Congress avoids another shutdown, passes corporate-friendly budget with Obama's blessing

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/12/us-usa-congress-budget-deadline-idUSKBN0JP23320141212

It was a tough position for Dems: agree to basically roll back Dodd-Frank regs on derivatives trading, and increase contribution limits to political parties, or risk getting an even uglier, GOP-driven budget proposal in January when the new legislators move in. It was sad to see Obama and some other major Dems fold like a cheap suit in the face of this raw deal. More left-leaning Pelosi and Warren were vehemently opposed, but were ultimately overruled.

It was reported that JP Morgan Chase literally wrote the section of the bill relating to derivatives. This is not new, but it's sad to see Obama being such a cheerleader for this bill considering his previous statements on financial reform and Wall Street abuses.

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My mistake, it was Citigroup that wrote the rider, not Chase. But it really doesn't make a difference. It implies that the rider is in the Street's best interests, not the public's. The language relates to bailouts from losses on derivatives trading. Dodd-Frank had an exception (that would have gone live in 2015) to prohibit taxpayer bailouts for derivatives losses from trading that was deemed too risky (trying to reduce moral hazard). Well the big banks would have none of that - they are like a degenerate gambler in Vegas demanding that Bellagio cover any losses they incur (and then they try to tax dodge any gains they make). Of course the Street insists that derivatives serve to lower systemic risk, not increase it. That is true in some cases, like how gun proponents say that firearms reduce violence. But then what about the times when the opposite occurs? Banks just say, "Oh well, we tried our best. Now pay us." While global wealth evaporates but they still get their bonuses.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/12/unsurpriing-connection-two-odious-parts-cromnibus/

“I love the American political system, I really do, but the ability to sneak in substantive policy measures and make it take it or leave it, I think it’s appalling,” said Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who is a prominent critic of the nation’s big banks.

-NYT

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It's hard to oppose the subtle, gradual rollbacks and changes that are eroding our democracy and "the soul of America". It's not like there was a coup and all of a sudden an evil regime took power. It's easy to fight back when it's a "Red Dawn" scenario, but Americans are lazy/easily distracted and we don't want to do the hard work of citizenship if it's not glamorous or urgent. The people who value power/profit are patient (and wealthy), so they chip away at our values bit by bit, at each election cycle and session of Congress/Supreme Court that the public barely pays attention to.

Reagan declared that we don't torture, and he was far from a dove. Now you have modern-day GOPers making all sorts of excuses to condone torture (or even argue that it's patriotic). In hindsight, Cheney was such a disaster for US ideals - and I think he had more of a negative impact on history than people like Qaddafi and Kim Jong Il (at least those guys practices overt evil, and were therefore easier to oppose). After the deaths of old-schoolers (and mostly straight shooters) like McCain and Hagel, I really fear what direction the GOP will go with unqualified political animals like Cruz and Ryan as the prominent voices. I mean, we already see the direction now: corporate plutocracy, oppression of women/minorities/foreigners, a disdain for science/logic, and unrestrained security state, to name a few.

I don't have much knowledge on this matter, but my personal feeling is that presidents who have the most reform potential have a greater view of themselves vs. the office of the president. What I mean by that is - they are either self-assured iconoclasts/visionaries like Lincoln, tremendously principled and conscientious like the Roosevelts, or chip-on-the-shoulder megalomaniacs like Nixon. They want to mold America into their image, and won't just be passive presidents who don't rock the boat and piss off the powerful. They never ask "is this what a president would do?" They do it because they know it's right, and they don't care if the pollsters and establishment approve or not (the opposite of Hillary).

That is the kind of leader we need to fight the negative trends now - and Sanders/Warren strike me as that type of personality, however their electability and charisma are another issue. Many thought Obama was going to be one of those reformers (he was mostly a DC outsider, "post-partisan", and one of the few presidents who grew up poor), but alas he is just a weak-willed bureaucrat who couldn't influence Congress, and deferred to the Pentagon and Wall St. to our detriment. He's a great campaigner but not a great leader of men. Considering the hand he was dealt, I wouldn't say he was a bad president, but he is a colossal failure in terms of missed opportunities (and the fact that some key issues got worse under his tenure - but not the things that the Tea Party would complain about). That's what's kind of ironic/tragic about Obama, both the left and right curse him for different reasons, which maybe suggests he doesn't have a good sense of his political identity, and tries to float in the center to please everyone, even though it's impossible. And unfortunately the modern US center is further to the right than most prominent European conservative parties. It's been scientifically shown that the US center has drifted right significantly since WWII.

