• Pinboard Links

    Flap’s Links and Comments for July 21st on 16:57

    These are my links for July 21st from 16:57 to 17:21:

    • Conservative groups want to repeal law on teaching contributions of gays – A referendum drive has been proposed to repeal a recently signed state law requiring California schools to teach about the contributions to history of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.

      A coalition of conservative groups announced Thursday that it has filed papers required before it  can begin collecting signatures.

      "We think the bill goes way too far and costs way too much," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute, one group supporting the repeal. "We don’t need it to be mandated to teach about transgender historic figures in our schools."

      England said the coalition, which also includes the Pacific Justice Institute, needs to collect 505,000 signatures by Oct. 12 to put the measure repealing the law on the ballot. SB 48 by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) was signed  recently by Gov. Jerry Brown, who said at the time: "History should be honest."

      Leno said Thursday that the groups represent "an extremist voice of the Republican Party.'' And although he recognizes their right to petition for change, "I don't believe that is he sentiment of Californians.

      ======

      I guess we will see….

      I do not have any children in California public schools any longer, nor would I want my grandchildren to be educated in them regardless of the gay issue here.

    • Flap’s Links and Comments for July 21st on 10:55 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for July 21st on 10:55 #tcot #catcot
    • Flap’s Dentistry Blog: The Daily Extraction: Upper Right Second Molar with a Crane Pick – The Daily Extraction: Upper Right Second Molar with a Crane Pick
  • Pinboard Links

    Flap’s Links and Comments for July 21st on 10:55

    These are my links for July 21st from 10:55 to 16:42:

    • Poll shows Californians prefer easing prison terms to paying more – Cash-strapped Californians would rather ease "third-strike" penalties for some criminals and accept felons as neighbors than dig deeper into their pockets to relieve prison overcrowding, a new poll shows.

      In the wake of a court order that the state move more than 33,000 inmates out of its packed prisons, an overwhelming number of voters oppose higher taxes — as well as cuts in key state services — to pay for more lockup space.

      The survey, by The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, shows a clear shift in attitude by residents forced to confront the cost of tough sentencing laws passed in recent decades.

      The poll canvassed 1,507 registered California voters between July 6 and July 17, about six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier court order requiring the inmate numbers to be cut. It was conducted by two firms in the Washington, D.C., area: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, and American Viewpoint, a Republican firm. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.52 percentage points.

      The ailing economy far outweighs crime as the top concern for most people today, the pollsters said. That, along with the court order, could help explain voters' new receptivity to changes long sought by prisoner-rights advocates:

      — More than 60% of respondents, including majorities among Democrats, Republicans and those who declined to state a party preference, said they would support reducing life sentences for third strike offenders convicted of property crimes such as burglary, auto theft and shoplifting.

      — Nearly 70% said they would sanction the early release of some low-level offenders whose crimes did not involve violence.

      — About 80% said they approve of keeping low-level, nonviolent offenders in county custody — including jails, home detention or parole — instead of sending them to state prisons. The same percentage favors paroling inmates who are paralyzed, in comas or so debilitated by advanced disease that they no longer pose a threat to public safety.

      The pollsters noted that people don't generally favor the release of convicted criminals. But "when it comes to prisons," said Linda DiVall of American Viewpoint, "voters are looking for solutions that don't raise taxes or take money from other priorities like education."

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      Read it all…..

      Just wait until some horrendous crime by a just released felon occurs.

      Want to bet whether poll results change?

    • For California redistricting commissioners, what’s a conflict of interest? – In the spring of 2010, when he applied to become a member of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, Gabino Aguirre of Santa Paula described himself as a "community activist" who had been an "advocate for a variety of causes."

      Aguirre survived the rigorous screening process conducted by the State Auditor's Office and was ultimately chosen as one of 14 commissioners selected from a pool that originally included 25,000 applicants.

      Now, with the commission poised to adopt political district maps that are certain to displease many Californians, Aguirre, one of five Democrats on the panel, has become the subject of sharp attacks from Republican Party leaders who accuse him of being a community activist who has been an advocate for a variety of causes.

      The attacks raise anew questions that the State Auditor Elaine Howle struggled with in 2009 as she developed guidelines and regulations for the selection of commissioners, a task with which she was charged under Proposition 11, the initiative that created the independent redistricting process.

