus service was stopped in Phoenix and Scottsdale too. But other bus unions also provide bus service in Phoenix and Scottsdale so bus service did not come to a complete halt in Phoenix and Scottsdale like it did in the other cities.

Also the light rail service, which is run by another union continued to provide service. I did ride once on the light rail during the strike, when I went to the First Fridays event in downtown Phoenix.

Here are photos of both sides of my bus pass, which I could not use during Aug 1 thru 4. The bus pass number seems to be # L31-0013125. I probably bought it at the APS office in Chandler.

Glendale City Council target of 2 new probes

Glendale City Council target of 2 new probes

By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Aug 12, 2013 9:37 PM

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has opened two new inquiries into the actions of Glendale council members and officials.

The first inquiry involves possible Open Meeting Law violations by council members Norma Alvarez and Ian Hugh, who publicly discussed proposals submitted to the city by firms bidding to run Jobing.com Arena.

The second matter was prompted by Alvarez. It concerns the councilwoman’s allegations of possible improper money transfers among city accounts to cover various debts to the National Hockey League, other arena-related transactions and improvements at businesses owned by other council members.

The fund transfers already are the subject of an audit commissioned by the council, and members are scheduled to be briefed on its findings today.

The new state inquiries were disclosed in a letter by Assistant Attorney General Christopher Munns on Aug. 5 to acting City Attorney Nick DiPiazza.

The Republic obtained the letter from the city through a public-records request.

Munns asked DiPiazza to provide more information about the matters by Aug. 23.

Neither Munns nor Alvarez responded to The Republic’s requests for comment.

The new probes came just days after the Attorney General’s Office closed another investigation into possible Open Meeting Law violations by six council members involving serial meetings with NHL executives on May 28.

The state closed that inquiry on Aug. 1 after interviewing a single undisclosed council member and reviewing assurances by DiPiazza that the serial meetings failed to meet the law’s criteria for official meetings.

The inquiry regarding Alvarez and Hugh concerns a council workshop on June 28. The public meeting focused on efforts by the incoming owners of the Phoenix Coyotes to secure an arena-management contract.

At the time, the competitive proposals by other bidders had not been publicly disclosed by the city, though council members had discussed the bids in private session.

Alvarez and Hugh both suggested in the public meeting that the competing proposals were valid options to the 15-year, $225 million agreement that the incoming Coyotes owners sought.

Four days later, the council voted 4-3 to award the arena-management contract to the incoming Coyotes owners. Alvarez, Hugh and Mayor Jerry Weiers voted against the measure.

Hugh said he was unconcerned about the state inquiry.

“I didn’t disclose any confidential information or violate the Open Meeting Law,” he said. “That pretty well sums it up.”

Regarding the second new inquiry, Munns did not elaborate in the letter why Alvarez believes the money transfers may be improper.

The results of the city’s audit likely will shed light on Alvarez’s questions about the money transfers, Weiers said. The new Open Meeting Law allegations probably lack merit, he said.

“The thing that troubles me is the fact that the council is fighting each other rather than working together to help the city get out of these problems,” he said. “Personalities are getting in the way and that’s unfortunate.”

McDonnell says he and his family have returned all ‘tangible’ gifts from donor

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McDonnell says he and his family have returned all ‘tangible’ gifts from donor

By Rosalind S. Helderman, Updated: Tuesday, August 13, 6:34 AM E-mail the writer

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has returned all “tangible” gifts that were given to him and his family members by a wealthy political supporter but has declined to detail a list of all items returned.

McDonnell (R) told the Associated Press on Monday that his lawyers had informed him that they had finished returning the items provided by Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the chief executive of a dietary supplement company whose relationship with McDonnell is under state and federal investigations.

Rich Galen, a spokesman for McDonnell’s legal team, confirmed the gifts have been returned but indicated that McDonnell does not intend to release an itemized accounting of those items.

People familiar with the situation have said Williams’s gifts to the governor’s family included $15,000 worth of high-end clothing purchased for McDonnell’s wife, Maureen, at Bergdorf Goodman in New York and a $6,500 Rolex watch, engraved with the words “71st Governor of Virginia,” that Williams bought for the governor at Maureen McDonnell’s urging. Galen said Tuesday that, as a tangible gift, the Rolex watch was one of the items that McDonnell returned.

McDonnell’s return of the gifts was part of a dramatic shift in his public strategy in dealing with the Williams issue since The Washington Post first reported that the executive had paid $15,000 for the catering at the 2011 wedding of one of McDonnell’s daughters.

The wedding gift came even as the McDonnells were taking steps that were helpful to Williams’s company, Star Scientific.

For months, McDonnell called Williams a family friend and said that he had followed Virginia’s gift disclosure laws, which do not require disclosure of gifts to spouses or children. McDonnell said gave no special treatment to Williams or the company.

But on Friday, Galen signaled a change in tactics, turning on Williams in a statement that indicated McDonnell has had a 37-year unblemished record of public service but that Williams, 58, “has been in trouble with government entities since the earliest days of his business career.”

Galen accused prosecutors of engaging in a “quid pro quo” with the businessman, suggesting they were trading lenient treatment for Williams and his company in exchange for testimony against the governor.

The new tact came after people familiar with the investigation revealed that Williams was cooperating with prosectors exploring whether McDonnell traded influence for gifts and money and after Star Scientific formally told investors it expected to face no charges, including any resulting from a securities investigation it had revealed in March.

McDonnell apologized on July 23 for breaching Virginians’ trust in his dealings with Williams, while maintaining that he had broken no laws. He announced that he had repaid $124,000 to Williams, money the executive had given Maureen McDonnell and a small corporation the governor owns with his sister in 2011 and 2012.

Then he said he was working to return other items provided by Williams. His daughter repaid the $15,000 catering gift; another daughter gave back $10,000 Williams had given her as an engagement gift.

Holder is targeting lengthy mandatory drug sentences

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Holder is targeting lengthy mandatory drug sentences

By Pete Yost and Paul Elias Associated Press Mon Aug 12, 2013 9:00 PM

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder announced a major shift Monday in federal sentencing policies, targeting long mandatory terms that he said have flooded the nation’s prisons with low-level drug offenders and diverted crime-fighting dollars that could be far better spent.

If Holder’s policies are implemented aggressively, they could mark one of the most significant changes in the way the federal criminal-justice system handles drug cases since the government declared a war on drugs in the 1980s.

As a first step, Holder has instructed federal prosecutors to stop charging many non-violent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. His next step will be working with a bipartisan group in Congress to give judges greater discretion in sentencing.

“We will start by fundamentally rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes,” Holder told the American Bar Association in San Francisco.

There are currently more than 219,000 federal inmates, and the prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity. Holder said the prison population “has grown at an astonishing rate — by almost 800 percent” since 1980. Almost half of the inmates are serving time for drug-related crimes.

Holder said he also wants to divert people convicted of low-level offenses to drug-treatment and community-service programs and expand a prison program to allow for release of some elderly, non-violent offenders.

The speech drew widespread praise, including from some of the people Holder will need most — Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he is encouraged by the Obama administration’s view that mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenders promote injustice and do not serve public safety.

Paul and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have introduced legislation to grant federal judges greater flexibility in sentencing. Leahy commended Holder for his efforts on the issue and said his committee will hold a hearing on the bill next month.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he looks forward to working on the issue with Holder and senators of both parties.

But support was not universal. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Holder “cannot unilaterally ignore the laws or the limits on his executive powers. While the attorney general has the ability to use prosecutorial discretion in individual cases, that authority does not extend to entire categories of people.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said whether the law needs to be changed should be decided by Congress, along with the president.

“Instead, we’re seeing the president attempt to run roughshod over the direct representatives of the people elected to write the laws,” Grassley said. “The overreach by the administration to unilaterally decide which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore is a disturbing trend.”

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., agreed that Holder should not have taken the action without congressional approval.

“While reducing mandatory minimums may be good policy, I hope the attorney general fully understands that Congress should address the issue through legislation,” Gosar said. “As I have repeatedly said, the attorney general does not get to pick which laws to enforce and which ones to toss out of the window.”

But Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said the Obama administration had to act in part because Congress has failed to do so.

“This is another example of the president having to step in on a volatile but important issue because of a lack of action by Congress,” Grijalva said. “We have bills before us on this issue all the time — and I support them — but they don’t even get a hearing. ... I think what Holder did is a wise move and, frankly, overdue.”

The impact of Holder’s initiative could be significant, said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a private group involved in research and policy reform of the criminal-justice system.

African-Americans and Hispanics probably would benefit the most from a change. Black people account for about 30 percent of federal drug convictions each year and Hispanics account for 40 percent, according to Mauer.

If state policymakers were to adopt similar policies, the impact of changes at the state level could be even broader. Currently, about 225,000 state prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

One national survey from 15 years ago by the Sentencing Project indicated that 58 percent of state drug offenders had no history of violence or high-level drug dealing.

