But down the ballot, 10 things stood out.

• Nearly 50,000 people voted for Roger Hernandez, a termed-out Democratic assemblyman from West Covina who had been running for Congress until he suspended his campaign after he was placed under a domestic violence restraining order and was stripped of his committee assignments.

• Congressman Darrell Issa seems to have won re-election. Although it’s still close and the Los Angeles Times had not yet called the race, Issa maintains a nearly 4,000-vote lead over Democrat Doug Applegate. This isn’t noteworthy because Issa was vulnerable and squeaked out a win. It was noteworthy because Issa, the richest member of Congress, wasn’t seen as vulnerable. The Vista Republican, in his 15th year in Congress, has been one of the most high-profile Republicans over the last few years as a constant thorn in the side of the Obama administration. But as national money started flowing to Applegate and an endorsement of Donald Trump appeared to be weighing Issa down, the race tightened.  

• As long as these results hold, Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, will be the only incumbent in California’s 53-person congressional delegation to lose. Fellow Democrat, Ro Khanna of Fremont, finished what he started in 2014, when he first challenged Honda.

• A reminder that California is not as uniformly progressive as it often seems: Voters upheld the death penalty as the maximum sentence for murder. Even more surprising is that a measure to speed up death penalty appeals is clinging to a two-point lead in the returns.

• Republicans appear to have held their seats in the state Senate, beating back a Democratic supermajority. Everything hinges on a Southern California district that extends from Cypress to West Covina to Chino Hills, where Republican Ling Ling Chang, a sitting assemblywoman, is holding an almost two-point lead over Democrat Josh Newman. 

• But in the Assembly, Republicans lost three seats, dipping below one-third of the chamber. In the Los Angeles South Bay, David Hadley was knocked out by former Democratic Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi. In Orange County, Young Kim trails former Democratic Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva. And in the Inland Empire, Eric Linder is losing to Sabrina Cervantes.

• While no Senate incumbents of either party were defeated, five incumbent Assembly members either lost or trail. That includes the Republicans, Linder, Kim and Quirk-Silva, along with two Democrats who lost intraparty challenges. Cheryl Brown, the Inland Empire incumbent, lost to Eloise Reyes in a proxy war between environmentalists and unions that opposed Brown and Big Oil and charter schools that supported her. In the San Fernando Valley, Patty Lopez was ousted after the Democratic Party endorsed her challenger, former Democratic Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, who also had major support from outside business interests.

• Orange County, the traditional Republican stronghold, voted for Hillary Clinton for president. According to The Orange County Register, the county hadn’t supported a Democrat for president since the Great Depression. That result reflects a consistent slide in Republican registration in the county, which has persisted for decades.

• Speaking of Orange County, Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez lost her home county in the U.S. Senate race by 9.6 points. Sanchez has represented Orange County in Congress since she was first elected in 1996.

• And speaking of the U.S. Senate race, more that 1.1 million people sat it out. The race made headlines after the June primary, when no Republicans advanced to the general election — a byproduct of the state’s relatively new primary system where the top two candidates advance regardless of party. Sanchez lost to Attorney General Kamala Harris, a fellow Democrat.

New bill rekindles old human egg fight

Good morning! Happy Monday. Our top story is about a new bill rekindling the old human egg fight.

California women interested in profiting from their eggs — often handsomely — have long availed themselves of private opportunities to do just that. Now, they could have another chance to do so on the medical research market under a new bill.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “In wake of Stanford sexual assault case, lawmakers once again pitch mandatory prison time,” writes the Los Angeles Times. 
• “A surge in Democratic voter registration has cut Republicans’ advantage in Orange County to less than 6 percentage points and has doubled the number of Democratic cities over the past year,” writes The Orange County Register.
• Fight over a campaign-funded slate mailer posing as a newspaper heads to federal court. OC Weekly has more. 
• “Bilingual education back on the ballot 18 years after voters rejected it,” writes The Sacramento Bee.

Assembly:

• In at 1 p.m. 

Senate:

• In at 1 p.m. Packed Appropriations agenda starting at 10 a.m.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @APLaurieKellman

Good morning. Happy Hump Day. 

Sure as the sun rises every morning, every election cycle Playboy legend Hugh Hefner gives to Loretta Sanchez’s congressional races — having given $10,400 to Sanchez’s Senate campaign.

