In an unusual move, state Attorney General Kamala Harris has shut four law firms that she says bilked hundreds of strapped homeowners facing foreclosure. The firms now will be run by the State Bar while Harris' lawsuits are resolved. It's getting ugly out there.
From the Contra Costa Times' Eve Mitchell: "Harris alleges that the Southern California attorneys banded together to file "mass joinder" lawsuits, which effectively folded cases with separate but similar circumstances into one legal filing."
"The law firms sent out mailers to homeowners in California and 16 other states who had trouble paying their mortgage."
"The mailers gave the impression that a legal settlement was within reach and that the homeowners would benefit by becoming a named plaintiff. Telemarketers gave homeowners misleading advice and information about the benefit of joining the case, according to Harris' suit. Call center companies were also named in the suit."
As a smattering of GOP lawmakers disclose information about their office budgets, the real issue between Speaker John Perez and Assemblyman Anthony Portantino isn't disclosure, it's about Congress:
From the Bee's Dan Walters: "Portantino's only hope for a congressional career, therefore, appears to be the 32nd Congressional District, some miles east of La Cañada Flintridge, which contains just a tiny sliver of his Assembly district. And therein lies the political rub."
"While that district lacks an incumbent Democrat, it's not only a rock-solid Democratic seat but one specifically created by the redistricting panel to maximize Latino political prospects – and Portantino, it should be noted, is not Latino."
"The district, in fact, is virtually made to order for first-term Democratic Assemblyman Roger Hernández, a protégé of – big surprise – Assembly Speaker Pérez. Portantino says he's running for Congress but hasn't yet made up his mind where. Hernández knows where he is running. If Portantino challenges him, next year's Democratic primary will be, shall we say, heated."
Speaking of information, we come to the latest in the continuing saga of UC's political and fiscal miscues, this time over its refusal to include its salaries in the state controller's statewide database.
From Aaron Burgin in the San Diego Union-Tribune: "The UC system — which is proposing $140 million in raises while students pay 18 percent higher tuition this fall — says it cannot afford to provide data to the controller. The system has more than 100,000 employees, compared to 232,000 state civil-service employees."
"Most major government employers in the state have complied with the controller’s request, including every city and county. Chiang is compiling his public database as a response to last year’s revelations about huge pay packets for public employees in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell."
"Hundreds of special districts providing water, fire or cemetery services have complied, although obscure ones such as the Buzztail Community Services District have not.
The UC system is the only state agency that has not complied."
The predictions that the newly evolving "green economy" will result in millions of new jobs are not panning out. In fact, some numbers in a new survey show that green-sector jobs actually were lost. Aaron Glantz in the Bay Citizen has the story.
"A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent."
"Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development."
"The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on as homeowners balked at the upfront costs."
And from our "Mars Attacks" file comes word that aliens may destroy humanity on Earth in order to protect others in the universe. It's okay with us, as long as they start with Glendale.
"It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim."
"Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain."
"This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future."