“These proportions on state prisoners may have shifted somewhat since that time, but it’s still likely that a substantial proportion of state drug offenders fall into that category today,” Mauer said.

Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., said he would support such legislation if it came before the House.

“I’ve always felt that mandatory sentencing was not something I supported,” Pastor said. “I feel that a judge should have the discretion to mitigate a sentence or impose a harsher one depending on the circumstances and the facts of the case. That’s the way to ensure that justice is served.”

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz., said something must be done to reduce prison overcrowding and save taxpayers’ dollars.

“As a former prosecutor, I know how important it is to crack down on criminals and keep our communities safe,” Kirkpatrick said. “But when our prisons are needlessly overcrowded, taxpayers are stuck with the tab. I support efforts to find a common-sense solution to this problem, and I’ll be taking a closer look at what the attorney general is proposing.”

In a three-page memo to all 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices around the country, Holder said rising prison costs have resulted in reduced spending on law-enforcement agents, prosecutors and prevention and intervention programs.

“These reductions in public-safety spending require us to make our public-safety expenditures smarter and more productive,” the memo stated.

In some cases where a defendant is not an organizer, leader, manager or supervisor of others, “prosecutors should decline to pursue charges triggering a mandatory minimum sentence,” Holder’s memo said.

In his speech to the ABA, the attorney general said, “We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate — not merely to convict, warehouse and forget.”

Holder said new approaches, which he is calling the “Smart on Crime” initiative, are the result of a Justice Department review he launched early this year.

The attorney general said that some issues are best handled at the state or local level and that he has directed federal prosecutors across the country to develop locally tailored guidelines for determining when federal charges should be filed and when they should not.

He said 17 states have directed money away from prison construction and toward programs and services such as treatment and supervision that are designed to reduce the problem of repeat offenders.

In Kentucky, legislation has reserved prison space for the most serious offenders and refocused resources on community supervision. The state, Holder said, is projected to reduce its prison population by more than 3,000 over the next 10 years, saving more than $400 million.

He also cited investments in drug treatment in Texas for non-violent offenders and changes to parole policies, which he said brought about a reduction of more than 5,000 in the prison population last year.

He said similar efforts helped Arkansas reduce its prison population by more than 1,400. He also pointed to Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Hawaii as states that have improved public safety while preserving limited resources.

San Francisco County District Attorney George Gascón applauded Holder’s speech. “It’s obviously a big shift in policy,” Gascón said. “Now, let’s see how the follow- through works.”

In a state experiencing severe prison overcrowding, Gascón has been advocating “alternative” sentencing of low-level drug offenders since taking office as district attorney in January 2011. He previously served as the city’s police chief.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to delay the early release of nearly 10,000 California inmates by year’s end to ease overcrowding at 33 adult prisons.

Praising Holder’s efforts, Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office, said the attorney general “is taking crucial steps to tackle our bloated federal mass-incarceration crisis.”

Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said, “For the past 40 years, the Department of Justice, under both political parties, has promoted mandatory minimum sentencing like a one-way ratchet.”

Former federal appellate Judge Timothy Lewis recalled that he once had to sentence a 19-year-old to 10 years in prison for conspiracy for being in a car where drugs were found.

Lewis, also a former prosecutor, said the teen, who was Black, was on course to be the first person in his family to go to college. Instead, Lewis had to send him to prison as the teen turned and screamed for his mother.

“I am just glad that someone finally has the guts to stand up and do something about what is a pervasively racist policy,” said Lewis, who is African-American.

Erin Kelly of the Republic Washington Bureau contributed to this article.

Confession at center of Doody retrial

A speedy fair trial in the Buddhist Tempe murders??? Don't make me laugh

1) The confessions from the four Tucson kids (Mike McGraw, Leo Bruce, Mark Nunez, and Dante Parker) were almost certainly obtained using the "9 Step Reid Method". The "9 Step Reid Method" is just an improved form of beating people with rubber hoses to get confessions. The "9 Step Reid Method" replaces real rubber hoses with psychological rubber hoses. Innocent people routinely make false confessions when integrated with the "9 Step Reid Method".

The Tucson kids were released after spending a year in the Maricopa County jail when it was discovered that Alessandro Garcia and Jonathan Doody had the gun that the murders were committed with.

The Tucson kids later received settlements from Maricopa County for false arrest.

2) The confessions from Alessandro Garcia and Jonathan Doody were also almost certainly obtained using the "9 Step Reid Method". Again the "9 Step Reid Method" is a lot like beating people with psychological rubber hoses to get a confession. And again innocent people routinely make false confessions when integrated with the "9 Step Reid Method".

3) I not joking about this, but the Tucson kids were arrested when the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office got a tip from Mike McGraw, a guy in a mental institution in Tucson, who said he know who committed the murders in Phoenix. Yes, a tip from a guy in a nut house in Tucson, who out of the blue called the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and said he knew who committed the worst murders in the history of Maricopa County.

The 4 kids from Tucson were taken to Phoenix by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office where they were coerced into giving false confessions.

Source

Confession at center of Doody retrial

Jonathan Doody’s earlier murder convictions were overturned.

By Laurie Merrill The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Aug 13, 2013 1:24 AM

The murders 22 years ago of nine people at a West Valley Buddhist temple stand as one of the most brazen and shocking cases in Arizona history.

On Aug. 10, 1991, investigators found six monks, a nun and two helpers lying facedown and grouped together in a circle, their heads pointing inward like spokes in a wheel, at the Wat Promkunaram Temple in Waddell. Some of their hands were clasped in prayer. They were drenched in blood from head wounds made by .22-caliber bullets and shotgun blasts to torsos, arms and legs.

Six people confessed to the crimes under intense interrogation, and two West Valley teens were convicted of the murders in 1993. One pleaded guilty, the other was found guilty by a jury.

On Monday, five years after his conviction was overturned, Johnathan Doody’s retrial began with jury selection in Maricopa County Superior Court. A panel of about 150 potential jurors was whittled to 46. Jury selection continues today.

This time, defense attorney Maria Schaffer said, “we intend to show that Mr. Doody was not present during the murders.”

“He was not there,” she said.

Doody was 17 when he was arrested in the case in October 1991. Doody, now 39, has been incarcerated ever since.

It’s a case that forever changed police-interrogation techniques and the face of Arizona politics, Schaffer said. [Bullsh*t it didn't change ANYTHING. Almost ALL the police departments in the USA routinely use the "9 Step Reid Method" to get confessions today. Despite the fact that the "9 Step Reid Method" is nothing more then a psychological version of beating people with rubber hoses to get confessions and routinely gets false confessions. Google "9 Step Reid Method" and you will find out what I am talking about] It helped elect Sheriff Joe Arpaio to his first term in office in 1992, she said. He campaigned on the claim that he would not extract confessions the way his rival, then-Sheriff Tom Agnos, reportedly did. [That's just one of the many lies Sheriff Joe has told us.]

Sheriff’s investigators under Agnos took thousands of photos and fingerprints.

Their first solid lead, a September 1991 tip, resulted in the arrests of five men in Tucson. Four confessed and became known as the “Tucson Four.” [Solid lead??? As I said it was a call from a guy in a MENTAL INSTITUTION in Tucson!!!!]

Investigators pleaded, cajoled, threatened and lied to them until they were willing to say anything, reports say. [Yea, that sounds exactly how the "9 Step Reid Method" works!]

Those confessions were found to be false about a month later, when investigators tied a .22-caliber gun to the murders. It was a gun none of the four owned.

The weapon was linked to Alessandro “Alex” Garcia and to Doody, then a high-school junior. Investigators approached Doody during a football game. He went with them willingly.

Doody was subjected to a 12-hour interrogation by officers who used the same techniques on Doody that they used to get false confessions from the Tucson Four, according to Alan Dershowitz, Doody’s then-attorney. [Again that is typical of how the "9 Step Reid Method" works]

“They used every trick in the book,” Dershowitz said several years ago. “They denied him the right to have a parent there. They created the circumstances for false confession, and they got it — a false confession.” [Again that is typical of how the "9 Step Reid Method" works]

Garcia also confessed. He later pleaded guilty in a plea bargain that allowed him to avoid the death penalty if he testified against Doody. He was sentenced to 271 years in prison, 10 fewer than Doody’s sentence of 281 years.

In 2008, 15 years after Doody was found guilty, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, ruling that his confession was coerced. The Arizona Attorney General’s Office appealed, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, paving the way for Doody’s retrial.

In the years since the first trial, six witnesses have died, Schaffer said. The key to the prosecution case, Garcia, is in prison, Schaffer said. “Basically, what we are going to tell the jurors is that Garcia is not truthful,” Schaffer said.

The Maricopa County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment Monday.

Opening arguments are scheduled for Aug. 21.

Here is a quote from the following article on the big break in the case which was a call from a Tucson mental institution.