Obama's bad bet on the sequester strategy

Jack Lew [BHO's Chief of Staff and possibly next Treasury Sec.] said we have an idea for a trigger. And Harry Reid, the Democratic leader asked skeptically, what's the idea. And Lew said, sequestration. Reid bent down and put his head between his knees almost as if he was going to throw up or was having a heart attack. - Bob Woodward on NPR (he wrote a book about the budget battle)

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/11/171737558/republicans-push-to-rebrand-automatic-spending-cuts-as-deadline-nears
http://www.npr.org/2013/02/15/172078615/automatic-budget-cuts-near-as-democrats-gop-stand-firm

The Dems really need to read The Art of War and Game Theory stuff like this: http://artofstrategy.net/, because their strategy continues to suck! As you probably know by now, contrary to our assumptions the idea of sequestration (mandatory across-the-board budget cuts) originated in the Obama White House, from Jack Lew (and was later passed in a bipartisan vote by Congress). Their belief was the seq. would be so repugnant that even the most intransigent Republicans would agree to some tax increases to cut the deficit. Gross miscalculation! It shows they don't know the other party (or their own) very well.

Rule #1 of making good threats/punishments is to actually make sure that your threat/punishment is the absolute worst thing imaginable among your rival's plausible outcomes. Otherwise why the heck would he/she be motivated to avoid it by making a deal? Now for *sane* Republicans, the seq. is a nearly worst choice due to its harsh cuts to defense and loss of federal funds for their districts (FYI the seq. is constitutional and not a new idea, but it just has never been implemented in modern history, if ever). But the House is not totally comprised of sane, conscientious GOPers. Due to GOP-led gerrymandering, you have even more ultra-safe ultra-red districts. While the constituents there may be a mix of deficit hawks and people who might get mad about less federal dollars flowing in, their representatives have great job security and no reason to be less conservative. Much of the TP and many safe GOPers actually WANT the seq. to happen. So Obama served it up to them on a platter, and now they have all the leverage because they have no "stick" to fear from the seq. This has also caused a problem for Boehner and less-extreme GOPers (the few of them left), who may face a lot of voter (and corporate donor) ire if they let these cuts happen. It's a disaster for the Dems obviously. Yeah another lesson in punishment - make sure your idea hurts your rival more than you!

The folks in DC made matters worse by the fiscal cliff deal they crafted - which was mostly tax "increases" (and some tax breaks/pork to get the required votes - like the NASCAR and tuna industry exceptions), with no major spending cuts. That further motivates the pro-seq. crowd to stick to their guns because they haven't been appeased with major spending cuts so far. It's a cluster F.

When negotiating with folks whose #1 priority is to irrationally cut taxes and spending as much as possible, you can't scare them with spending cuts (a 3rd grader knows that). What do they fear instead - losing their jobs, losing their pay, and tax/spending INCREASES. What Obama and Lew should have done instead of proposing the seq. was to replace it with a "stick" like this: if they don't come up with a budget deal that is a mix of "reasonable" spending cuts and tax increases, then the following will happen:

- Irreversible loss of pay to Congress and their staff
- Irreversible loss of future benefits and pension
- Garnishing of their re-election funds and party PACs towards deficit reduction
- Expiration of tax cuts and maybe some tax increases
- Increases in as much legal, extra-Congressional discretionary spending as possible

That stuff should make any deficit hawk and teabagger quake in his/her boots, right? Probably a lot of that is unconstitutional, but come on, they can come up with something that could actually scare. Brinksmanship is getting you and your rival as close to oblivion as necessary in order to force a compromise. It is even more effective when you are not quite sure how close to oblivion you actually are (so you are forced to play it safer). The "stick" would be even better if the amounts of tax and spending increases was determined by a random-number-generator (over a reasonably large and painful range of #s), so there would be no way for the deficit hawks to zero in on how bad it could be. Of course it takes a lot of cojones to pull this stuff off, and there is a chance it will blow up in your face. But at least it's better than giving your rival exactly what he wants.

