Ali Meyer:

This afternoon Gov. Jerry Brown signed the “Dream Act” bill AB 130. By Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, the bill will “allow undocumented immigrants who live in California to apply for scholarships funded with private donations,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

This bill is one part of the Dream Act initiative.  Part two, AB 131, would allow these students to be available for public financial aid, paid for by state taxpayers. Brown also is expected to sign it.

This isn’t the first time the Dream Act was introduced.  Cedillo has been attempting to pass the bill since 2006.  Introduced as SB 1460 in 2010, the bill passed both houses of the state Legislature but was vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on September 30, 2010.  Now that Schwarzenegger is gone, Cedillo has found luck with Gov. Jerry Brown.

The Dream Act, Cedillo said, is a “bill that recognizes that in the year 2025, this economy of the eighth largest economy of the world is going to be missing one million people with bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees. And the question is, where will these people come from?”

Where will they come from? Isn’t there already a surplus of college students with degrees attempting to find jobs? Not to mention adding undocumented immigrants to the list?

“I suggest to you part of where they come from is from this group, this community of students, that are called dream students,” he continued.

The opposition mentioned the state’s endemic budget problems.  “The problem we have right now with the state of California’s budget is that we don’t even have enough money to provide financial aid for students that are here legally, let alone ones that are here illegally,” said state Senator Bob Dutton, R-Riverside.

July 25, 2011

State Sen. Joe Simitian is attempting to pass SB 514, a bill that would prohibit the sale of dextromethorphan (DXM), a cough suppressant, to minors.  Proponents of the bill warn that DXM is a harmful drug to minors and the instances of abuse have been increasing.  Opponents say it’s difficult to know which products contain DXM since there is no authoritative list, making it difficult for clerks and businesses to regulate these transactions.

DXM’s side effects  include “dissociative out of body sensations, nausea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, dilated pupils, paranoia, lethargy, numbness of fingers and toes, seizures, brain damage, heart attacks and deaths,” said Sen. Simitian.

“Since 2003, Dextromethophan has been the most commonly abused substance by teenagers as reported to the poison center accounting for about 20 percentof all teenage abuse calls and about 80 percent of them involve a teenager being reared in a hospital for significant adverse effects,” said Dr. Eileen Anderson, the senior toxicologist at California’s Poison Control Center.  “The poison center has seen a 15-fold rise in teenage DXM abuse in the last decade.  This is a serious problem in CA with significant associated healthcare costs.”

Even the manufacturers of DXM are backing SB 514.  “There still continues to be a big problem with kids abusing this particular product and so we now feel it is the time to agree to this effort,” said Terry Thomas of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. “The analysis has correctly pointed out that there will be some minor loss of revenue from sales tax but we think that is definitely offset by the savings in healthcare costs.”

Slippery Slope

Opponents think this bill leads to a slippery slope.  “Now our 17 year old college kids who have a terrible cold and have to study all night before the final can’t go to the drugstore and buy something that will relieve them of their cold because of this abuse,” said state Sen. Chris Norby. “I don’t doubt that there is abuse but there’s abuse for virtually every kind of thing you can buy in a drugstore.  And if we continue to ratchet up the requirements for clerks and they are constantly carding people, I think thats an issue.  I can see a day where there will be an entire list of substances that a retail clerk will have to ask ID for, or have keys too.  There’s no end to it.”

Instead of relying on government regulation, Norby focused on individual responsibility.  “If you look at the biggest substance kids are abusing, it’s food.  My kids are addicted to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.  They buy them all the time.they’ve got lots of salt. They’ve got lots of fat. They stain their fingers and the school is thinking about banning them because these kids love the Cheetos and it stains all the papers at school.  If the schools want to ban it, fine, we may have a law ultimately doing that.  That’s my responsibility as a parent.  Yes, it will give them hypertension.  Yes, it will make them fat.  Most things in the supermarket will do that.  But I’m concerned about a slippery slope and will definitely not go down that path.”

The retailers have room to be concerned.  “A major issue is the absence of a state-generated, authoritative list of products containing DXM,” said the California Grocers Association. “Grocers would be forced to make an independent determination regarding which products are covered.  The employing business would be subject to potential legal action and opportunistic litigation despite earnest efforts to train employees and require them to follow the law.”