"Then, one month after the killings came what seemed like the big break. Tucson mental-hospital patient Mike McGraw, 24, on Sept. 10, 1991, called sheriff's investigators. He said he knew who had done it and he named names.

Soon, Tucson police had picked up McGraw and several friends: Leo Bruce, then 28, Mark Nunez, 19, Dante Parker, 20, and Victor Zarate, 28. All were taken to Phoenix and grilled from 9 p.m. to dawn daily, from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13."

Source

Valley Buddhist temple massacre has had lasting impact

by William Hermann - Aug. 14, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

The slaying 20 years ago of nine people at a West Valley Buddhist temple, while tragic in its own right, also changed the face of Arizona politics and still shines a light on the issue of police interrogation techniques.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio may well owe his first election victory, in 1992, to then-Sheriff Tom Agnos' staff bungling the investigation into the Aug. 9, 1991, murders at the Wat Promkunaram Temple. Arpaio has become a key figure in Arizona politics, using his influence to get others elected and playing a key role in making illegal immigration a state and national issue.

The legacy of the murders also lives on in Arizona police agencies, where detectives interrogating suspects strive not to make the mistakes sheriff's investigators made 20 years ago. [That is rubbish!!! The "9 Step Reid Method" is still routinely used by most police departments in the USA to get confessions. Hell, for that matter the "9 Step Reid Method" is routinely used by police departments through out the world to get confessions.]

Early on, detectives threatened, pressured and coerced four innocent men into false confessions, then used the same tactics with two other suspects. [Sure sounds like they used the "9 Step Reid Method" to get the confessions] The result: A guilty man who confessed and went to prison may yet go free.

The monks who live, pray and teach at Wat Promkunaram, meanwhile, will hold a prayer service Aug. 27 for the six Buddhist monks, a nun and two acolytes who were brutally murdered at the temple in the community of Waddell on that night 20 years ago.

A frenzied scene

Russell Kimball, then-homicide chief for the Sheriff's Office, remembers the frenzy at the crime scene.

"It was like an armed camp out there - everybody who was anybody in law enforcement wanted a part of it," he said. "The media was everywhere; it couldn't have been a higher-profile case."

Investigators found nine victims lying face down and grouped together, their heads pointing inward like spokes in a wheel. Some had their hands clasped in prayer. The carpet was bloody from head wounds made by .22-caliber bullets and shotgun blasts to torsos, arms and legs.

Sheriff's detectives over six days did exhaustive crime-scene work, taking thousands of photographs and fingerprints and making scores of diagrams.

"We collected every shell casing, took down walls and took the carpet out," Kimball said. "We also set up a multiagency task force. We soon had 221 people from 21 agencies on the case, and all done under constant pressure."

Despite an exhaustive investigation, weeks went by without a solid lead. Then, one month after the killings came what seemed like the big break. Tucson mental-hospital patient Mike McGraw, 24, on Sept. 10, 1991, called sheriff's investigators. He said he knew who had done it and he named names. [Wow!!! So a guy from a NUT HOUSE or INSANE ASYLUM in Tucson called and said he could help the cops solve the murders!!! And the dumb cops listened to him!!!!]

Soon, Tucson police had picked up McGraw and several friends: Leo Bruce, then 28, Mark Nunez, 19, Dante Parker, 20, and Victor Zarate, 28. All were taken to Phoenix and grilled from 9 p.m. to dawn daily, from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13. [Again the techniques used sound exactly like the "9 Step Reid Method"]

Kimball said the investigators pleaded, cajoled, threatened and lied. [Again that's how the "9 Step Reid Method" works]

"It was so frenetic, 'You do this and I do that,' and we used tag-team tactics," he said. "Worse, we had people who'd never done murder interrogations, or even major crimes, before working those guys." [Rubbish. This those are the standard operating techniques used by police to get confessions - the "9 Step Reid Method"]

Among the mistakes made by interrogators, Kimball said, was, "they fed information about the case to them, and a trained homicide investigator would not do that." [Again those were not mistakes, but the standard operating procedure of using "9 Step Reid Method" to get confessions]

The suspects' resistance only added pressure.

"We hammered on those guys until we broke their will, it was as simple and bad as that," he said. "After a while they were willing to say anything." [And this is how the "9 Step Reid Method" works. You beat the krap out of them with a psychological rubber hose until they confess]

The defendants buckle

Beaten down and exhausted, four of the defendants began to tell the detectives what they believed they wanted to hear, and because they'd been given information about the murders, they gave details that seemed damning.

"Obviously they talked - because of the pressure," Kimball said. "A suspect has been up for hours and everything starts breaking down. The suspect gets to a place where they just submit, say anything the detectives want, just to stop the pressure." [And that is how the "9 Step Reid Method" is supposed to work. The "9 Step Reid Method" is very effective at getting confessions. Both real confessions and false confessions]

One man didn't break. Zarate maintained his innocence and was released.

Then-County Attorney Rick Romley charged McGraw, Bruce, Parker and Nunez with nine counts each of first-degree murder.

But once the "Tucson Four" had a few days to rest and think about what had happened to them, they recanted, saying they were coerced. But investigators were certain the crime was solved. [Days? The reporter exaggerating. It only took a few hours for the Tucson kids to recant their confessions. They made the cops happy by confessing and now wanted to go home, like the cops promised them they could if they confessed.]

Then, on Oct. 23, they got a fateful phone call.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab had identified the murder weapon: a .22-caliber rifle that didn't belong to any of the Tucson men. It belonged to a boy named Rolando Caratachea Jr., then 16.

The rifle had been found Aug. 21 when Caratachea and his friend, Johnathan Doody, 17, were stopped by Luke Air Force Base police. Task-force investigators had learned about the stop, picked up the rifle on Sept. 10 and talked with Doody, who said that he and friend Alessandro Garcia, 16, had fired it several times together. All three young men lived in the West Valley.

But that line of investigation stopped, because Sept. 10 was the day Mike McGraw made his call from Tucson. The rifle sat in a detective's office for weeks before being tested.

A new theory

Once investigators learned it was one of the murder weapons, Caratachea, Doody and Garcia were picked up for questioning. They were put in adjoining interrogation rooms. Detectives went to work on them, sure they were part of a murder crew involving the Tucson men. [Again using the good old "9 Step Reid Method"]

Valley lawyer and author Gary L. Stuart, who long has been absorbed by the case, said that when he began to write about it he planned to concentrate on how improper interrogation techniques can elicit false confessions. [Improper? Improper or not the "9 Step Reid Method" is the technique used by departments throughout the world because it is effective at getting confessions - both false confessions and real confessions]

"In my first two years of research that's what I focused on," he said. "Then I realized the story was at least as much about coercing true confessions as coercing false confessions."

Stuart points out in his 2010 book "Innocent Until Interrogated" that "when the detectives who had questioned the Tucson Four got their hands on Doody, Caratachea and Garcia, they used their old playbook."

Garcia succumbed to interrogators, who told him he could escape execution if he gave them Doody. Garcia admitted being at the temple that night and said Doody shot the monks with the .22, while he blasted them with a shotgun.

The heat was turned up on Doody.

"Doody was subjected to intense interrogation by the same group of officers, using the same techniques that they had earlier successfully used to break down the Tucson Four," Stuart said. [Again the good old "9 Step Reid Method"]

"Doody was arrested at 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night, put in a holding cell until midnight and then they started the interrogation," Stuart said. "It went all night, and by 6 a.m. the next morning he is starting to be incoherent - you can hear it on the tape. He is crying and petrified, he has two adults playing the 'good cop, bad cop' routine. He was in there almost 13 hours." Different suspect, same tactics [Again that sure sound like it came from the playbook of the "9 Step Reid Method"]

Kimball says now, "It was the same old thing."

"You have (the interrogating detective) begging Johnathan to tell you the truth, and you could feel him not wanting to surrender," Kimball said. "But he finally did surrender; was broken."

Doody admitted he'd gone to the temple that night with Garcia. He didn't admit to shooting anyone. Still, what he said was enough to eventually convict him - and to convince Romley that the Tucson Four case "was just all wrong."

"I had questions about the Tucson men even before Doody and Garcia's interrogations," Romley said. [if you had questions why did you let them rot in jail for a year *sshole???] "I began to review the materials, and inconsistencies started popping up. It just didn't hold together. I talked to Tom Agnos and said I was dismissing the charges against the Tucson Four. It was a difficult conversation."

The Tucson Four were released Nov. 22, 1991. All but McGraw sued the county. In 1994, Leo Bruce and Mark Nunez got $1.1 million each. Dante Parker got $240,000.

Doody and Garcia were tried in 1993. Doody did not testify. His statement that he was at the temple the night of the killings, and Garcia's testimony that he and Doody carried out the killings, were enough to convict them of nine counts of first-degree murder.

On Feb. 11, 1994, Doody was sentenced to 281 years in prison. On July 15, 1994, Garcia got 271 years. For Garcia, who had readily confessed, appeals of the sentence seemed useless.