What's wrong with CA?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/185791

Kind of related to our previous thread about Boomers/Net Geners:

"California, like any gorgeously endowed person, has a natural inclination toward self-absorption.... The most recent ascendant group are the gentry liberals, whose base lies in the priciest precincts of San Francisco, the Silicon Valley and the west side of Los Angeles. Gentry liberalism reflects the narcissistic values of successful boomers and their offspring; their politics are all about them."

Fed up with the Sacramento roadblock, some Californians are pushing for a Constitutional Convention to remake the state government (the last one occurred in 1878). Positive reform or another can of worms?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-convention25-2009feb25,0,374880.story?track=rss

A California budget "solution"

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1239210.html

"I know that we're not sending [Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger] the budget that he wanted," [Assembly Speaker Karen] Bass said. "But this isn't the budget that any of us wants."

Yet this is what we're getting!

The Dems and GOP can't agree on whether to raise taxes (in a state with some of the highest taxes in the US) and/or cut critical spending to public services to balance the $15B budget deficit, which caused the budget to be about 80 days late this year (a new record in tardiness for a state that has only passed 4 budgets on time). So what do they do instead? Borrow against future budgets of course! Arnold's billions of dollars of bonds did not sustainably fix CA's budget woes, as he promised when running to oust Gray Davis. Regardless, there have been some painful cuts, such as smaller doctor reimbursements for Medi-Cal, smaller or suspended cost-of-living increases for schools/seniors, cuts to disability/SSI, and many teachers/public workers laid off. Of course this mostly hurts the poorest and weakest of us, who don't really matter. At least they managed to close some tax loopholes on the rich and privileged (the famous yacht/RV deduction), or so they claim. But plenty of other holes remain.

So now the CA legislature (with a Congress-like 19% approval rating, compared to Bush and Arnold's 38%) has decided to play some accounting tricks to appear to balance the budget. I love the Sac Bee term for it: "employing accounting maneuvers". So basically CA will take 10% larger income tax witholdings in the first half of the calendar year, and then take less in the second half or give it back to us as reimbursement later (we can opt out of this though, but probably most people won't). By the way, tax reimbursements for archaic paper filers (such as idiots like myself) can take up to 6 months for delivery, according to the CA Franchise Tax Board. Well, I filed my 2007 return in February, and haven't got my meager reimbursement yet in September! I emailed, mailed, and called the FTB about it, and they said they didn't know why there was a delay, but would "flag" my file for fast action. That was 3 weeks ago, with no results. I can't stand how the state just decides to sit on your money (money that you could have invested to collect interest, or more like watch it evaoprate in the turbulent market!), and you just have to wait until they get around to returning the money you earned months ago back to you. So for them to seek to balance the budget by increasing income tax witholdings, I can just see our wages stagnating in Sacramento's coffers for months, if not years. And can you imagine the sea of confused filers and complaints that will flood the FTB, an agency that's not exactly known for outstanding customer service? Obviously Lehman and Fannie aren't the only financial institutions that are terribly mismanaged and make poor decisions that hurt themselves and their customers.

So the legislature will pick up the budget shortfall in year X by siphoning tax revenue from year X+1. But what happens when the budget for year X+2 comes around? Now you have to take even more money from the future pot to compensate for the money you withdrew last year. Pretty soon we'll be paying for the 2015 budget with 2030 money, which is like a no-interest bond for them! The state doesn't have to pay interest to the taxpayers that it borrows from without our consent. Of course this is just a stopgap measure to buy them some time in order to draft a "real" budget that could persist. Well considering their track record for cooperation and punctuality, I think it's more likely that we'll win the lottery!