SB 514 will next go to the Assembly floor for roll call.

Looks like California taxpayers may have one more thing to pay for on their list.  State Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, is attempting to pass SCR 6, which will provide free Internet service for at least 10 years to those living in state affordable housing.  The concurrent resolution will be heard this Wednesday in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The language of the resolution states that “Only 48 percent of Californians who are renters have a broadband subscription in their home and of the 35 percent of Americans who do not have broadband service in the home, 36 percent cite cost as the primary reason, making this barrier the most common reason.”

Interesting.  More than half of people who actually pay rent cannot afford it or choose not to buy it.  Yet this resolution asks them to fund someone else’s Internet connection.

Outrageous.

The resolution claims that the Internet “strengthens communities, opens new markets for business, offers new workforce development opportunities, and inspires individuals towards entrepreneurship.”  Taxpayers are already paying for a service to help those living in affordable housing access the Internet: the public library.

Who’s to say that accessing the Internet will have an impact on renters’ productivity and job-search utility?  Who’s to say these renters won’t spend their time viewing pornography, stalking on Facebook or playing games instead?

Providing an Internet connection won’t make people productive. The type of person that wants to use the Internet for job search inquiries is the type of person that will walk their derriere to the public library and read the classifieds and use the Internet there.

If SCR 6 actually comes into existence, I might just cancel my current Internet subscription and sit outside the subsidized housing to catch that free wifi.  Just an idea for all you taxpayers out there.

July 11, 2011

Editor’s Note: Some corrections to this article were added after comments from Natasha Minsker, Death Penalty Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California.

JULY 9, 2011

By ALI MEYER

If SB 490 becomes law, voters could have a chance to kill the death penalty. In the key section, the bill stipulates, “Provides that the state shall not carry out any execution following the enactment of this act unless the voters fail to approve this act.” Those currently on death row would have their sentences commuted to life in prison without chance of parole. The last person executed in California was in 2006.

SB 490 is by state Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland. On July 7, it passed in the Assembly Public Safety Committee by a 5-2 vote.  The bill now is in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Proponents say the death penalty costs too much. Opponents of the bill are fighting to keep it because they believe the death penalty deters bad behavior and provides justice for victims.

Hancock focused foremost on the costs of keeping inmates on death row, instead of putting them back into the general prison population.  “Since 1978, when voters approved the death penalty, only 13 people have been executed,” she said. “That’s 13 people over 33 years; 714 are still on death row at a cost of $184 million a year.  Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prison system. California’s death row is the largest and the most expensive in the United States. It is not helping protect our people, but helping bankrupt us.”

Expensive Executions

The cost factor became a a bigger issue after a new study was released last month showing that the death penalty cost California $4 billion since 1978. The study was by U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell.

Costs have risen largely because of the lengthy appeals process that keeps death row inmates in limbo, sometimes for decades. Recent court rulings have limited the means of execution over concerns of violating the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” One current holdup is the difficulty in getting the drug sodium thiopental, which courts have allowed to be used in executions.

Despite the new cost study, most backers of SB 490 previously opposed the death penalty on general principle. Moreover, if California began executing those on death row at the rate of Texas, an average of 23 per year the past decade, the cost per execution would drop quickly.

Some families of murder victims testified in favor of the bill.   “Today in California we’re laying off police officers, we’re closing crime labs, we’re eliminating victim services, and ending cold case investigations,” said Judy Kerr, whose brother was murdered. “We have a crisis of unsolved murders that are over 45 percent.  Today there are thousands of murder victim families who watch while we throw millions of dollars every year into a farce of a justice system that does nothing to address the needs of real families.”

Backers of the death penalty stated their reasons for opposing SB 490. “We share the public support of the death penalty,” said Cory Salzillo, representing the California District Attorneys Association. “We believe it is the appropriate and carefully measured response to the most heinous crimes that society faces.  The death penalty deters future criminality if by no other means than by permanently incapacitating potential repeat offenders.” He agreed that the death penalty is costly. But he did not agree that we should abolish it just because it’s expensive. “We cannot put a price on justice,” he said.