      Kim Alexander, president and founder of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, said she believes the auditor "struck the right balance" in disqualifying those whose political connections were so strong as to make them potentially beholden to a particular party or politician while at the same time keeping the process open to those who had been engaged in civic activities.

      "No one involved in crafting this commission expected you to have applicants who had zero political involvement in their history," she said.

      Indeed, a review of applications reveals a history of civic and political activism on the part of several commissioners. Some examples:

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      Read it all…..

      The California Citizen's Redistricting Commission is a disaster. The law should be changed to empower the California supreme Court to draw the lines.

    • See which areas have the most unauthorized immigrants in California – Undocumented immigrants comprise about 7 percent of the state's population and 9 percent of its workforce, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. The number of unauthorized immigrants in the state has held fairly steady at just below 3 million for the past five years — even shrinking slightly — as immigrants settle more often in states other than California, according to the report, which is based largely on federal tax returns. Undocumented immigrants are heavily concentrated in farming areas and urban coastal communities. This map shows which areas have the highest proportion of undocumented immigrants.

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      The map is at the link….

    • Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone takes California Secession Online – PE.com – Politics – Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone, who proposed that 13 counties secede from California, has taken his effort online.

      Stone's wants to create South California. And although he tempered the secession talk at a recent Board of Supervisors meeting, he did convince his colleagues to give him the go ahead to put together a summit on state issues — provided no county funds or staff went toward the effort.

      In a statement today, Stone proposed the summit for September or October and wants local officials to discuss ways to change the state. Stone, a Republican, wants a part-time Legislature, a balanced-budget requirement and changes to public employee pensions.

      He has launched both a website — californiarebellion2012.com — and a Facebook page to bolster his efforts.

      =======

      Never going to happen….

    • Meth Addict with Flame Thrower to Be Spared Prison as States Cut Spending – Zackariah Lehnen, a 30-year-old transient, was paroled from a California prison in November after serving five months of a 16-month sentence for drug possession. He left under a program intended to reduce state costs by freeing nonviolent prisoners without supervision.
      Six months later he was arrested and charged with murder in the torture and stabbing deaths of an 89-year-old man and a 27- year-old woman in a Los Angeles suburb, according to court documents. He’s in jail, with a plea hearing set for July 28.
      Lehnen’s case, reminiscent of Willie Horton, the Massachusetts inmate who committed rape in 1987 after failing to return from a weekend pass, is an extreme illustration of the risks states face when they look to reduce prison spending by locking up fewer convicts.
      “It’s a perfect example of what goes wrong when you prioritize saving money over public safety,” said Ted Lieu, a former military prosecutor who’s now a Democratic state senator from Torrance, in a telephone interview.
      U.S. crime has dropped in the past two decades, a period when the number of state prison inmates doubled to 1.4 million and correctional spending more than tripled to $52.3 billion in 2009, according to the Pew Center on the States and the National Association of State Budget Officers, respectively. Now deficits, and a rethinking of how convicts are handled, are prompting states to reduce the number of convicts they hold.

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      Read it all….

      If they start letting these criminals out of prison, there will be more violent crime eventually.

      Then, the media will show the outrage that built all of the prisons in the fist place.

      But, at what cost…..

    • Mexico seizes over 800 tons of methamphetamine chemicals – The Mexican army has seized just under 840 tons of chemicals used for manufacturing methamphetamine in a raid in central Mexico, one of the biggest finds of its kind ever made in the country.

      The seizure in a warehouse took place in an industrial area in Queretaro, about 125 miles (200 km) north of Mexico City, the Mexican defense ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.

      The seizure, which the army made on Monday, included 787 tons of phenylacetamide and 52.5 tons of tartaric acid, all in 25 kilogram (55 pound) packets. Both chemicals can be used in the manufacture of meth.

  • Social Media,  Tea Party,  Twitter

    Tea Party Members Tweet the Most

    Graphic Courtesy of NIIP

    Not really surprising since the LEFT has been slow to move away from their own blogosphere.

    Tea party candidates tweet more frequently than Democrats and even their generic Republican rivals.

    That’s the finding of a study out of the University of Michigan, which surveyed 460,000 tweets over a three-year period from 687 candidates running for U.S. House, Senate and governor. 

    Over the study period, tea party candidates tweeted an average of 901 times compared to 723 times for Republicans and 551 for Democrats.

