The latest of these has caused extra heartburn for county sheriffs — a sharp uptick in illegal drug use and trafficking. While the state of California struggles to pass judicial scrutiny, the big decreases in sentencing and prison time authorized by Proposition 47 have gone into effect.

“Judges expect that tens of thousands of Californians may seek to have their felony convictions reduced,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “Courts have had to scramble to handle the surge in workload, and some agencies are planning to ask for more public funding to cover the added duties.” In Long Beach, said City Prosecutor Doug Haubert, the changes have approached “the point of absurdity.” In Humboldt County, claimed ABC Channel 23, Prop. 47 created “havoc on the streets.”

Against that uneasy backdrop, criminals and wrongdoers involved in the illicit drug trade have begun gaming the system to appease judges, using technicalities and loopholes to supply the growing inmate and gang demand for hard drugs.

Unintended consequences

Earlier in the year it had become clear that many local jails were unprepared to handle the volume of incarcerated felons directed their way from state prisons by Brown’s “realignment” program. The Legislature passed some prison reforms, but these sometimes addressed challenges at the relative margins of the realignment problem.

In one instance, legislators sent to Brown a bill, AB966, that would eventually give free condoms to state prison inmates. Sexual activity in prison is not permitted by law, but HIV and AIDS have spread anyway. AB966, known as the Prisoner Protections for Family and Community Health Act, tasked the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “to develop and institute a five-year plan to make the prophylactics available in all 34 麻将牌 of its adult prison facilities,” as UPI reported.

Now, county sheriffs have raised the alarm over the way drugs have widened the scope of realignment’s unintended consequences. In an Associated Press report, officials went on record that, in addition to bringing “tougher inmates to jails,” realignment has created an opportunity for offenders to use jails as a revolving door for the drug trade.

The culprit is “a provision allowing parole violators to serve 10 days in the local jail instead of months in prison.” This rule, dubbed “flash incarceration,” was “intended to give authorities a way to avoid sending parolees back to state prisons.” But, as AP reported, it has been “used by some offenders to bring drugs, hidden inside their bodies, into county jails,” according to state sheriffs’ offices.

A shifting target

Some uncertainty has arisen as to how the abuse is to be properly measured. While Adam Christianson, president of the California State Sheriff’s Association, called the drug spike a veritable “freight train,” AP noted counties could have an interest in playing up realignment’s adverse and unintended consequences, whether out of a desire for increased funding or decreased responsibility for adapting poorly to the state’s halting reforms.

Nevertheless, California officials cannot get around the fact that realignment has caused more unlawful activity, on pace to grow unless regulations change. Reform advocates had expressed enthusiasm last month that the Golden State had begun to turn the tide on incarceration, with voters approving Prop. 47’s downgrade of nonviolent felonies, including drug possession, to misdemeanors.

“As many as 10,000 people could be eligible for early release from state prisons, and it’s expected that courts will annually dispense around 40,000 fewer felony convictions,” observed Matt Sledge at the Huffington Post, in a report characterizing Prop. 47 as a blow to prisons and the drug war.

Rather than a clear-cut victory against an out-of-control incarceration regime, however, California’s conflicting and competing criminal justice reforms could better be described as a policy target that keeps shifting in uncomfortable ways.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, the judiciary has kept the pressure on state officials to push even more felons out from behind bars. Federal judges gave the state until the new year to roll out parole hearings for second-time felons who have served half their prison time.

Policies set in motion by Brown designed to satisfy the courts “cut California’s prison population by 1,000 inmates,” the Times cautioned, “meeting short-term goals even though state projections show inmate numbers will continue to rise.”

However, in California, where millions of illegal immigrants live, a semi-formal version of state-level amnesty has been gathering steam for years. Despite dogged opposition by Republican and Tea Party activists, Sacramento’s slow-motion legalization of the undocumented has paved the way for the White House’s planned moves to receive a much smoother reception than in other state capitols.

Still, the exact details of Obama’s intended actions remain murky, and even among libertarian-leaning immigration doves, his assertion of sweeping executive powers has hit against fierce criticism. Indeed, as the Washington Post noted, the president himself previously disavowed the constitutionality of what he may now have resolved to do — insisting he was “not a king” and could not “just suspend deportations through executive order.” Californians have not been immune to the sense of ambiguity surrounding Obama’s shifting immigration policy.