Not so for Doody.

The case had drawn national attention. Doody's treatment at the hands of interrogators brought Alan Dershowitz, a nationally known attorney, to his side.

In 1995, Dershowitz, working with lawyer Peter Balkan in Phoenix, argued to the Arizona Court of Appeals that Doody was wrongfully deprived of his father's presence during the interrogation. He also argued that the Miranda warning against self-incrimination was improperly administered and that Doody's confession was not voluntary.

There began the appeals that continue to this day, though now near resolution.

Legal challenges ongoing

In May, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Doody's confession, elicited over 12 hours of questioning, was illegally coerced. On Aug. 1, the Arizona Attorney General's Office petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that decision. If the Supreme Court refuses, Doody must be retried or go free.

Stuart said Doody's confession never should have stood up in court.

"What the law requires is a standard of admissibility and evidence for a confession, and the test of admissibility is whether it was freely and voluntarily given by the defendant," Stuart said. "The standard is whether the defendant's will was overborne by the interrogator. Was he coerced into confessing?

"They coerced the Tucson Four, who were innocent, but in much the same way they coerced Doody, who is guilty," Stuart said. "It was coercion all the same, and that should make it inadmissible in court."

Stuart said the appellate ruling clarified "that the danger to society and constitutional mandates are every bit as important in true confessions as they are in false confessions."

If there is a broader legal legacy of the investigation, it is this: Detectives at Valley police agencies are now more mindful of their interrogation techniques.

Interestingly, the murders are not at all a searing topic at the temple where they all took place.

The day after the slayings, Buddhist monk Phrakru Widesbrommakun was called to Phoenix from a Los Angeles temple. He has been in Waddell ever since, now serving as abbot.

"I knew the people who were killed, and we still feel very sad here about it, of course," the monk said recently as he sat in the temple's dining hall. "But we do not have hatred about it. In that respect, we have forgotten what happened and cannot concern ourselves with it.

"We are about peace."

Two Powerful Signals of a Major Shift on Crime

Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates.

Source

Two Powerful Signals of a Major Shift on Crime

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and ERICA GOODE

Published: August 12, 2013

WASHINGTON — Two decisions Monday, one by a federal judge in New York and the other by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., were powerful signals that the pendulum has swung away from the tough-on-crime policies of a generation ago.

Critics have long contended that draconian mandatory minimum sentence laws for low-level drug offenses, as well as stop-and-frisk police policies that target higher-crime and minority neighborhoods, have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups. On Monday, Mr. Holder announced that federal prosecutors would no longer invoke the sentencing laws, and a judge found that stop-and-frisk practices in New York were unconstitutional racial profiling.

While the timing was a coincidence, Barbara Arnwine, the president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that the effect was “historic, groundbreaking, and potentially game-changing.”

“I thought that the most important significance of both events was the sense of enough is enough,” said Ms. Arnwine, who attended the speech in San Francisco where Mr. Holder unveiled the new Justice Department policy. “It’s a feeling that this is the moment to make needed change. This just can’t continue, this level of extreme heightened injustice in our policing, our law enforcement and our criminal justice system.”

A generation ago, amid a crack epidemic, state and federal lawmakers enacted a wave of tough-on-crime measures that resulted in an 800 percent increase in the number of prisoners in the United States, even as the population grew by only a third. The spike in prisoners centered on an increase in the number of African-American and Hispanic men convicted of drug crimes; blacks are about six times as likely as whites to be incarcerated.

But the crack wave has long since passed and violent crime rates have plummeted to four-decade lows, in the process reducing crime as a salient political issue. Traditionally conservative states, driven by a need to save money on building and maintaining prisons, have taken the lead in scaling back policies of mass incarceration. Against that backdrop, the move away from mandatory sentences and Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s ruling on stop-and-frisk practices signaled that a course correction on two big criminal justice issues that disproportionately affect minorities has finally been made, according to the advocates who have pushed for those changes.

“I think that there is a sea change now of thinking around the impact of over-incarceration and selective enforcement in our criminal justice system on racial minorities,” said Vanita Gupta of the American Civil Liberties Union. “These are hugely significant and symbolic events, because we would not have either of these even five years ago.”

Michelle Alexander, an Ohio State University law professor who wrote “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” an influential 2010 book about the racial impact of policies like stop-and-frisk and mandatory minimum drug sentences, said the two developments gave her a sense of “cautious optimism.”

“For those of us who have become increasingly alarmed over the years at the millions of lives that have been wasted due to the drug war and the types of police tactics that have been deployed in the get-tough-on-crime movement, today’s announcements give us fresh hope that there is, in fact, a growing public consensus that the path that we, the nation, have been on for the past 40 years has been deeply misguided and has caused far more harm and suffering than it has prevented,” she said.

But not everyone was celebrating. William G. Otis, a former federal prosecutor and an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, described Mr. Holder’s move as a victory for drug dealers that would incentivize greater sales of addictive contraband, and he suggested that the stop-and-frisk ruling could be overturned on appeal.

Mr. Otis also warned that society was becoming “complacent” and forgetting that the drug and sentencing policies enacted over the last three decades had contributed to the falling crime rates.

Yet Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based research group, said many police chiefs agreed that it was time to rethink mandatory sentencing for low-level drug offenses. And he said departments across the country would examine the stop-and-frisk ruling in New York “to see if their practices pass muster.”

But he added: “You can’t get away from the fact that in most large cities, crime is concentrated in poor areas which are predominantly minority. The question becomes, what tactics are acceptable in those communities to reduce crime? And there is a trade-off between the tactics that may be used and the issue of fairness.”

David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia who has been involved in a lawsuit over stop-and-frisk in that city, said both Holder’s announcement and the ruling were “part of a national re-examination of criminal justice policy that has been spurred for the last 40 years by a fear of crime.”

As that fear has lessened, he added, there has been more room to be heard for critics who say that some policies have gone too far and may be counterproductive. Those critics cite the low rate of finding guns with stop-and-frisk actions, and say that the experience of being searched — and the consequences if drugs are discovered — alienate people in targeted communities, making them less willing to give the police information about more serious violent crimes.

“There was the thought that if we stop, frisk, arrest and incarcerate huge numbers of people, that will reduce crime,” Rudovsky said. “But while that may have had some effect on crime, the negative parts outweighed the positive parts.”

Critics have argued that aggressive policing in minority neighborhoods can distort overall crime statistics. Federal data show, for example, that black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates.

“There is just as much drugs going on in the Upper East Side of New York or Cleveland Park in D.C.,” said Jamie Fellner, a specialist on race and criminal drug law enforcement for Human Rights Watch, citing predominantly affluent and white neighborhoods. “But that is not where police are doing their searches for drugs.”

Alfred Blumstein, a Carnegie Mellon professor who has studied race and incarceration issues, said Mr. Holder’s speech and Judge Scheindlin’s stop-and-frisk ruling both addressed policies that “were attempts to stop crime, but they weren’t terribly effective.”

Together, he said, the events indicated that society was “trying to become more effective and more targeted and, in the process, to reduce the heavy impact on particularly African-Americans.”

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.

Nuclear-missile unit fails security test

Source

Nuclear-missile unit fails security test

By Robert Burns Associated Press Tue Aug 13, 2013 10:37 PM

WASHINGTON — An Air Force unit that operates one-third of the nation’s land-based nuclear missiles has failed a safety and security inspection, marking the second major setback this year for a force charged with the military’s most sensitive mission, the general in charge of the nuclear air force said Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command, said a team of “relatively low-ranking” airmen failed one exercise as part of a broader inspection, which began last week and ended Tuesday. [So blame it on the low end guys, rather then the officers that supervise them???]

He said that, for security reasons, he could not be specific about the team or the exercise. [Another government nanny telling us to "trust him" because we can't be trusted to know what the government is doing. This really bothers me.]

“This unit fumbled on this exercise,” Kowalski said by telephone from his headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., adding that this did not call into question the safety or control of nuclear weapons at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.

“The team did not demonstrate the right procedures,” he said, and it was rated a failure. “(To elaborate) could reveal a potential vulnerability (in the force),” Kowalski added.

In a written statement on its website, Kowalski’s command said there had been “tactical-level errors” in the snap exercise, revealing “discrepancies.”

Without more details, it is difficult to reliably judge the extent and severity of the problem uncovered at Malmstrom, home of the 341st Missile Wing, which is one of three nuclear-missile wings.

Each wing operates 150 Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, on alert for potential launch against targets around the globe.

On Capitol Hill, a spokesman for Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that “two troubling inspections in a row at two different missile wings is unacceptable” to McKeon.

“It is his sense that the Air Force must refocus on the nuclear mission,” spokesman John Noonan said. “The Air Force should hold failed leadership at the group and wing level accountable, recommit itself from the top down to the nuclear-deterrent mission, and ensure a daily focus on its centrality to our nation’s security.”