By now, everyone in Orange County and Washington knows the story: Hefner gives to Sanchez and occasionally it gets her in trouble. But Hefner doesn’t appear to have a connection with Sanchez’s congressional district, and she’s known mostly for her policy expertise in military and national security issues, so answering “why” is challenging, although it most likely has to do with who Sanchez unseated 20 years ago to get to Washington: “B-1” Bob Dornan.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:  

• Remember the Orange County jailbreak earlier this year? New information shows “sheriff’s deputies failed to search construction workers and school instructors working inside the jail,” while “jailers did nothing to inventory potentially dangerous or useful tools being carried into the jail, or to make sure that the tools left with workers, even after sharp cutting blades were left behind on two occasions near inmate housing areas prior to the escape,” writes The Orange County Register. Oops!
• A new report suggests that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is not weeding out low-performing deputies in their first year, which potentially causes problems later on and in life-or-death situations. The Los Angeles Times has more.
• And two bills that would have increased transparency of law enforcement, including increased access to police disciplinary records and body camera footage died on Tuesday in the state Senate. The Los Angeles Times has more.
• And The Sacramento Bee writes what it’s like for two innocent men and their struggles to get money for years spent in prison. 

Assembly:

• Full day of hearings. 

Senate:

• Full day of hearings.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @joshrogin @latinostrategy

Senate Bill 331, a bill sponsored by government employee unions that is on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, is touted as increasing transparency in contracting by certain local governments.

But critics say the bill’s provisions are actually intended to punish agencies that have adopted ordinances increasing transparency in collective bargaining negotiations with employee unions.

Targeting COIN

The bill only applies to counties, cities and special districts that have adopted a Civic Openness in Negotiating ordinance. According to the bill’s Senate legislative analysis, COIN ordinances typically require agencies engaged in labor negotiations to:

• Hire an independent negotiator.
• Obtain an independent analysis of the costs of contract proposals.
• Disclose within 24 hours any offers and counteroffers made during the negotiations.
• Disclose communications that elected officials have with representatives of employee unions.
• Disclose a proposed contract before it’s placed on an agenda for approval.

“The COIN ordinances’ proponents argue that the local requirements are necessary because the secrecy that shields labor contract negotiations results in labor agreements being approved by elected officials without sufficient opportunities for the public scrutiny,” the analyst said.

Versions of the COIN ordinance have been adopted by Orange County, the cities of Costa Mesa, Fullerton and Beverly Hills, and the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Although that’s just five local agencies out of thousands in California, it may be five too many for SB331’s backers.

“The opposite of what its title [Civic Reporting Openness in Negotiations Efficiency Act] implies, SB331 is a cynical piece of legislation designed to punish local agencies that adopt COIN ordinances, or even less stringent ordinances requiring public disclosure of benefit and long-term costs of labor contracts,” said the public law group Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai LLP on its website. “Under the legislation, agencies that adopt almost any measure promoting a better understanding of their labor costs must accept onerous requirements for all public contracts over $250,000.”

Those requirements force COIN ordinance agencies to apply similar transparency measures to all $250-000-plus contracts.

“The breadth of contracts covered by SB331 is also ridiculously extreme,” Renne Sloan said, “including ‘accounting, financing, hardware and software maintenance, health care, human resources, human services, information technology, telecommunications, janitorial maintenance, legal services, lobbying, marketing, office equipment maintenance, passenger vehicle maintenance property leasing, public relations, public safety, social services, transportation, or waste removal.”

For every $250,000-plus contract – regardless of how mundane or routine – the agency would have to provide a report listing offers, counteroffers, names of those involved and other negotiation details. The report must be filed at least 30 days before each contract is considered by an agency and at least 60 days before the agency votes on it. The agency must consider the contract for at least two meetings before voting.

The only way an agency can avoid the requirements is by suspending, repealing or revoking its COIN ordinance.

The bill’s author Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, on the Senate floor Sept. 10, portrayed it as simply a measure to increase governmental accountability and fairness. “I think we are all in favor of transparency,” he said. “Let’s make it equitable and make all contracts in open meetings and have them transparent – not just labor or just business [contracts].”

Encouraging Transparency

The only senator to speak against it was John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, who introduced Orange County’s COIN ordinance when he was a supervisor.