Apprehension and expectations

In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, one illegal immigrant described his discomfort in emblematic terms. Ernesto Perez — a 44-year-old father of four who has spent 19 years residing illegally in the United States — told the paper, “Obama is the only hope we have right now. Because three of my kids live with me, I’m always afraid that I will be separated from them. They need me. We need each other.”

Perez’ long undocumented stay underscored just how lax California has been in prosecuting illegal immigration, and for how long. His personal uncertainty, however, confirmed what millions of legal and illegal residents have known about president Obama for years: his willingness to deport. Critics from the left, such as Bill Moyers, have slammed Obama for breaking records with over 2 million deportations during his time in office.

That’s why illegal immigrants in California have depended so much on the Golden State’s incremental approach to legalization. Through a battery of state laws and regulations, Sacramento has given undocumented residents several protective paths toward the kind of status that makes it harder to deport.

With taxpayer money, access has been opened to educational loans for college, legal representation in juvenile court proceedings, driver’s licenses and the practice of law without a Social Security number. The California Supreme Court ruled in January that Sergio Garcia, an illegal immigrant who duly passed the California Bar Examination, could not be prohibited by the state from practicing law; Gov. Jerry Brown authorized Garcia’s license soon thereafter.

A push from activists

California activists dedicated to full legalization have used the state’s legal landscape as a justification for pressing president Obama for sweeping changes. In a typical statement making the rounds, California Immigrant Policy Center director Reshma Shamasunder urged Obama “to move on executive action and end unjust deportations that have caused the separation of families, as quickly as possible. Given the stalling we’ve seen in Congress for so many years, we hope he is bold in his action and covers as many people as possible.”

As KQED reported, California’s rules 麻将牌 helped swell the immigrant population to its current level, with about half of the children in state claiming an immigrant parent and one in four residents claiming foreign birth. Although legal immigrants have not pushed in a collective way for swift and full amnesty, Latino voters have consistently shown support for some kind of expanded “path toward citizenship,” as policymakers in both major political parties often put it.

For their part, Republicans have warned of consequences if Obama opts against enforcing the immigration laws on the books. Michael Steel, the spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-OH, adopted the colorful language characteristic of today’s media relations officials, “If ‘Emperor Obama’ ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his Constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue — and many others.”

Rhetoric or reality? With the president’s announcement on amnesty coming tomorrow, the fireworks will begin in earnest. The new, Republican-dominated Senate is seated in January, added to continued GOP control of the House.

Obama is leaving office in two years due to term limits. So in the new year, jockeying to be his replacement will intensify in both the Republican and Democratic parties, with his amnesty possibly the top issue out of the starting gate.

Of the several California cities where pension reform emerged as the sharpest political issue, San Jose faced some of the most pointed combat. Pension reform drove this month’s close election for mayor, which pitted Supervisor Dave Cortese — the union-backed candidate — against Councilman Sam Liccardo, who was allied to outgoing Mayor Chuck Reed.

The lines were the city’s pension reforms in Measure B, approved by over two-thirds of San Jose voters in 2012. As The Wall Street Journal observed, however, Liccardo’s Democratic pedigree was 德州扑克在线游戏 enough to help turn back Cortese’s challenges to the Reed legacy.

According to the Journal, “San Jose’s pension reforms are among the boldest in the country because they modify benefits for current workers in addition to future hires.” In the world of pension policy, that approach has sparked a virtual panic among defenders of the status quo. Wherever such changes have been proposed, critics have warned that public-sector employees would essentially abandon their jobs; in San Jose, reported the Journal, “the city’s police union faulted the pension reforms for a putative ‘exodus’ of officers and a crime wave,” even though “property and violent crime rates have fallen since 2012.”

Liccardo recently put an optimistic face on his goal of fully funding annual health care obligations for retirees. He saw “plenty of common ground,” he told KQED. “We have new opportunities going forward, and I’ll be talking with the heads of our police union and certainly with the rank and file about how we can find common ground.” But Reed cautioned  he expects more union-driven legal challenges ahead.

A tug of war in Stockton

Although smaller in size than San Jose, Stockton’s battles over pensions have also been closely watched, on account of the city’s struggle through bankruptcy proceedings. A recent pair of rulings by bankruptcy judge Christopher Klein heightened the drama surrounding Stockton’s attempts to meet its pension obligations with a minimum of fuss.