    “The conservative candidates—Republicans and Tea Party members—definitely used Twitter more visibly and showed a more coherent set of messages and topics,” said Eytan Adar, assistant professor in the School of Information and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “They also followed each other much more closely. I think it’s fair to say they were much more cohesive in a lot of ways and at the end of the day that makes for a stronger campaign.”

    The study found that not only did tea party members tweet more often, but they retweeted each other and used hashtags more frequently.

    The entire paper is here (Pdf).

    We utilize graph and text mining techniques to analyze differences between Democrats, Republicans and Tea Party candidates, and suggest a novel use of language modeling for estimating content cohesiveness. Our findings show significant differences in the usage patterns of social media, and suggest conservative candidates used this medium more effectively, conveying a coherent message and maintaining a dense graph of connections. Despite the lack of party leadership, we find Tea Party members display both structural and language-based cohesiveness.

  • American Economy,  Chrysler

    American Taxpayers Lose $1.3 billion in Chrysler Bailout

    Bankruptcy for Chrysler would have been better.

    U.S. taxpayers likely lost $1.3 billion in the government bailout of Chrysler, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.

    The government recently sold its remaining 6% stake in the company to Italian automaker Fiat, wrapping up the 2009 auto bailouts that were part of TARP.

    Fiat paid the Treasury a total of $560 million for the remaining shares, as well as rights to shares held by the United Auto Workers retiree trust.

    Originally, the government committed a total of $12.5 billion to the struggling automaker, Old Chrysler and Chrysler Group. Of those funds, $11.2 billion has been returned through principal repayments, interest and cancelled commitments, the Treasury said. Chrysler paid back $5.1 billion in loans in May.

    Even though that means $1.3 billion will not be recovered, the Treasury called it a “major accomplishment.”

    “With today’s closing, the US government has exited its investment in Chrysler at least six years earlier than expected,” Tim Massad, Treasury assistant secretary for financial stability said in a release.

    As part of the loan agreement, Chrysler was given until 2017 to return the bailout funds. If it had taken the full term, the interest accrued on the loans would have significantly reduced the government’s losses.

    Next time, the government should let these companies go out of business or seek bankruptcy protection.

    No more government bailouts.

  • Pinboard Links

    Flap’s Links and Comments for July 21st on 10:33

    These are my links for July 21st from 10:33 to 10:37:

    • PPIC Report: Unauthorized Immigrants in California – Estimates for Counties – California has more unauthorized immigrants than any other state, about 2.6 million of the nation’s 11
      million; they make up 7 percent of the total California population and 9 percent of the state’s labor force. For
      decades, unauthorized immigrants have been a part of California: in many industries in the economy and in
      rural and urban communities.
      But recent and comprehensive information about the numbers and location of this population within
      California—at the county and sub-county level—does not exist. That this wide information gap exists is
      doubly surprising given the amount of energy spent and attention paid to this issue by policymakers and the
      public over those same decades.
      This report is the first to use a new source of administrative data at the local level to produce comprehensive
      and systematic sub-state estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population in California.
      We find that unauthorized immigrants live in every county in the state, primarily but not only in highly
      agricultural or highly urban areas. As in the country as a whole, unauthorized workers here reside not just in
      traditional immigrant communities, but have found homes throughout all regions of the state.

      ========

      Read it all

    • PPIC Illegal Immigration Report by Hans Johnson and Laura Hill – Despite a recent decline, the number of illegal immigrants in the United
      States remains high, and illegal immigration remains one of the most
      divisive issues in the nation. Illegal immigrants make up about 28 percent
      of all foreign-born U.S. residents and slightly less than 4 percent of the
      nation’s total population. The vast majority of immigrants in California are
      legal residents. But as the state with the most illegal immigrants, California
      has a critical stake in how well this issue is understood. The purpose of
      this At Issue is to provide basic information on illegal immigration and the
      debate surrounding it. Because illegal immigrants are not directly identified in censuses and national surveys, the information provided here is
      based on the best available estimates. These estimates are consistent
      across sources and are regarded by research experts as the most accurate available.
    • New studies find California’s illegal immigrant population shrinking – Using the new methodology, Hill and Johnson pegged the state's illegal population at 2.9 million in 2008 (it's since declined slightly) and did a region-by-region breakdown. While Los Angeles County, the state's largest with nearly 10 million people, also has the state's largest number of illegal immigrants, nearly a million, several rural counties have larger illegal proportions.