In response to word of the failed inspection, George Little, press secretary for the Pentagon, said the bottom line for nuclear forces hasn’t changed: “Our nuclear forces remain fully capable and ready.” [To kill every body on the face of the earth or just to kill everybody on the face of the earth that is an evil commie???]

“While the fact that the unit made errors during this exercise is disappointing, this type of exercise is designed to push people to their limits and learn how to improve,” Little said. [Gee, the Cold War has been going on for 60+ years. I figured the government would have this stuff down pat!!!]

Asked whether the Air Force intends to take disciplinary action against anyone for the inspection failure, Kowalski said the Air Force is “looking into it.” [But don't count on it. Our government masters rarely punish fellow government bureaucrats for their crimes or mistakes]

Overall, the 341st Missile Wing “did well,” he said, earning ratings of excellent or outstanding in the majority of the 13 areas in which it was graded by inspectors.

Those areas include management, administration, safety, security, emergency exercises, worker reliability and other facets of a mission that relies on teams of officers and enlisted personnel.

ICBM wings undergo two types of inspections. The one at Malmstrom was a “surety” inspection, which the Pentagon defines as “nuclear-weapon-system safety, security and control.” The point is to ensure that no nuclear weapon is accidentally, inadvertently or deliberately armed or launched without presidential authority.

Kowalski said his command’s inspector general has conducted 14 such inspections since early 2010 with just two failures — both involving the 341st Missile Wing. The first was in February 2010. The second was this week.

The 341st also failed a safety and security inspection in 2008.

A different type of inspection of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., in March of this year led the deputy commander of the wing’s operations group to complain of “rot” in the force.

Technically, the wing passed that inspection, but its missile crews earned the equivalent of a “D’’ grade when tested on their mastery of Minuteman 3 launch operations using a simulator.

The following month, the 91st temporarily removed 17 officers from launch-control duty — the first time such a large number had been pulled from duty.

In June, Lt. Col. Randy Olson, the commander in charge of training and proficiency of missile crews at Minot, was relieved of duty, citing a “loss of confidence” in his leadership.

Launch operations were not part of the Malmstrom inspection failure, Kowalski said.

The trouble at Minot was the latest in a longer series of setbacks for the Air Force’s nuclear mission, highlighted by a 2008 Pentagon advisory-group report that found a “dramatic and unacceptable decline” in the Air Force’s commitment to the mission, which has its origins in a Cold War standoff with the former Soviet Union.

After a series of nuclear embarrassments in 2008 — including the inadvertent transport of six nuclear-tipped missiles on a B-52 bomber, whose pilot did not know they were aboard when he flew from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. — then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the top two Air Force officials.

Kowalski’s command was created in late 2009 as part of an effort to fix what was broken in the nuclear force. In Tuesday’s interview, he said he is encouraged that inspections after 2009 began finding an increasing number of problems at the ICBM wings, followed by a decrease since 2011.

He said this tells him that the Air Force has come up with a more rigorous, effective means of inspecting and that they are spurring change.

“This is a difficult inspection,” he said, so occasional failures do not point to a systemic failure to adhere to safety and security regulations.

Companies should be able to deal with solar customers as they please

Source

Patterson: Companies should be able to deal with solar customers as they please

Posted: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 6:01 am

Commentary by Tom Patterson

Should the Arizona Corporation Commission require the customers of APS to provide yet another subsidy to solar energy production? That’s the question at the heart of the argument between the utility and it’s net-metering customers.

APS customers who own solar panels are allowed to sell the energy they don’t need back to APS at full market price. When solar power is not available, they use energy off the grid, usually at times of high demand. APS has clearly shown that under this arrangement, “net-metering” customers don’t pay their fair share of the cost of building and maintaining the grid infrastructure.

APS proposes to pay panel owners $50-$100 less per month for the solar power they purchase. Solar panel owners and their allies in the business object, arguing that the implicit subsidy is warranted because of the great societal benefit of solar power.

University of Arizona economics professor Gautam Gowrisankaran argues that alternative energy subsidies would be “good for the economy” because they would “spur technological development to reduce carbon emissions”.

That would be good if it were true because solar has a big technological handicap. It is still one of the most expensive methods known to generate electricity. Every solar enterprise in existence today depends on government subsidies to stay alive.

But it doesn’t seem logical to assume that further subsidies stimulate innovation. In fact, the opposite case makes more sense. So long as we are willing to pour billions of dollars into supporting today’s inadequate technology, the incentive to innovate is less, not more.

Besides, what other technology had to be nursed along for decades by government before it became economically viable? Did automobiles? Airplanes? Computers? Did nuclear or fracking or other energy technologies followed this course?

The special break for net-metering is actually one of the least significant subsidies granted to solar. Solar panel owners receive a 30 percent tax credit on installation. Manufacturers like the failed Solynda and many others have been awarded a smorgasboard of loans and grants. SolarCity is among the companies that, as part of the 2009 Obama stimulus, receive cash in-lieu-of tax credits for installing solar panels in homes and businesses.

Yet solar panel installers and their customers have gone to the mat to protect the special treatment they now receive from APS. They’ve poached some Republican heavyweights to make the case that the solar energy industry is good for the economy. Solar energy provides jobs, they claim.

But that argument doesn’t hold water. All forms of power generation employ people and contribute to the economy. If we didn’t subsidize solar, other energy producers would eagerly fill the void. They would also employ workers, but without requiring a handout.

Rhine Resch, CEO of the Solar Energy Industry Association, advances another argument, that net-metering “really is a property rights issue. Homeowners should have the right to install solar … and sell that electricity.”

Huh? The “right to sell” assumes the right to compel someone else to buy. It’s a desperate argument and basically economic gibberish.

Others argue that all energy sources are subsidized one way or another, so why not solar? That’s unfortunately true, although no other energy industries are propped up to the extent that solar and wind require.

But the better approach would be to end all energy subsidies. The demand for energy is relatively inelastic, and there are multiple sources of supply to compete for the business. It’s an ideal environment for the free market to work.

There is no good reason for government to pick winners and losers other than to moderate externalities, principally air pollution. (Hint: nuclear plants emit no carbon, yet nuclear is relatively disadvantaged by solar subsidies).

It appears that the technology to make solar financially viable isn’t far away. In the meantime, we’re foolish to jeopardize the economic growth we so desperately need by distorting markets and subsidizing noncompetitive technologies. The Corporation commission should let APS sort it out without more “help” from government.

• East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.

Corporate welfare, alive and well

Corporate welfare, alive and well

By Michael Hiltzik

August 13, 2013, 5:11 p.m.

As a developer of shopping malls, including 22 in California, Westfield Group clearly takes its responsibilities to the consumer economy seriously.

The Australian company's malls are typically well-designed and anchored by the finest department stores, such as Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom. The firm spends gobs of money to refurbish its older malls.

As a California taxpayer, you should be proud of Westfield's efforts. That's because you're paying through the nose for them.

Over the years the company has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in favorable tax assessments, as a recent study documents. That means millions in foregone revenue that could pay for schools and parks. [That's the socialist line. If you ask me that money I COULD SPEND for better things. The government doesn't deserve my money any more then the Westfield Group does!]

And this summer, the Los Angeles City Council granted Westfield a special tax break of up to $59 million on a new mall in Woodland Hills it probably would have built anyway.

Westfield's position is that it receives nothing it's not legally entitled to. "Westfield has paid all real property taxes that have been assessed in accordance with applicable law, like every other taxpayer," its spokeswoman, Katy Dickey, told me by email. As for the new tax abatement, "we worked with the city through the review/approval process and followed the rules," she said.

Yes, they probably did — and that's the problem.

Westfield is a perfect example of what's wrong with California's system of business incentives. Corporate welfare has been baked into the rules for so long that state and municipal leaders don't think twice about it anymore. No one asks whether these breaks serve their purpose. No one asks for evidence of a compelling need. [All the reason they just cited are wrong. The bottom line is it's corporate welfare for bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions. Of course most of us know that there isn't any difference between bribes and campaign contributions]

"Westfield is a high-profile example," says Peter Kuhns, the Los Angeles director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, one of the community groups that sponsored the property tax study. "But there are thousands of commercial property owners in California" getting a similar break on assessments. "That's why our schools are falling apart." [F*ck the schools!!! My wallet is falling apart from all the money the government takes from it and doles out as corporate welfare]

Let's see how this works for Westfield.

On June 28, the City Council voted to grant an exemption of up to 42% of the net new tax revenue generated over 25 years by Westfield's planned Village at Topanga mall. The mall will feature a Costco warehouse store, an extended-stay hotel, restaurants and smaller shops, adding up to 1 million square feet.

The giveaway was sponsored by then-Councilman Dennis Zine and was based on a consultant's report that a "feasibility gap" of $49 million faced the project. That's the difference between Westfield's development costs and the value it could pocket over the 25-year period. The city is empowered to cover up to half of that with tax breaks; to reach $25 million in present value you have to exempt $59 million over the whole period.