“A few days ago the LA Times had an editorial that encouraged municipalities to adopt COIN, civic openness in negotiations,” he said. “So here we are with a few municipalities, cities that have adopted COIN. And now we want to make it very cumbersome for them.

 

“Basically, most negotiations for collective bargaining in counties, cities are done in closed session, closed doors. And then the results are released, and a few days later they are voted on without any input from the public. COIN is just encouraging transparency. And we should not be penalizing it.

 

“We have a lot of funny things that come out of bargaining in closed session. And that’s why a lot of our cities and counties, and even the state, are in pretty poor fiscal shape. And no wonder we keep asking for tax hikes.”

Mendoza’s transparency argument in favor of SB331 was echoed by Jennifer Muir, the-assistant general manager (now general manager) for the Orange County Employees Association, at the July 1 Assembly Local Government Committee hearing.

“There have been a number of efforts in recent years to promote transparency in government, and those efforts are laudable,” she said. “We believe transparency should not be limited to a jurisdiction’s public workforce. And instead should be applied evenly to areas where taxpayer money is being spent.”

Bill Causes Rift in O.C. Sheriff’s Department

The debate on the bill pitted the Orange County sheriff’s 2,800-member rank-and-file against the sheriff’s department management.

Tom Dominguez, president of the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said, “SB331 represents a critical step toward assuring transparency in public contracts. Transparency is not truly transparent if it is being selectively directed at a single group or entity. Private sector contracts worth millions of dollars are routinely approved by elected officials with little or no public scrutiny.”

Dominguez continued, “SB331 will give the public a window into how taxpayer money is being spent on private sector contracts. And ensure these precious dollars are being spent serving the public.”

But Don Barnes, an Orange County assistant sheriff representing Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, countered that the bill could put lives at risk.

“While the Sheriff’s Department welcomes transparency, this bill will detrimentally impact those we serve, as well as our employees in providing those services, due to the unnecessary restrictions and costs caused by the mandates of the bill,” he said.

“If SB331 were made law, critical public safety contracts would be delayed. Specialized contracts with the crime lab, often with sole-source vendors due to the specialized nature of the equipment, would be adversely affected by the passage of the bill.”

Another risk, Barnes said, is that the county could be sued if delays in procurement of goods prevent the county from meeting its mandated welfare requirements for county jail inmates.

“While proponents of the legislation point to openness and transparency – a value that we share and a worthy goal – the additional burdens and cost increases associated with SB331 will inevitably and unnecessarily strain staff’s time, burden budgets that are already stretched too thin and result in unintended consequences affecting the delivery of public safety services to the residents and visitors of Orange County,” he said. “This is not an anti-union position; this is a continuity of operations issue that I’m stressing for public safety.”

Orange County COIN Struck Down in Court

Democrats on the committee were not persuaded.

“Having a certain incapacity much like O.C.’s in the past, it’s amazing to me that cities and counties and districts that decide they want to outsource public services because of a claim of reducing costs, somehow want to increase the costs for negotiating with their own employees, while giving an unfair advantage of course to those services that are outsourced by suggesting there’s no need for equal transparency,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego. “Frankly, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

If Brown signs the SB331, it will be the second major transparency setback for Orange County this year. The county’s COIN ordinance was struck down by a Public Employment Relations Board administrative law judge on June 16. The judge ruled that the county, before adopting the ordinance, should have provided “notice and an opportunity for the union to meet and confer over that adoption or its effects.”

Renne Sloan warned that the ruling “may further discourage local agencies from adopting similar measures to make negotiations more transparent and responsive to the public’s interests and welfare.”

Mendoza says California’s population and demographics have changed significantly since the formation of counties and by increasing the number of supervisors from five to seven, residents of California’s largest counties will get a more representative and responsive county government.

Cost of increasing government has always been an obstacle to changing the number of supervisors. Mendoza’s legislation tries to confront that issue by declaring that the cost of seven supervisors shall not exceed the cost of five supervisors at the time the measure takes effect after the 2020 census.

With California’s huge and diverse population, the suggestion that county representation be improved makes sense – but who should decide, state voters or local voters?

Los Angeles County, the largest county in the state, would be directly affected by this measure if it becomes law, along with the counties of Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and perhaps Santa Clara if it crosses the 2 million population threshold before the initiative takes effect.