Well speaking of that, come November the voters will get to decide whether we want to borrow from future lottery revenues to help balance the budget too. So buy more scratchers! But the lottery is just a sick social experiment. Critics say the CA lottery is terribly underperforming versus other states, needs to vastly improve marketing, and should be privatized. Well maybe so, but as we know, most gambling/lottery operations prey on and hurt lower income individuals the most. And those are the vulnerable people who depend on state services to literally stay alive. So they're getting the double-whammy in CA: cuts to their services, as well as greedy Wall Street involvement in the lottery. So for the few lucky winners, they'll get less money because some will be shipped off to investors. And of course the lottery causes many social problems that push more people into financial ruin, force more desperate families to file for state support, and have less spending money to infuse into the state's economy. Is it any sort of budget solution to promote the lottery - where sales tax dollars just become lottery revenues instead? That's like Enron accounting.

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why not just sue the estate of ken lay for the money enron stole from the state? i think it's around 16 billion? oh, that's right, arnie dropped any charges or possible lawsuits against him or enron. that's how he funded his recall.

Wow, he really gave them immunity?

Yep, it appears so! Davis-Bustamante were preparing a $9B suit/refund against Enron for the CA energy scam, but Arnold dropped it. Well $9B would have gone a long way to balancing our current budget.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/oct03_Palast.shtml

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I guess the last budget proposal was "j/k", and this is the real one:

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1249171.html

It's sad that it took 81 late days and state childcare/medical facilities scrambling for stopgap funding in the meantime (or just flat out closing their doors to the needy public) for the CA legislature to realize that they can increase revenues by actually getting corporations to pay their taxes! So instead of using private citizen taxpayers as "ATM machines" as Arnold said, they will scrap those short-sighted, disrespectful accounting gimmicks and instead collect more revenue by actually enforcing the corporate tax code. They will make late payment penalties larger, which will either net them more money in penalties or increase on-time payments. Wealthy persons and companies that owe more than $1M in back taxes will be penalized 20% instread of 10%, and some tax amnesties will be cancelled. Small companies are supposedly exempt.

Actually I have to give credit to Arnold for standing firm on this and not just signing the previous stupid budget to get it over with. It's more than I can say of the spineless Democrats and ideologue Republicans in the legislature. What if their salaries and benefits froze up for 81 fretful days, so they could see what it's like for lowly state workers and the clients who depend on them?

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Also... what do you think about the huge infusion of public cash into the money markets by the Feds? So much for small government and laissez-faire. Maybe such a drastic move is unavoidable at this point, to restore some lost confidence and rescue the financial sector. But it sends a dangerous message of course, like the market is the misbehaving spoiled teen, and the government is the rich father who will always pull major strings to bail the kid out of trouble. Maybe instead of rescuing greedy idiots every time they shoot themselves in the foot, we can overhaul the entire system so that our economy is not so dependent on overborrowing, overspending, and lusting for larger and larger profits? I must be smoking. Well, at least some people got their money back in the market with this "good news". The Dow swung from 11,300 to 10,600 to 11,400 in half a week, sheesh.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080919/financial_meltdown.html

Police shaking down people in the war on drugs

Federal and state laws, in general, say that a law enforcement agency that seizes assets may not "supplant" its own budget with confiscated funds, nor should "the prospect of receiving forfeited funds … influence relative priorities of law enforcement agencies."
NPR has found examples, mainly in the South, in which both of these things have happened.

Ron Barroso, a longtime criminal defense attorney, says, "I believe a lot of these stops are fishing expeditions, nothing more. They figure they stop enough people out there that they can profile, for whatever reason, sooner or later they are going to hit on something."

"If a cop stops a car going north with a trunk full of cocaine, that makes great press coverage, makes a great photo. Then they destroy the cocaine," says Jack Fishman, an IRS special agent for 25 years who is now a criminal defense attorney in Atlanta. "If they catch 'em going south with a suitcase full of cash, the police department just paid for its budget for the year."