How much debate did this get from the council? If you guessed "none," have a cookie. [It's not about debate. As I said before it's corporate welfare for bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions] The vote came one week after the deal's details were unveiled. They weren't reviewed by a single council committee. Council President Herb Wesson allowed 10 minutes for comments from the floor, pro and con, rudely hastening the speakers along as though he was facing an urgent call of nature. The council approved the deal 10 to 0.

Was there some reason that taxpayers needed to cover the "feasibility gap"? No. The site is located between two existing Westfield malls, so its development is likely to enhance their value too. Westfield already owns the property and had poured $18 million into pre-development costs before coming to the council with upturned palms.

"It was not at all clear that this project would not have happened without the tax subvention," says City Controller Ron Galperin, who came out against the deal during his successful campaign against Zine for that post.

The firm hardly needs the money. Westfield manages assets worth nearly $60 billion and recorded a profit last year of more than $1.5 billion (U.S.).

The city says it's making an investment to allow Westfield to build the Village over a shorter time frame, producing more tax revenue faster. But although the city's consultants projected that the new mall would generate a goodly volume of business, it's unclear how much would be new business, as opposed to sales cannibalized from other locations. This is important, because cities love to use tax breaks to poach developments from neighboring counties and cities. It's a vast zero-sum game, except for the taxpayer, who loses.

In this case, the Costco slated for the Village will be relocated from just a few miles up the street. The city's consultants at Santa Ana-based Rosenow Spevacek Group didn't count most of the revenue from the Costco in calculating the value of the new mall. But estimating how much other spending will be new is something of a black art.

To be fair, they also cut Westfield's claim of a $91.4-million feasibility gap nearly by half. "We didn't agree with everything Westfield said" about potential revenue and development costs, says Jim Simon, a principal at the consulting firm.

Galperin says he's planning a "holistic" look at how these redevelopment handouts get calculated. "Invariably, these reports involve a not insignificant amount of guesswork," he says. "The city should find ways to make good projects happen, but shouldn't give away revenues if it's not absolutely necessary."

California has also embedded a huge long-term tax break for commercial property in its tax code, via chronic underassessments of the holdings. That brings us to the property tax study of Westfield's malls, which was prepared by a group of Australian unions. The study's authors compared the mall values Westfield reported to its shareholders with the lower property assessments on assessors' books. The discrepancy is enormous.

Take the Century City mall, the centerpiece of Westfield's West Coast presence and its most valuable U.S. property. It's right in the heart of the high-spending Westside, anchored by Bloomingdale's and filled with such luxe retailers as Tiffany, Louis Vuitton and Rolex.

In its 2012 annual report, Westfield valued Century City at $921 million. But its assessed valuation on L.A. County's books is only $588 million, or about 63% of the company value.

The property tax report calculates that the discrepancy costs L.A. County $4.4 million a year for Century City alone. Similar mismatches occur for almost all the firm's Los Angeles malls for a total loss, the report says, of nearly $19 million.

This figure underscores the flaw in our tax system created by Proposition 13. The initiative was sold as a relief plan for overtaxed homeowners, but it's become a great boon for commercial property owners. The degree to which this shifts the tax burden onto residents can be seen in Los Angeles County, where residential properties went from about 53% of the tax roll in 1975 to nearly 70% in 2009.

One reason for this is that commercial owners have many ways to conceal changes in ownership, which are supposed to trigger reassessments. There's no evidence that Westfield has exploited that loophole, but county assessors generally find it hard to keep up with changes of value in commercial properties, a much more complicated process than valuing your house.

The best remedy is the "split roll," which would revise Proposition 13 to treat commercial properly more fairly, say, by linking assessments closely to revenue potential.

But the greater challenge is to wean corporate developers from municipal handouts. Politicians' default response should be "Make your case, and it better be good." L.A. can start the new trend by taking back the welfare check it's written to big, healthy, wealthy Westfield.

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @hiltzikm on Twitter.

Congressman Jackson Jr. - I don't deserve to be punished for my crimes???

Sadly when you compare a bank robber to a crooked Congressman, the bank robber usually admits he did something wrong, while the Congressman things he is being unjustly singled out and punished for crimes that all his Congressional buddies get away with.

Source

Tearful Jackson Jr.: 'I couldn't have been more wrong'

By Katherine Skiba and Marina Villeneuve Tribune Newspapers

10:30 a.m. CDT, August 14, 2013

WASHINGTON – A tearful Jesse Jackson Jr., addressing the judge who will sentence him for looting about $750,000 in campaign funds, apologized today for his crimes and expressed special regrets to his mother and father.

“Your honor, throughout this process I’ve asked the government and the court to hold me and only me accountable for my actions,” he said.

When Jackson Jr. spoke, he voice was firm except for the few times he wept openly and paused to dry his eyes with tissue, blow his nose and collect himself.

“I am the example for the whole Congress,” he said. “I understand that. I didn’t separate my personal life from my political activities, and I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Jackson Jr. said he “misled” people, the government, the Federal Election Commission and the people. “I was wrong,” he said.

Talking about his desire to be sent to a federal prison camp in Alabama, he said: “I want to make it a little inconvenient for everybody to get to me.”

He said he hoped that he wife could earn enough money in his absence to keep the family together. “When I get back, I’ll take on that burden,” Jackson Jr. said. “By then I hope my children will be old enough that the pain I caused will be easier to bear.”

Before Jackson Jr.’s remarks, his lawyer Reid Weingarten said his client felt “horror, shame and distress” over his crimes.

But Weingarten also attempted to downplay the impact of Jackson Jr.’s crimes, since he took money from his own campaign fund. It’s not as if there are widows and orphans outside the courthouse who are victims and asking for his head, Weingarten said.

“This is not a Ponzi scheme,” he said.

Weingarten asked for an 18-month sentence for Jackson Jr. and noted, “He suffers from a very, very serious mental health disease.”

He identified the ex-congressman’s illness as bipolar disorder, and conceded that it was relevant even though “we didn’t plead guilty by reason of insanity.”

Matt Graves, an assistant U.S. attorney, countered that Jackson Jr.’s crimes represented one of the largest cases of theft from a campaign treasury that had ever been prosecuted.

Graves also took a shot at Jackson Jr.’s reported condition of bipolar disorder, saying normally when mental health issues are litigated in court, there was expert testimony, discovery and an examination of the defendant — and said none had occurred in this case.

“When one looks at the facts,” Graves said, “it’s quite clear that there’s no there there.”

He decried Jackson Jr.’s “wasted talent” and “what he threw away.” [I wonder if bank robbers use that lame excuse in pleading for a reduced sentence???]

Jackson Jr., 48, and his wife, Sandi, 49, a former Chicago alderman, will be sentenced today by federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is no relation to the defendants. Both could receive prison terms – him on a felony conspiracy count and her on a related charge of failing to report about $600,000 in taxable income.

The Jacksons held hands as they arrived this morning at the federal courthouse. They emerged from a white SUV and were accompanied by Judy Smith, a crisis communications expert and former federal prosecutor whose work inspired the TV show “Scandal.”

Jackson Jr. wore a dark suit and grimaced. Sandi Jackson wore a beige suit and smiled broadly. They said nothing to more than 20 media representatives gathered.

The ex-congressman’s father, Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., arrived earlier with his wife and some of his children.

Speaking with reporters before the hearing, Rev. Jackson reflected on his son’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder. [So is he saying people with bipolar disorder have a God given right to commit crimes??? And deserve to get off with a slap on the wrist???]

“I don’t know how I missed so many signs,” he said. “We found out he was sick very late. We thought we almost lost him. He was in a different place altogether.”

“He was very sick,” said Rev. Jackson. “People speculating, ‘Is he faking it?’ No, he’s not.”

Jackson said that for a time his son wouldn’t drink water, worrying it was dirty.

The sentencing hearing began at about 8:35 a.m. Chicago time. The judge said she would hear out both sides, then take a recess, and pronounce sentence first against Jackson Jr. and then his wife.

The judge gave Jackson Jr. an early victory when she indicated he would not have to pay $750,000 to his old campaign fund in addition to the $750,000 money judgment forfeiture he agreed to when he pleaded guilty.

“If the victim is the campaign, the campaign is defunct,” she said.

Weingarten had argued for just such a ruling -- that Jackson Jr. owed $750,000, not double that amount. “My client wants to be able to feed his children,” Weingarten said. “There are a limited amount of resources here.”

Weingarten said the $750,00 would be coming out of the Jackson household and that Jackson Jr. “will be breaking his head” to make that happen. He did not elaborate on the source of those funds.

After the financial ruling in favor of Jackson Jr., the courtroom discussion turned to the $168,550 in restitution to the IRS that Sandi Jackson had agreed to make at the time of her plea.