In Los Angeles County, four times voters were asked to increase the size of the Board of Supervisors. Four times the voters said no.

In 1962, 1976, 1992 and 2000, Los Angeles County voters rejected increasing the board to either seven or nine members from the current five. In the most recent vote, the proposal was defeated by nearly a two to one margin.  Mendoza argues that a statewide measure is needed to prevent local county officials from defeating any local measure to expand the board. Indeed, the bill analysis for the Senate Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments argues that Los Angeles County Supervisors responded to a legislative attempt to expand the Board in 2000 with a cynical approach of the supervisors putting an expansion measure on the ballot with weak cost controls then working to defeat it. 

Be that as it may, the fact is that voters in the county have four times defeated an effort to change the number of supervisors. If Mendoza’s measure receives a two-thirds vote in the Legislature and appears on the ballot, all the voters in the state will have a say, not just the voters in the most populous counties. In fact, many voters who do not live in the affected counties will help to decide the issue. 

Under such circumstances, local self-determination could be lost to a state requirement.

Newspapers around the Golden State have focused on this seeming contradiction.

This story is from this week’s Orange County Register:

It’s a conundrum statewide: Officials demand that people conserve water. People respond, and water use goes down. But less water sold means less money flowing into public coffers, so prices rise to make up for lost revenue.

 

Folks feel that they’re being punished for conserving. But what else can the water agencies do to cover fixed costs, which don’t fluctuate like the rain? …

 

Southern California cities and water districts are selling less water now than they did back in 2003, but are bringing in much more money nonetheless, a Register analysis found. Rising rates are an integral part of that equation … . The cost of water has doubled and rates at most agencies have risen in recent years, and is expected to rise even more.

‘The financial logic is inexorable’

Last week saw a similar piece in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Whenever drought hits, Californians invariably do their part to save water. They cut back on watering lawns, shorten showers and fix leaks.

 

This conservation ethic has taken hold quickly during the current drought. Ratepayers in San Diego County and elsewhere in the state are meeting or often significantly exceeding their state-mandated reduction.

 

Now for the unpleasant but predictable sequel. As water use goes down, the rates charged are going up. And many of those good citizens, who are dutifully pitching in for the public good, are outraged. But the retail water agencies, who directly supply residential, business and agricultural customers, say they have little choice.

 

The financial logic is inexorable. If you sell less of something, to balance the budget you must either cut costs, raise the price, or a combination of both, the agencies say.

The Los Angeles Times also reported on sharply rising rates in areas served by the L.A. Department of Water and Power, but without the context of recent conservation drives.

Agencies ‘uncomfortable’ with conservation

David Sedlak, a professor of civil engineering at UC Berkeley and a water infrastructure expert, suggested this issue is a little bit more complicated in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Water utilities have an uncomfortable relationship with conservation. They prefer that we consumers gradually reduce per capita water use as our region’s population grows so they don’t have to make costly investments in new supplies. When we abruptly start cutting water use during a drought, the utilities fear the resulting plunge in their revenue. They have good reason to worry: During the last drought, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had to lay off workers when it experienced a $70 million revenue shortfall after customers answered the city’s call for conservation by decreasing water use by 30 percent.

 

Some of the blame for the misconception about the relationship between water consumption and the cost of providing water lies with how we are billed for water. To incentivize conservation, California’s utilities have created complex billing schemes in which rates go up when consumers use more than a reasonable baseline allocation of water. This is an effective way of rewarding conservation and making life a little easier for low-income families, but it feeds into the mistaken idea that water is a commodity rather than a fixed-price service.

But to consumers shocked by higher bills, just about any justification is likely to produce a sharp response or be dismissed as double-talk. Here’s how San Diego resident John Oliver responded to a Union-Tribune story about conservation forcing higher costs:

“And this is yet another reason why I refuse to cut my use below the level I want to use water at,” he wrote on Facebook. “Anyone who falls for this ‘There’s a drought, it’s terrible, we all have to do our part, but not the smelt or the almond farmers or the developers or the poor or the sick or the elderly or the illegal aliens’ nonsense is a fool.”

If he ultimately prevails, he can thank a change in state law to accept late absentee ballots, a bill authored by — state Sen. Lou Correa.