First, Klein held that it would be unconstitutional should pension funds go completely untouched against a city’s will. But then he ruled  Stockton’s planned agreement on the bankruptcy was properly structured, despite leaving pensions largely intact.

The careful decision left reform opponents with half a loaf: on the one hand, cities had the right to touch pensions, violating the unofficial so-called “California Rule” that traditionally kept them sacrosanct; but on the other, the California Public Employee Retirement System, which filed legal objections to any pension changes, was basically free and clear.

Stockton’s private creditors, by contrast, took a big haircut — a setback all of them accepted, with one exception. Upsetting Stockton’s delicate balance of interests, Franklin Templeton Investments has filed an appeal of Klein’s second ruling. With a total of $36 million in loans sunken into Stockton — which has paid CalPERS $29 million a year and counting — Franklin was set to receive just 12 cents per dollar on its investments, according to the city’s bankruptcy plan, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Echoing the dire predictions made in San Jose, the Bee reported, Stockton city officials and CalPERS warned that cutting pensions would touch off a “mass exodus by police officers and other city workers.” Franklin, however, argued  there simply wasn’t adequate proof that pension revisions would collapse key public services — and that basic fairness required its share of the bankruptcy burden be lessened. Now, that argument will go to the 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel in Pasadena.

New transparency

Meanwhile, overarching the city-by-city conflict, a potentially game-changing development has emerged from Sacramento, where incoming Treasurer John Chiang announced a new website designed to supply citizens with the gory details of California’s accumulated pension obligations.

Available at ByTheNumbers.sco.ca.gov, the data has given Californians sudden access to about a million items of pension information, from fiscal years 2002-03 to 2012-13, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Announcing the site, the Times reported, Chiang expressed his hope the research would “empower greater citizen participation in how government handles a policy matter which is central to California’s long-term prosperity.”

On Thursday, it became clear that this vision was straight out of the California Democratic Party playbook: side with the interests of veteran, mostly white teachers over the educational needs of struggling, mostly nonwhite students.

This isn’t inspiring. It’s not even progressive. It’s reactionary, racially charged interest-group politics.

Fox News has the details:

“New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took off the gloves in his battle with education reformers, rescinding an agreement for the city to share space with several public charter schools.

“The move undercuts educators, parents and some 700 students at four schools, including Harlem Success 4, one of the public charter school movement’s top success stories, and two set to open in the fall. While agreements at those schools were rescinded, expansion of a fourth school was also blocked. … De Blasio … is an unabashed critic of charter schools and won election with full-throated support of the United Federation of Teachers.”

Minority kids better served by charters than status quo

In California, the biggest charter success stories are usually in heavily minority areas. Why? Because they’re served so poorly by a union-enforced status quo that makes adult jobs more important than student progress at regular public schools.

The same is especially true in New York City, which has an odd and highly controversial system of funneling white and Asian students into elite schools that get more resources, a system that white New York liberals would see as outrageous if their kids didn’t benefit.

De Blasio is one of such hyprocites. His wealthy contributors’ kids can go to top schools. But the kids of the minority voters who overwhelmingly supported him?

No charter schools for you!

“Katherine Bathgate, of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, called the [mayor’s] decision ‘outrageous.’

“’This is an unjustified attack on the city’s most vulnerable youth — 93 percent of students in charter schools in New York City are minorities and 73 percent are low-income,’ Bathgate said. ‘These children and parents don’t deserve to have the rug pulled out from under their feet.’

“De Blasio’s administration previously pulled $210 million in building funds from public charter schools and diverted it to pre-K expansion at traditional schools.

“The teachers union hailed the decision.”

Of course it did.

Will Latino Dems ever object to CTA domination of schools?

I talked to a respected pollster the other day and asked him when fissures finally would open in the California Democratic establishment between the elected Dems who are subservient to the CTA and CFT and the largely-Democratic Latino community, which can’t be happy with the California public school status quo, which is dictated by the CTA and CFT.

He said when a prominent and polished Latino Republican started making the case, then the screwiness of backing Dems would start to sink in with Latinos. May that happen soon, because otherwise nothing will ever change in California’s adult-first public school system.

As for de Blasio, just wait for him to actually voice an inspiring new vision of New York City, much less America. He may look and seem different than Anthony Weiner, Charley Rangel, Mark Green, Al Sharpton and other New York “progressives.” But actions speak louder than height or family history.