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I guess cops figure that if they can't stop the flow of drugs into the US, the might as well stop the flow of cash proceeds from those drugs from returning to Latin and South America. After 9/11, it's much harder for criminal outfits to launder dollars internationally, so increasingly drug gangs are relying on mules smuggling money through our southern border. So in principle, it's good for the police to try to crack down on one or both directions of the drug-money flow. Less money going south means fewer guns and bribes for the cartels, hopefully (maybe the horrible drug war in Mexico might be a future email topic). But giving law enforcement the green light to cavalierly seize private money on the mere "suspicion" of criminal activity, under the pretext of "keeping children safe from drug peddlers", could be a justice nightmare - and it has been in some cases (see NPR vignettes below). I guess for law-abiding citizens, it's just too dangerous to carry around large sums of cash. Maybe it's always been like that in history, but you don't expect the "good guys" to be gunning for your cash along with the criminals!

Some moron made a law allowing local law enforcement departments to keep 80% of seized currency from drug busts, traffic stops, etc., in order to incentivize aggressive crackdown on money trafficking. Heh, since when have cops ever needed a reason to confiscate other people's money? It goes all the way back to the Sheriff of Nottingham. For civil forfeiture, you don't even have to be charged with a crime, but the cops/Feds just have to be able to show a "preponderance of evidence" that the money impounded was "associated" with criminal activity. And unlike "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt", if we want our money back, the burden of proof is on the defendant to demonstrate the money is clean. Though it's hard for Average Joes to get their money back, since the legal costs to challenge the cops are often much larger than the amount seized by law enforcement (though many cases have gone to court, with victories awarded to the defendants).

Yes in many cases law enforcement has properly seized millions in veritably dirty money, which is a good thing for us (though it's debatable how much of an impact those busts have actually had on the overall drug trade). But some innocent citizens had their assets taken by police, often colored people in sparsely-populated areas of the Midwest and South, where police budgets are small and media coverage/legal services are less available to citizens. Granted that it may appear suspicious if blue-collar type minorities, who aren't well-spoken and presentable, are transporting large sums of cash, but that's not illegal (yet) and justice is supposed to be blind. Some immigrants and others come from "cash is king" cultures and don't believe in banks/investing. So what can they do when they need to transport their savings - just hope for the best? Eager cash-strapped cops and prosecutors, non-scrutinizing judges, and semi-defenseless motorists; that is a recipe for abuse if I ever heard one.

Who knows how much cops are keeping on the side, but officially: "Records with the Justice Department show that state law enforcement agencies seized $1.58 billion in 2007 alone, but that doesn't include the tens of millions of dollars that go through the state asset forfeiture programs — which are not tabulated in any central repository."

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91490480#91495507
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91555835

On Sept. 2, 2007, Hunt says he was driving south on I-75 through central Georgia on the way to see his mother in his hometown of Dublin. Hunt was wearing his hair in braids and driving a friend's orange Dodge Charger [profiling!?!], when two Lamar County sheriff's deputies pulled him over for speeding. ... But what really got their attention was the $5,581 Hunt had stuffed in his pockets, which he said was the weekend profits from his car-detailing business.

"They just told me it looked like drug money, that was all," Hunt says. The deputies found no drugs or alcohol in the car; Hunt was not arrested for any offense, nor was he written up for a traffic violation. The U.S. attorney's office in Macon, Ga., has now initiated proceedings to keep Hunt's money based on probable cause that it is "proceeds traceable" to "a controlled substance." Among their strongest evidence:

The deputy smelled burned marijuana.
The deputy observed "an untestable" amount of what appeared to be marijuana on the floorboard.
Drug dogs detected drug residue on the currency when it was brought back to the station. [what money doesn't have drug residue on it!?!]
Hunt has not been charged with any crime as a result of the traffic stop. So the question arises: Why is the government trying to take his $5,581?

Hunt concludes, "It was my hard-earned cash. They had guns and badges and they just took it. If I would have been a drug dealer, I would have just left them and let them have the money."

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On Oct. 20, 2005, Gonzalez says he was driving south on U.S. Highway 281 from Austin to Brownsville to look at a car and buy a gravestone for his dying aunt. Gonzalez, who owns a car lot, was carrying $10,032 in a briefcase. About 90 miles north of the Mexican border, two sheriff's deputies of the Jim Wells County Task Force pulled him over for driving without a front license plate.