With 100 percent of the precincts reporting, the Santa Ana Democrat is down by just two votes to Republican Andrew Do in the First District Supervisorial race. Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley estimates there are 6,105 late absentee, provisional and election day ballots left to count — more than enough to flip the result.

Correa also has another ace up his sleeve: those late absentee ballots not yet received by county election officials.

SB29: Correa bill to accept late ballots

For years, state law required that absentee ballots be in the hands of an official “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.” That has meant thousands of ballots that were postmarked on Election Day but delayed in the mail could not be counted.

Effective Jan. 1, 2015, a new state law, Senate Bill 29, took effect that expanded the window of time for receiving late absentee ballots. California became the 12th state to accept late absentee ballots after Election Day. That California bill was authored by Correa.

According to the State Senate’s floor analysis of the bill, the new requirements for a vote-by-mail (VBM) ballot to be considered “timely cast” are:

“If it is received by the voter’s elections official via the United States Postal Service (USPS) or a bona fide private mail delivery company no later than three days after election day and either of the following is satisfied:

“A. The ballot is postmarked or is time stamped or date stamped by a bona fide private mail delivery company on or

“before election day; or,

“B. If the ballot has no postmark, a postmark with no date, or an illegible postmark, the VBM ballot identification envelope is date stamped by the elections official upon receipt of the VBM ballot from the USPS or a bona fide private mail delivery company, and is signed and dated by the voter on or before Election Day.”

Although there was wide-ranging support for the first provision of the law, it’s the second provision, allowing ballots without a postmark, that concerned some state lawmakers and well-respected organizations.

No Postmark: Potential for Voter Fraud

Correa’s bill passed the Senate on a 21-11 vote and the Assembly on a 54-25 vote. Republican lawmakers in both houses echoed the concerns of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that the bill would increase the chances for voter fraud.

“We sympathize with the author’s desire to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised,” the HJTA wrote in opposition to the bill. “It is over this latter provision that we must oppose the bill. … For instance, a ballot without a postmark leads one to question its legitimacy. How do election officials know it wasn’t filled out after the election?”

Despite that serious question, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Correa’s bill into law on Sept. 26.

Growing Number of Late Ballots

Correa’s bill was inspired by a 2010 incident in Riverside County, where 12,563 absentee ballots were discovered at a local post office after Election Day. At first, the ballots were disqualified. A judge later ordered the ballots be counted.

The change in the law was supported by the California Teachers Association, California Common Cause and California Forward. According to California Forward, “68,000, or 1 percent of all ballots cast by mail in California went uncounted in 2012.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, has previously said late absentee ballots are “the number one reason for ballot rejections.” According to the group’s analysis of Orange County’s absentee ballots from the November 2012 general election, 3,362, or 0.6 percent, were not counted in that election. Of those disqualified ballots, 65 percent were due to being too late to count.

A 2012 analysis by Political Data Inc., the state’s leading voting and elections data firm, estimated “that 30,000-plus voters statewide had their ballots invalidated because they were received too late to be counted. Nearly half of these voters were under 30 years old, 14 percent were Asian-American and 17 percent were Latino.”

2007 Special Election Redux

The close special election is the redux of a 2007 special election for the same seat. Eight years ago, Janet Nguyen defeated Trung Nguyen by just seven votes after lawsuits and a recount. According to the Orange County Register, “Janet Nguyen was up by 52 votes on Election Night, Trung Nguyen, 49, was declared the leader by seven votes after late ballots were counted.”

The 2015 race even featured a connected cast of characters. Do, who holds a slim two-vote lead in 2015, served as Janet Nguyen’s chief of staff at the county.

He modeled his campaign on her recent victory to state Senate and even hosted his election-night party at her favorite election-night hangout, Azteca Mexican Restaurant in Garden Grove.

After being termed out as a supervisor, last November Janet Nguyen easily won a seat in the state Senate — ironically taking Correa’s seat.

However, with Democrats in California, you see even worse canards. The worst is the idea that stricter regulations and government-imposed costs — AB 32, minimum-wage hikes and more — are somehow good for the economy.

Just as laughable is the claim that without good-to-great pay and ridiculously generous benefits, there will be an exodus of wonderful workers from government jobs. We’re hearing lots of this in the aftermath of the federal bankruptcy judge’s ruling that the city of Stockton can invalidate and renegotiate pensions for current and retired employees. Example:

Dave Low, the chairman of Californians for Retirement Security, a coalition of state public employees, said the decision could hurt not only workers but also residents of cities across the state.