Dan Webb, her attorney, tried to persuade the judge that extracting a total of $750,000 from the two Jacksons was sufficient and that his client need not be ordered to make separate restitution to the IRS.

Prosecutors want both the $750,000 judgment from him and the $168,550 from her.

Webb noted that the judge had the confidential pre-sentence investigations done on the Jacksons. In reference to the $750,000, Webb said: “This is not an insignificant amount of money.”

Jackson Jr. told the judge that he could pay the $750,000, but didn’t have the $168,550 and suggested the IRS be paid first out of the larger sum. “I certainly don’t want the IRS harassing my family while I’m away,” he said.

The judge said she would decide that issue when she handed down the sentences.

The Jacksons, both Democrats, pleaded guilty in February after a yearslong spending spree with campaign funds. Among the loot: a $43,000 Rolex watch, furs, vacations, two mounted elk heads and memorabilia ranging from a Michael Jackson fedora to an Eddie Van Halen guitar.

Prosecutors want him to serve four years in prison and her 18 months. Defense lawyers want probation for her and a lighter term for him.

If both get prison terms, they are expected to be served consecutively so that either the husband or wife is free to care for their two children, ages 9 and 13.

Jackson Jr. was in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2012. Sandi Jackson served on the City Council from 2007 until last January. Both resigned their positions leading up to their guilty pleas.

Jackson Jr. began a mysterious medical leave of absence from Congress in June 2012 and never returned. His office said initially that he was suffering from “exhaustion,” but his lawyers later said he was being treated for severe depression and bipolar disorder.

kskiba@tribune.com

¿Como se dice Nazi en Español? ¡¡¡John Kerry!!!

EU recaba información para garantizar seguridad: Kerry

El secretario de Estado estadounidense justificó los programas de espionaje de su país y reiteró que éstos se realizan dentro del marco jurídico.

El secretario de Estado de Estados Unidos, John Kerry, respondió a las quejas brasileñas sobre el espionaje global y dijo que su país seguirá haciendo "lo necesario" para preservar la "seguridad" de los estadounidenses y "del mundo en general".

En una rueda de prensa junto al canciller brasileño, Antonio Patriota, quien reiteró el malestar que causaron en su país las denuncias del espionaje estadounidense, Kerry aseguró que Washington hará "lo necesario para que esos problemas no interfieran en las relaciones" y sostuvo que EU actúa "dentro de las leyes".

Kerry explicó que no podría "discutir cuestiones operacionales" relativas a la "seguridad nacional" en una rueda de prensa, pero aseguró que todas las actividades de las agencias estadounidenses se dan en los marcos de leyes aprobadas "por el Congreso nacional después de los ataques del 11 de septiembre" de 2001.

Según Kerry, "Estados Unidos recoge información de inteligencia para proteger a sus ciudadanos, como hacen todas las naciones del mundo, y lo hace dentro de las leyes".

Explicó que, en el caso de Brasil, "se seguirá dialogando para que haya certezas y el gobierno entienda y esté de acuerdo" con lo que Estados Unidos "debe hacer para garantizar su seguridad y la seguridad del mundo en general".

Subrayó además que, "en los últimos años, un cierto número de grupos (terroristas) han atentado contra los intereses no sólo de Estados Unidos, sino también de otros países", y que el gobierno de Barack Obama "sólo está intentando evitar que esas cosas ocurran".

Según Kerry, Brasil y Estados Unidos deben seguir "trabajando juntos" y "concentrarse" en las "realidades más importantes de las relaciones bilaterales". Entre ellas citó la promoción de "los valores democráticos", el "empeño por mejorar la vida de nuestras sociedades", el fomento del comercio y las relaciones económicas o la cooperación en áreas como ciencia y tecnología.

Republicans screw Libertarians to beat Democrats???

Source

Signature requirements spiral for some candidates

The controversial elections bill changes the amount of voter signatures candidates must get on nominating petitions.

House Bill 2305 requires one-sixth of one percent of the total voter registration in at least three counties for statewide candidates for office, such as U.S. Senate, governor or attorney general.

For legislative and congressional candidates, the new requirement is one-third of one percent of the total voter registration in the district from which a congressional candidate, or a state legislative candidate, is running.

Here’s a few examples of how the numbers will play out for the various political parties when the law takes effect Sept. 13:

For governor, all candidates – from all parties – will need to submit 5,376 valid signatures.

For Libertarians, that’s a jump of 4,380 percent from the current requirement of 120 signatures.

For Greens, an increase of 20,577 percent, up from 26.

For Democrats, its up 9.8 percent, from 4,896.

For Republicans, the requirement represents a drop of 5.8 percent, from 5,709..

For Congressional District 1, all candidates must submit 624 signatures.

For Libertarians, that’s an increase of 4,700 percent, up from 13 signatures.

For Greens, its a hike of 20,700 percent, from 3 signatures.

For Democrats, its down 13 percent, from 717 signatures.

For Republicans, its an increase of 8.9 percent, from 573 signatures.

Source: House Bill 2305

Doctors for higher health-care costs!

Source

Wonkbook: Doctors for higher health-care costs!

By Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, Published: August 15 at 8:23 am

A crucial change in the health-care conversation over the last few years has been the shift in focus from “costs” to “prices.” Everyone knows American health care costs too much. But after the release of the International Federation of Health Plans’ data and Steven Brill’s epic Time article and the New York Times’ massive price series, it’s also becoming common knowledge that a major cause of those high overall costs is sky-high prices for every individual service, drug, and treatment.

Identifying the problem is easy. Doing anything about it is hard. But there’s one thing states can do that isn’t particularly hard: Allow more nurse practitioners — who charge much less than doctors — to treat patients directly, without a physician’s oversight.

Doctor’s groups oppose this strenuously. They say patient safety is at risk. What’s really at risk is their incomes. 17 states and the District of Columbia already allow nurse practitioners to treat patients directly and there’s been no resultant rash of patient deaths in Washington, Oregon, Maine, Colorado, Arizona, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Montana, Idaho, Nevada — I could go on. (Nor, by the way, has anyone heard of doctors going begging on the streets in those states, but I digress.)

The Wall Street Journal reports today that five other states are considering freeing nurse practitioners to practice with physician oversight, including California, where only 16 of the state’s 58 counties have enough primary-care doctors. These kinds of shortages are common, and they’re likely to get even worse as the population ages and the Affordable Care Act expands coverage to millions of Americans.

Doctors don’t have a good answer for how they can rapidly expand to meet all this new demand. But they know they don’t want nurse practitioners doing it. The powerful California Medical Association — also known as the doctor’s lobby — opposes the bill with the usual line: It will “ultimately harm patients and decrease quality of care.”

No, what will ultimately harm patients and decrease the quality of care are too few doctors who charge far too much. But right now, those doctors are the incumbents, and incumbents are politically powerful. They’ve persuaded the California state assembly to amend the bill so it “would allow NPs to operate independently only in a hospital, clinic or other group setting and eliminate a pathway to autonomous practice after 6,000 hours of supervised work.”

Bringing down national health-care costs will be hard. A lot of the calls will be wrenching, and the evidence on both sides will be close. Not this one. As the Institute of Medicine writes, “States with broader nursing scopes of practice have experienced no deterioration of patient care.”

This is a protection racket. Any state legislature that extends it is choosing higher health-care prices — and health-care costs — for no good reason.

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.

Fixing New York’s flawed ‘stop and frisk’ policing

That's bullsh*t. According to this article NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg police thugs have violated the rights of 4.4 million Mexicans and Blacks over the last 8 years by falsely arresting them (i.e. detaining them) and illegally searching them for guns and drugs.

The false arrests and illegal searches are bad enough, but for all practical purposes the Second Amendment has also been flushed down the toilet in New York City too and those people are not allowed to have guns to protect themselves from either government criminals or common criminals.

Source

Fixing New York’s flawed ‘stop and frisk’ policing

By Editorial Board, Published: August 14

IN AN emphatic defense of civil liberties, federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin on Monday declared that significant portions of New York City’s controversial “stop and frisk” policing tactic — at least as it’s been employed throughout the Bloomberg administration — were unconstitutional.

While the policy accompanied a steep decline in the homicide rate in recent years, the unfortunate reality is that the city’s use of stop and frisk has come to represent the largest racial profiling operation in the United States, with African Americans and Hispanics accounting for more than 80 percent of the 4.4 million stops conducted over eight years. That has undermined the trust residents place in law enforcement, especially in minority communities.

Both reasonable and practical, Judge Scheindlin’s195-page ruling ultimately afforded civil rights the primacy they deserve. “The goals of liberty and safety may be in tension,” she wrote, “but they can coexist — indeed the Constitution mandates it.”