"He asked me to get out of the car. I did," Gonzalez says. "He asked me for my driver's license and insurance. I gave it to him. He asked me if I had weapons, drugs or large amounts of money. I told him I did."

The police video shows Gonzalez with a shaved head, wearing baggy shorts, standing beside a Mazda [more profiling!?!]. The incident report states the deputies grew suspicious when Gonzalez and his passenger both appeared nervous, and a drug-sniffing dog signaled the presence of drugs. The deputies took them in for questioning and searched the car. They found no drugs or weapons. Though Gonzalez said he was a businessman and showed them a credit card printed with the name of his car lot, the officers didn't believe him.

The deputies handed Gonzalez a waiver: If he signed over the money and did not claim the currency, he could walk away free. If he did not sign the waiver, he would be arrested for money-laundering. Gonzalez signed the waiver and gave up rights to his money.

"So at that time we got in our car and we left, still trying to figure out what just happened. We got officers that took our cash. We got officers that told us we can't get an attorney. So I'm thinking, are these guys officers of law? Did I just get robbed of my money?"

Gonzalez hired an attorney, who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. The county fought it, and lost. In April, the county returned his $10,032 and paid him $110,000 in damages, plus attorney's fees.

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On March 15, 2007, Michael Annan was driving his black Nissan Maxima south on I-95 through southeast Georgia. He had just gotten off his job on a dredging barge and was on his way home to Orlando, Fla., when he was pulled over for speeding by deputies in Camden County, just north of the Florida state line.

Annan, a 40-year-old immigrant from Ghana, was carrying $43,720 in hundreds and fifties rolled up in a sock in the pockets of his overalls — everything he had saved from nine years of work in Florida and Georgia. But because he did not trust banks, or his then-wife in Orlando, Annan was carrying his life savings in his pocket.

"They open my car engine and they try to find something," Annan said in an interview from Brunswick, Ga. "But I don't have nothing in my engine, and I don't know what they thinking. … After that, they said they would take me to the office."

At the sheriff's office, a drug dog was brought out to sniff his car, but it detected no narcotics. Annan says he showed them a pay slip from his employer, Great Lakes Dredging. Annan had no drug arrests. Undeterred, the officers confiscated the money anyway, explaining they needed to investigate whether it was drug money. They said he could call them back in two weeks.

Annan says he did call back, a half dozen times, but that no one would help him. So he took a day off from work to drive to the county seat of Woodbine, Ga., to visit the sheriff's office in person. He said they told him they were too busy to see him.

So he hired an attorney in Brunswick, who faxed Annan's work records and tax returns to the sheriff's office as proof he wasn't a drug dealer. Camden County then returned his money. The lawyer charged him $12,000 — more than a quarter of his savings.

"I think maybe they see money like that … maybe they thought I was dealing with the drugs … how can a black man have this much money in his pocket? I think they robbing me, I can't understand they can stop someone and take his money," he says in heavily accented English.

His attorney, Paula Crowe, who is familiar with Camden County, says that in her experience, she's sure Annan never would have seen his money again had he not hired a lawyer.

Lt. William Terrell, of the Camden County Sheriff's Office, said the highway interdiction team was just doing its job.

"The deputies, with all their training and experience, were acting in good faith as sworn officers doing their job. They were not trying to take Mr. Annan's hard-earned money, they were simply trying to verify that the $43,000 was not money made in a drug transaction."

Camden County has an aggressive highway interdiction program that has earned the sheriff's department more than $20 million over the past decade and a half. Sheriff Bill Smith — once considered one of the most successful sheriffs in the nation at confiscating drug money off the highways — is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation into whether he misused the forfeiture funds.

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The bundles contained $1 million. According to the law, 80 percent of that will go to the Kingsville Police Department. So that one afternoon's work will boost the department's budget by 25 percent.

"Law enforcement has become a business, and where best to hit these narcotics organizations other than in the pocketbook? That's where it's going to hurt the most. And then to be able to turn around and use those same assets to benefit our department, that's a win-win situation as far as we're concerned," says Kingsville Police Chief Ricardo Torres.

In this sleepy city of 25,000 people, with its enviable low crime rate, police officers drive high-performance Dodge Chargers and use $40,000 digital ticket writers. They'll soon carry military-style assault rifles, and the SWAT team recently acquired sniper rifles.