Insult to Victims

A representative from Crime Victims United called the bill an insult to victims. “Those who have offenders serving on death row believe that they are provided justice for the atrocious crimes committed against them and their families,” she said.

Committee members differed in their responses.  Assemblyman Steve Knight, R-Palmdale, spoke out against the bill. He said the death penalty was a deterrent to crime and that amending this may lead to amending life imprisonment down the road.

Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-El Camino Real, said he would support the bill because he was in favor of abolishing the death penalty though a vote of the people.

Should the bill pass, will Gov. Jerry Brown sign it?  The history of his position on the death penalty has been teeter-tottering over the years.  In the 1960s, when popular opinion and court decisions moved against the death penalty, he protested against it.

In 1977, he appointed the controversial Rose Bird to be the chief justice of the California Supreme Court. Despite a 1978 initiative in which voters approved bringing back the death penalty, her court reversed a high number of death sentences. No execution was carried out in California until 1992. Since then, only 13 have been carried out. In 1986, voters booted Bird from the court.

In his 2010 campaign for governor, Brown pledged he would not grant blanket clemency to everyone on death row. The Sacramento Bee captured a video of Gov. Jerry Brown’s interview in 2010 about the death penalty.  “I said I would prefer a society that did not have to use the death penalty,” he said. “But my preference has been overruled, and not only by the Legislature but by initiative.”

Because the bill allows a vote of the people to decide the fate of the death penalty, he might sign SB 490. But Brown also obviously is aware of Rose Bird’s fate.

By ALI MEYER

Vacations subsidized by fraud. Welfare to those not meeting work demands. Welfare cards used to buy coffin nails and fire water.

After such outrages, one might think the California Department of Social Services would reform itself. Especially at a time when the state can’t pay its own bills. Nope.

California is the leading welfare provider in the United States. It pays for the largest number of welfare fraud cases — with little sign of reversal.  This wide-ranging fraud includes extracting welfare money from casinos and cruise ships, the failure of welfare recipients to meet work requirements, and filing false returns.  What a mess.

Reported the Orange County Register, “California is nearly twice as big as New York state, but we have five times as many welfare cases.  According to the Public Policy Institute of California, our state is one of the only nine that does not enforce the federal government’s five year lifetime limit on cash welfare assistance.  The monthly cash check is almost  70 percent higher than the national average.”

The prevalence of welfare fraud is disheartening.  Last year the Los Angeles Times broke the news that millions of dollars were withdrawn from welfare cards at destination hot spots across the country.  Jack Dolan wrote, “More than $69 million meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children was accessed in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam between January 2007 and May 2010, according to data from the California Department of Social Services.”  More than $11 million was blown in Las Vegas. No one knows if Elvis got some of that.

And another $16,010 was withdrawn from cruise ships to Long Beach, Rio de Janiero and Beijing. Let’s hope the buffets were worth it.

In response, Gov. Schwarzenegger ordered the deactivation of ATMs for welfare cards across the country at gambling venues and cruise ships. But it was a minor reform.

Shirking Work

Besides the gross misuse of welfare benefits, recipients are not meeting their expected work requirements.  Out of a sample of 310 welfare cases, only five individuals participated in activities that moved their family toward self-sufficiency, according to a California Department of Social Services’s study in March 2011.   Only 60 of the 310 cases participated in countable work activities.

While many welfare recipients are failing to pull their own weight, California Department of Public Social Services workers aren’t much better.  One worker, Trang Van Dinh, was found filing nearly 200 fraudulent tax returns, preying on those who were seeking help.   He used clients’ personal information to file false tax returns in 2009 and 2010.

After victims found their tax returns delayed, only then was attention brought to the case.  He pleaded guilty in February to two felony counts, which earned him 46 months in jail and $667,000 in restitution.

So what steps is California Department of Social Services taking to reverse the fraud?  On July 1, 2010, the CDSS provided a response to Schwarzenegger’s Executive Order S-09-10, in which they listed 10 proposals, including plans for early fraud prevention and funding.  Proposal six of the plan states that CDSS would dedicate funding to be used for anti-fraud activities to implement an Early Fraud Program. The program would allow county Special Investigation Units aiding in detecting withheld information.

