The leader of the state Senate, joining other top Democrats in criticizing a federal court order, says lawmakers should be prepared prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to block the court-ordered release of thousands of prison inmates. He didn't say precisely what the money should be spent on, but likely would involve the transfer of more inmates out of state or to the counties, and he didn't comment on the looming closure of the prison at Norco.
From the Press-Enterprise's Jim Miller: "Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg told reporters that a federal three-judge panel put public safety at risk by ordering the state to release more than 9,000 inmates by year’s end to reduce overcrowding. The U.S. Supreme Court last week denied the Brown administration’s motion to stay a lower court ruling and the governor is appealing."
"With the state’s legal options dwindling, Steinberg said a top priority for the final weeks of the legislative session is to work with the governor on shifting more prisoners out of state or to county lockups, he said."
"If the governor is forced into a position, and the Legislature is forced into a position, where we’re going to have to spend tens of millions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars, to deal with these 9,000-plus inmates, that does not do a single thing to reduce the prison population on a long-term basis,” Steinberg told reporters Wednesday, Aug. 7."
You knew this one was coming: Banks have sued the city of Richmond over its attempt to use the public's power of eminent domain to grab stressed properties and cut the borrowers' monthly mortgage bills.
From the Bee's Hudson Sangree: "In a complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank said the plan was an illegal scheme to let the firm, Mortgage Resolution Partners, and its investors reap windfall returns "with Richmond receiving a small cut of the profits as its fee for renting out its eminent domain powers."
"They asked the court to stop it before any mortgages were seized by the city. Steven Gluckstern, chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners, said in a statement that he was confident the lawsuit was "without merit" and that the plan was legal."
"Sadly," he said, "the financial institutions that brought us this crisis are yet again part of the problem rather than part of the solution."
The use of online courses for higher education as a means of expanding access to classes -- a notion that has captured the attention of Gov. Brown, among others -- is running into problems.
From Capitol Weekly's Robert Thompson: "A bill backed by Coursera, a high-flying online education company, that would extend academic credit opportunities for California public university students is likely to be put on hold, the bill author’s office says."
"The Senate sent SB 520 by Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, to the Assembly in May over the opposition of teachers’ unions and higher education faculty organizations."
"Steinberg was “considering making SB 520 a two-year bill. The odds are pretty high at this point,” Steinberg spokesman Mark Hedlund said in a phone interview. A two-year bill is common in the Capitol when votes are lacking to move a measure forward in the face of significant opposition."
"Hedlund, however, said that wasn’t the case with SB 520, although there has been little movement on the measure since mid-June, according the Legislature's bill-tracking system."
An organizer of the hunger strike in California prisons is also being targeted by authorities as the remote-control leader of an L.A. gang, presumably dispensing orders from a cell at Pelican Bay.
From the AP's Don Thompson: "A gang leader who helped organize a massive hunger strike in California state prisons has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in federal indictments aiming to disrupt the Mexican Mafia prison gang and a Mexican drug cartel."
"The documents unsealed this week call Arturo Castellanos a Mexican Mafia member and the undisputed leader of the Florencia 13 criminal street gang in south Los Angeles County."
"Castellanos is accused of running the gang from inside his high-security cell at Pelican Bay State Prison. Castellanos and three other gang leaders in the isolation unit organized the hunger strike that at one point last month included more than 30,000 of the prison system's 133,000 inmates."
The future has arrived, at least as far as global warming goes. We're not talking forecasts here, we're saying right now.
From the Mercury-News' Paul Rogers: "Rising ocean waters. Bigger and more frequent forest fires. More brutally hot summer days."
"These aren't the usual predictions about global warming based on computer forecasts. They're changes already happening in California, according to a detailed new report issued Thursday by the California Environmental Protection Agency."
"Climate change is "an immediate and growing threat" affecting the state's water supplies, farm industry, forests, wildlife and public health, the report says. The 258-page document was written by 51 scientists from the University of California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other institutions an agencies."
"Paul Fronczak, 49, is a married father himself now, and for a long time he wondered why he did not resemble his own father and mother, Chester and Dora Franczak. They all underwent genetic testing earlier this year to prove once and for all that he was their biological son. The test came back negative."
"Mr Fronczak wrote his parents a letter when he got the results to let them know."
"I really feel in my heart that the real Paul Fronczak is alive and well ... and nothing would make me more happy in this life than to find the real kidnapped child, and at the same time I wouldn't mind finding out who I am," he told the Chicago Sun-Times."