When asked why the Kingsville Police Department needs sniper rifles, Torres says, "With homeland security, we all hear about where best to hit than … Middle America. This can be considered that sort of area. We have to be prepared."

Federal and state rules governing asset forfeiture explicitly discourage law enforcement agencies from supplementing their budgets with seized drug money or allowing the prospect of those funds to influence law enforcement decisions.

There is a law enforcement culture — particularly in the South — in which police agencies have grown, in the words of one state senator from South Texas, "addicted to drug money."

Part of the problem lies with governing bodies that count on the dirty money and, in essence, force public safety departments to freelance their own funding.

In Kleberg County, where Kingsville is the county seat, Sheriff Ed Mata drives a gleaming new police-package Ford Expedition bought with drug funds. This year, he went to his commissioners to ask for more new vehicles.

"They said, 'Well, there ain't no money, use your assets,' " he says. He says his office needs the money "to continue to operate on the magnitude we need."

Another county agency, the Kingsville Specialized Crimes and Narcotics Task Force, survives solely on seized cash. Said one neighboring lawman, "They eat what they kill." A review by NPR shows at least three other Texas task forces that also are funded exclusively by confiscated drug assets.

The concern here is that allowing sworn peace officers — who are entrusted with enormous powers — to make money off police work distorts criminal justice.

Don't ever vote an entertainer to politics

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/09/BAHA115GAP.DTL&type=printable
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/03/MN2S111RJT.DTL&type=printable

Arnold is such a spineless hypocrite. He spends a good chunk of his governorship campaigning all over the world for green reforms to combat climate change, but now that he has failed to control one of the worst state budget crises in US history (now over $17B in the red), he totally reverses his platform. I know CA has to cut costs, but where is the logic in cutting $1.4B in funding for our public transit system that has much room for improvement, especially when gas is so expensive and more people are depending on it to get around? To be more precise, Arnold plans to keep the state public transit budget fixed, but CA voters had previously approved a supplemental $1.4B for various upgrades, which Arnold and the Legislature will probably cancel.

"Even with California's massive deficit, scaling back the state's support for public transportation makes no sense environmentally or economically," said Nathaniel Ford, who runs the San Francisco Municipal Railway. "Every dollar spent on transit helps clean the air by getting people out of their cars. And with gas prices continuing to escalate, we should be doing everything we can to encourage, not discourage, transit use."

The American Public Transportation Administration estimates that national ridership is on pace to be at its highest level in 50 years (another "positive" consequence of high fuel prices, as we alluded to in our previous oil discussion). For a Bay Area example, Arnold is planning to withdraw hundreds of millions that were promised to improve our deficient BART, Caltrain, and muni rail systems (despite their age and other shortcomings, they all had over 4% jumps in ridership so far this year). He's also cutting $19M to the AC Transit bus system (servicing some of the poorest areas in the Bay), even though higher fuel prices are causing millions in cost overruns for them. The timing is horrible, since AC Transit has seen overall ridership increase 3%, with some cross-bay routes increasing 50%. So if Sacramento wants to cut public transit budgets, yet demand is still high, of course the transit authorities will boost fares to stay solvent. This will mostly impact the lower-income urban people who are dependent on public transit, and the least able to weather a price hike.

Only a moron politician would reduce access or stunt growth to a service that is becoming increasingly necessary to the people due to conditions out of our control. If Californians can take advantage of affordable, functional public transit, then they'll waste less money on individual transport, and will have more money to contribute to the economy in other ways and improve revenues for the state. In addition, they'll be polluting less and wasting less time/stress/accidents in traffic, which also saves state resources in the long run. If Arnold really cared about balancing the budget and protecting the environment, then maybe he should cut the salaries to his cabinet and the Legislature, since they can't ever seem to pass a budget on time! Maybe he should lay off some of his bodyguards (who can kill The Terminator anyway?) and reduce trips in the state jet. Maybe he should tax wasteful luxury vehicles (the kind he and his wife drive, SUVs in fact!), as well as large homes that consume more utilities.