Despite the firestorm the ruling in Floyd v. City of New York has already ignited in City Hall — where, within hours of the decision, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, true to form, vowed to appeal— the judge didn’t outlaw New York’s use of stop and frisk, a tool the Supreme Court has supported. She merely found that the New York Police Department (NYPD), in its particular application of the practice, had violated both the plaintiffs’ Fourth and 14th Amendment rights — the first guarantees freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the second guarantees equal protection under the law to every person, regardless of race.

As a corrective measure, the judge ordered an “immediate” change to the policy and the appointment of an outside lawyer, Peter L. Zimroth, to monitor the NYPD’s use of stop and frisk. These requirements are similar to measures the New York City Council passed this summer that were met with a veto from Mr. Bloomberg. If the judge’s ruling holds, oversight and accountability for stop and frisk finally would become the law.

Perhaps the most valuable piece of the opinion, however, was its condemnation of what the judge called City’s Hall’s “deliberate indifference” to the racial disparity in law enforcement techniques. “In their zeal to defend a policy that they believe to be effective,” the judge wrote of New York’s leaders, presumably Mr. Bloomberg and Raymond W. Kelly, his police chief, “they have willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy of targeting ‘the right people’ is racially discriminatory.”

Less than a month after George Zimmerman was acquitted on charges of manslaughter and second-degree murder for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and after President Obama’s moving response in the days that followed, those words have a special resonance.

Lawsuit challenges CHA's drug testing policy

But I am also against the government flushing the constitution down the toilet and making people pee in a bottle to prove they don't take illegal drugs to get into these programs.

Source

Lawsuit challenges CHA's drug testing policy

By Kim Geiger Tribune reporter

10:04 a.m. CDT, August 15, 2013

A Chicago man who objects to having to submit to drug testing as a condition of living in an apartment that he rents from the Chicago Housing Authority filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the policy in federal court.

Joseph Peery, 58, has lived in the Parkside of Old Town mixed-income housing development on the Near North Side since 2010. Drug tests are required of all renters before they move into the complex and every year on renewal of a rental agreement, Peery said.

“It’s humiliating, embarrassing, stigmatizing, and it’s unfair,” Peery said in an interview. “I think it needs to end.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois took up Peery’s case and filed a class action lawsuit against the CHA.

The suit alleges that the drug testing, which is required at a number of the CHA’s mixed-income developments, violates tenants’ protections from unreasonable searches, seizures and invasions of privacy under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and under the Illinois Constitution.

Mixed-income developments are privately owned and operated housing complexes in which public housing tenants live alongside tenants who pay affordable rates and those who pay market rates. The CHA owns the land and provides subsidies to the developments’ public housing units, CHA spokesman Matt Aguilar said in a statement.

The agency also reviews the management company’s tenant selection criteria “and ensures that all rules for CHA residents are the same as those for market rate renters,” he said.

The CHA defends the Parkside policy, saying that it is applied equally to all renters at the complex, including those whose rent is not subsidized.

“One of the requirements of renters is that they follow property rules. And if those rules happen to include drug testing, then public housing families — like their market-rate and affordable renter neighbors — must adhere to those rules,” Aguilar said.

The CHA in 2011 considered requiring drug tests of all CHA tenants, but the board of directors killed the proposal. Then-board chairman James Reynolds said at the time that the board thought the proposal was “kind of close to violating on civil rights.”

Adam Schwartz, a senior lawyer at the ACLU of Illinois, said the Parkside policy and those at other mixed-income developments are clearly aimed at CHA renters.

“The reason they’re doing this is because of the stigma of the CHA renters,” he said. “If they weren’t trying to get the CHA renters, they wouldn’t be doing it to any renters.”

Schwartz said that CHA acts as the “ultimate decider” on policies imposed by the housing manager.

“If the CHA does not want a criteria, the criteria doesn’t go in,” he said. “It takes CHA action to impose this policy.”

Peery’s rental agreement is with the CHA, not the private management company, according to Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois.

Brian Gilmore, a clinical associate professor and director of the housing clinic at Michigan State University College of Law, said he researched drug testing policies throughout the country in 2011 and was unable to find any other housing authority in the U.S. that allows the drug testing requirement.

“It looks like Chicago has probably gone the furthest of anyone,” Gilmore said.

Peery said he does not do drugs. He spent more than a decade working on projects aimed at helping people stay away from drugs, he said. He now works in the kitchen at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Peery described feeling humiliated by the testing process, which takes place at the office of the management company that oversees his apartment building.

“There’s secretaries there and people walking in and paying rent, and I’m handed a cup,” Peery said.

After producing the urine sample, “you’re literally sitting there with this cup on your lap with people walking in like why is this guy sitting there with a cup of urine on his lap?” Peery said. “I haven’t done a crime. Why am I made to feel like this?”

About a year after Peery moved into his one-bedroom apartment at Parkside, he heard that the CHA was considering appliying the drug test policy to all CHA tenants. He attended a town hall meeting where he said hundreds of people turned out to object to the idea.

“What really touched me was to watch a little old lady get up out of a wheelchair, right, to come to the mic to be able to speak, right, and shaking with — I mean, very vehement — ‘Why am I being forced to drug test and urinate into a cup?’” Peery recalled. “Why would you do that to a grandma?”

kgeiger@tribune.com

Sidewalk chalk could land four protestors in jail for a year

I remember we had an anti-war protest in Phoenix and the government used the same convoluted logic about a chalk drawing made on the sidewalk.

They also said the drawing would cost thousands of dollars to clean up, when in fact 5 minutes with a hose and water is all it would take to clean up the drawing.

Source

Sidewalk chalk could land four protestors in jail for a year

By FRANCIS MCCABE

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Four people could face up to a year in jail for chalking up city sidewalks while protesting police misconduct.

Kelly Wayne Patterson, 44, Brian Ballentine, 31, Hailee Jewell, 18, and Catalino de la Cruz Dazo Jr., 20, face multiple gross misdemeanor counts of placing graffiti or defacing property and conspiracy to commit placing graffiti.

If convicted, they could face probation, a suspended driver’s license, community service and up to a year in the Clark County Detention Center.

The four protesters, affiliated with Nevada Cop Block and Sunset Activist Collective, used washable colored chalk in July to write critical statements of police on the sidewalks outside the Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters and in front of the Regional Justice Center.

Demonstrating against police brutality and officer-involved shootings in Las Vegas, the protesters say they were practicing free speech and should not face charges.

District Attorney Steve Wolfson is taking the case seriously.

“This is not a kid drawing with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk. These are adults who used chalk to draw profanity,” he said. “And there is a law on the books that make it a crime to engage in this activity.”

One statement read: “Not one single cop in Metro’s entire history has been charged after shooting someone. Even if that person was unarmed and/or innocent.”

Another was: “(Expletive) the police.”

Officers on July 13 watched the protesters write statements on the sidewalk and told them they were violating anti-graffiti laws, according to police reports and court documents.

After the protest, Patterson and Ballentine were cited, and police called the city graffiti abatement team, which used high-powered washers to clean the dusty words.

Days later, before a scheduled court hearing on the citation the protesters again used colored chalk, typically made from a composite of calcium sulfate, as part of their protest outside the Regional Justice Center.

One statement read: “(Expletive) Pigs.”

An unknown woman dumped coffee on it, washing it away, according to police who witnessed the protest.

According to documents, Patterson then wrote on the coffee-stained ground, “(Expletive) the police.”

Police documented the evidence, called the city’s graffiti abatement team and began exhaustive research about the perils of power washing to sidewalks, including that it “artificially erodes and abrades the concrete’s surface thereby adding to the unnecessary wear and tear.”

Detailed police reports said the city crew cost $1,550 to clean both crime scenes.

The reports did not include the cost of the coffee used to clean one of the statements. It’s unclear whether it was a small, medium or large coffee.

Lawyer Robert Langford called the case preposterous and is representing the defendants pro bono.

“Under that standard, any kid that does hopscotch patterns on the sidewalk can be guilty of the same crime,” Langford said.

The veteran defense lawyer added, “Justice in this case is that the case should be dismissed. They were engaged in constitutionally protected First Amendment activity. Period. They have the right to engage in that type of protest. This was something that was harmless.”

Langford accused law enforcement officials of inflating the cost of the cleanup to justify the arrest and incarceration until bail was posted, instead of simply issuing a citation.

Part of his defense will be to show that the chalk could have been cleaned up at a lessor cost.

“My bet is a good stiff broom would have done the same thing,” he said.

By employing the power washing crew at a cost of more than $250, the graffiti charge was elevated from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor, which could mean a stiffer sentence if they are convicted.

Langford said the amount of time, money and other taxpayer resources spent on the case is ridiculous. And all “because the bullies at the Las Vegas police department wanted to hurt people who wanted to criticize them. That’s, in the final analysis, what this case is about.”

Langford added he’s considering filing a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the defendants.

“Public property is being defaced with profanity,” Wolfson said. “That’s what it comes down to.”

A preliminary hearing is set for December.

Contact reporter Francis McCabe at fmccabe@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.

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