Proposal eight would create a fraud investigative resource program within the existing Fraud Bureau, which would serve as the foundation for business intelligence needs on fraud prevention and investigations.

Proposal nine would enhance, expand and automate the Income Eligibility and Verification System, which would verify the accuracy of a clients identity and citizenship status and identify false social security information.

Proposal ten would implement a welfare fraud analytics system that would provide information that would help identify fraud in these benefit programs.

Investigations Decrease

With all of these initiatives to improve intelligence, common sense would suggest that more fraud investigations would be taking place.  Instead, the number of investigations has actually decreased.  In July 2010, when the proposals were written, 6,092 investigation requests were accepted for the Food Stamp program.

By January 2011, the investigation requests went down to 5,437.  The number of pending investigations for CalWorks and Food Stamps were 117,745 in July 2010.  Six months later, 23,103 more cases were pending at the end of the month.

Rather than increase the number of welfare fraud investigations, it appears as if the Department of Social Services has failed to use new fraud detection measures and ensure that the taxpayers’ dollars are not going to waste.

A final outrage is that welfare recipients are allowed to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards to buy booze and smokes. Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga proposed SB 417. It would have banned using the EBT cards to purchase  alcohol and tobacco products. It didn’t pass.

“You would think a simple common sense reform like trying to make sure taxpayer money is not used for the purchase of alcohol and tobacco would find bi-partisan support,” Dutton said.  “There definitely need to be reforms in this area.  Thirty-three percent of the budget is spent on health and human services.

“If we can’t stop welfare recipients from buying cigarettes and alcohol, we have a problem,” said David Wolfe the Legislative Director at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Of course, there is a way for welfare recipients to buy cigarettes and whisky: get jobs and pay for it themselves. But for now, the Democratic majority in the Legislature favors letting taxpayers pick up the party tab.

At a Governmental Organization Committee hearing on Tuesday, proponents of AB 183 claimed that self service checkouts contribute to underage drinking, while opponents of the bill point out that self-service checkout machines do not.

The bill’s opponents claimed that supporters’ justified the bill using underage drinking statistics.  But during the hearing, Senator Roderick Wright (D-Los Angeles) questioned if the statistics pertained to the issue at all. “What does that have to do with the bill at all?” Wright asked the representative from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, who had just shared a litany of underage drinking tragedies. “What evidence do you have that self-checkouts contribute to underage drinking?” Wright pressed.

The MADD representative said he’d have to defer to another witness for the answer.

Reverend John Hughes of the Methodist Ministry group, called the self check outs a “virtual vending machine,” and expressed his support for the bill.

One claim by supporters was that underage drinkers will go through the check out stand with a six pack of soda and then replace the soda with a six pack of beer as they bag their purchases.

Opponent National Cash Register Corporation, the maker of self check out machines, says this is not valid.  According to NCR, “There are weight differences and they can be detected at the machine.”

Many at the hearing asked if self check out machines are not specifically contributing to underage alcohol sales, why proponents of the bill are urging its passage?

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” said a representative from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. He explained that Costco clerks are required by law to not only check the ID of people that might be underage, but to make sure that every person who buys alcohol is not intoxicated. “If they fail to do this they get fired,” he repeated emphatically.

The California Retailers Association also opposed Ma’s bill, and stated that, “Unfortunately youth are getting access to alcohol, but they aren’t getting it from self checkouts. It’s just not true.”

One of the strong arguments against the bill was the attempt by government to pass another business regulation where one is not warranted.  Opponents insisted that self checkout stands do not actually contribute to underage drinking, but even if they did, the issues should be solved by the businesses rather than legislators.

“It’s really a labor issue, a training issue… perhaps there are additional tensions going on with clerks having a number of machines that they have to oversee,” said Paul Gladfelty, representing NCR. “That may be a valid issue, but its not a valid issue for the legislature.”

Wright said the committee would take the bill up again in two weeks after amending some of the bill’s language  – particularly how online sales were addressed.

JUNE 17, 2011