“We are disappointed,” he said, “that the judge has sided with Wall Street in a decision that has the potential of devastating citizens, employees and making bad situations worse.”

If cities are forced to break promises made to employees, Low said, “it will result in a mass exodus of police, firefighters and other public employees who will have no incentive to rebuild bankrupt cities.”

That’s from the L.A. Times.

No market demand for public employees at all — except cops

What a load of hooey. As I wrote for City Journal a while ago ….

With the exception of law enforcement and some niche categories, no evidence exists of substantial market demand in any area of public employment. Public-sector compensation is so much higher than private-sector pay because of pay practices — including automatic raises negotiated by bureaucrats who often stand to benefit from the policies — and because of the political clout of public-employee unions.

What’s happened this year in L.A. with firefighter vacancies illustrates this. See my account here; there were 10,000 applicants for a 300-job fire recruit class.

And here’s what I wrote a decade ago for the Orange County Register. I can’t find it online, but Nexis comes to the rescue:

After the 1994 bankruptcy, it was plain that the biggest enemy of Orange County taxpayers was reckless Treasurer Robert Citron, who gambled vast sums on risky investments with the aid of his Ouija board and ended up $1.6 billion in the red.

A decade later, our worst enemy is something much more abstract: a theory advocated by county personnel managers. Leaving out the jargon, it boils down to the notion that wages and benefits must go up on a regular basis so as to keep the county’s uniformly competent workers happy and stop them from fleeing to better jobs elsewhere.

The latest example of bureaucrats’ devotion to this theory came last month when a plan surfaced that would push the top salary range for about 100 county bosses to nearly $250,000 a year and the range for another 850 executives to nearly $200,000.

The problem with this theory is basic: It’s a crock.

“It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of an urban myth. With the exception of police officers, there’s no data that indicates [competition for public-sector employees] at all,” says Steve Frates, a senior fellow with the Rose Institute of State and Local Government in Claremont.

No turnover shows job satisfaction is high

What does the data indicate? You guessed it.

How often an organization loses employees is far and away the best indicator of relative satisfaction with pay and benefits. County officials I spoke with last week said overall figures on employee turnover were not available, but they didn’t dispute that it was low compared with the private sector.

This job satisfaction isn’t surprising. As economist Paul Craig Roberts has documented, public employees have higher average annual pay, better benefits and more paid days off than private-sector workers. This gap has widened over the past 20 years, during which the private sector has undergone a productivity revolution while government manifestly has not.

I’m still waiting on that government productivity revolution.

I suppose it is remotely possible that an unbiased juror would look at this case and not see it as murder. But it is a stunning comment on the public's sky-high tolerance for police misconduct that the officers weren't even convicted of assault under the color of authority. The tape of Thomas, as he is being brutalized, pleading for his dad to magically appear from nowhere and help him is the most wrenching thing I've ever heard. CalWatchdog founder Steve Greenhut had a powerful summary of the deadly assault in 2012:

“… the Orange County district attorney recently released a horrific 33-minute video of the city’s police officers beating a frail homeless man named Kelly Thomas last July. Thomas later died in a hospital. …

“The surveillance tape caught the horrifying confrontation in vivid detail. We see a large officer named Manuel Ramos approach the scraggly Thomas, who is suspected of breaking into some cars. Thomas gives him some lip, but doesn’t act in a threatening way. Ramos then puts on what the district attorney calls a 'show' as he slowly slips on latex gloves, twirls his baton and then says, '[S]ee my fists … these fists are going to f… you up.'

“Another officer comes in and starts swinging a baton at Thomas, who cries out in pain. Yet another officer, Jay Cicinelli, used a Taser on Thomas and, as the DA explained, hammered Thomas in the face with the blunt end of it. Thomas called out for his Dad as the officers worked him over. Ramos is being charged with second-degree murder and Cicinelli with involuntary manslaughter. Ramos, the DA added, 'turned a routine encounter into a brutal beating death.'”

But a jury believes no crimes took place.

Move along. There's nothing to see.

Don't you understand? There's one set of rules for the centurions, and another for the rest of us.