      Monterey and San Benito counties have the highest concentration at 13.5 percent, the research determined, with Imperial County at 12.8 percent, Napa County at 12 percent and Santa Clara County at 10.2 percent all in double-digits. The smallest illegal populations, proportionately, are in remote mountain counties.

      ======

      Read it all

  • Barack Obama,  Day By Day

    Day by Day July 21, 2011 – Dynasty



    Day By Day by Chris Muir

    Chris, I don’t think the Tea Party Caucus is going along with any Plan B, McConnell style or otherwise. They were not elected to be appeasers for the Obama agenda.

    Now, that the President has indicated he is receptive to a short term debt-ceiling measure, the GOP House should immediately pass one while insisting on a concrete plan from the Democrats in Congress and the President for a longer term deal.

    This is really the only option for the GOP members of the House.

    The McConnell Plan B and the Gang of Six Plans are really non-starters.

    Previous:

    The Day by Day Archive

  • Pinboard Links

    Flap’s Links and Comments for July 21st on 01:02

    These are my links for July 21st from 01:02 to 08:34:

  • American Economy,  Barack Obama

    President 2012: Bernie Marcus Home Depot Co-Founder Says Obama is Choking Economic Recovery



    According to this interview in Investor’s Business Daily.

    Bernie Marcus co-founded Home Depot (HD) in 1978 and brought it public in 1981 as the U.S. was suffering from the worst recession and unemployment in 40 years. The company thrived, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and redefining home improvement retailing.

    But Marcus says Home Depot “would never have succeeded” if it launched today due to onerous regulation. He recently helped launch the Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit of CEOs and entrepreneurs dedicated to preserving the free enterprise system. IBD recently spoke to him about jobs and the economy.

    IBD: What’s the single biggest impediment to job growth today?

    Marcus: The U.S. government. Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we’d tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It’s become stifling.

    If you’re a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.

    IBD: President Obama has promised to streamline and eliminate regulations. What’s your take?

    Marcus: His speeches are wonderful. His output is absolutely, incredibly bad. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones. With just ObamaCare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that’s probably going end up being 150,000 pages of regulations.

    IBD: Washington has been consumed with debt talks. Is this the right focus now?

    Marcus: They are all tied together. If we don’t lower spending and if we don’t deal with paying down the debt, we are going to have to raise taxes. Even brain-dead economists understand that when you raise taxes, you cost jobs.

    IBD: If you could sit down with Obama and talk to him about job creation, what would you say?

    Marcus: I’m not sure Obama would understand anything that I’d say, because he’s never really worked a day outside the political or legal area. He doesn’t know how to make a payroll, he doesn’t understand the problems businesses face. I would try to explain that the plight of the busi nessman is very reactive to Washington. As Washington piles on regulations and mandates, the impact is tremendous. I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I just think he has no knowledge of this.

    Read it all.

    The problem is that President Obama is an ideologue and will not listen. He will just spin out the same old Hope and Change Tripe and hope to get his demographic of voters to the polls for his re-election.

  • Barack Obama,  Mitt Romney,  Polling,  President 2012

    President 2012 Ohio Poll Watch: Obama 45% Vs. Romney 41%

    According to the latest Quinnipiac Poll.

    Although Ohio voters split 46 – 47 percent on whether President Barack Obama deserves a second term, and they give him a negative 46 – 50 percent job approval, he defeats four leading Republican presidential contenders, three by double digits, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

    In the race for Ohio’s support among GOP presidential contenders the leader by a large margin is “don’t know,” with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 16 percent, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at 15 percent, Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachman at 11 percent and Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 8 percent. No other candidate tops 6 percent. 

    President Obama leads Romney 45 – 41; tops Palin 51 – 35 percent; beats Bachmann 49 – 36 percent and leads Perry 47 – 35 percent. 

    “Ohio voters may not be wild about President Barack Obama, but at this point they appear to like his potential Republican challengers less, and in some cases a lot less,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

    This is the first key battleground state I have seen where President Obama actually leads. Obama trails or is tied in North Carolina, New Hampshire and Florida.

    The race is on and the GOP has to soon decide on their nominee and for now the best one to go up against Obama appears to be Mitt Romney.