JERRY BROWN PUSHES TRAFFIC DEBT ‘AMNESTY’ FOR POOR: ‘IT’S A HELLHOLE OF DESPERATION’

Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for an amnesty program for poor California residents who cannot afford to pay debts accrued through traffic violations after a blistering report from a nonprofit law firm concluded that the state is profiting off of minorities and low-income residents.

According to the Associated Press, Brown’s plan would see fines issued for minor traffic violations cut in half, while the administrative fees associated with the fines would be dropped from $300 to $50. California has reportedly suspended roughly 4.8 million driver’s licenses since 2006 over failure to pay fines associated with traffic violations.

In an April report titled, “Not Just a Ferguson Problem: How Traffic Courts Drive Inequality in California,” the Western Center on Law and Poverty outlined the ways in which it claims the state’s traffic court system disproportionately affects low-income residents.

“Due to increased fines and fees and reduced access to courts, more than four million Californians have suspended driver’s licenses,” the report states. “These suspensions make it harder for people to get and keep jobs, harm credit ratings and raise public safety concerns. Ultimately they keep people in long cycles of poverty that are difficult if not impossible for many to overcome.”

“California has sadly become a pay-t0-play court system,” WCLP legislative advocate Michael Herald, who helped author the report, told the Associated Press.

According to the AP, the fine for a red-light violation is now a staggering $490, up from $103 twenty years ago. The added fees go toward supporting social services like court construction and medical services. And the hefty fines grow even larger when those ticketed fail to pay.

“The fines and assessments being collected by the courts have increasingly been used not as a penalty for the violation, but as a source of revenue to fund government operations, including the courts,” the WCLP report found.

“How do you expect to pay something when you have no job, and you can’t get a job without your license?” 31-year-old Oakland resident Michael Armas told the AP. Armas said that as a result of failing to pay for minor traffic violations like using a cellphone while driving and failing to properly display his license plate, his fines have reached a total of $4,500.

In a statement, Brown called the traffic court system a “hellhole of desperation” for California’s poor.

“It’s a hellhole of desperation and I think this amnesty can be a very good thing to both bring in money, to give people a chance to kind of pay at a discount,” Brown said.

In February, Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) introduced Senate Bill 405, which would allow those with suspended licenses to keep their driving privileges if they agreed to pay reduced fines determined on a sliding scale.

“The whole fee system is out of whack, and for poor people, you make a choice between feeding your family or paying your rent or paying for a $63 parking ticket that turns out to be $300 in 60 days,” Hertzberg told CBS Los Angeles’ KNX 1070 radio station last month.

Brown spokesman Evan Westrup told the AP that the governor’s administration and the Justice Department have held discussions about overhauling California’s traffic court system. It was not immediately clear whether the Justice Department had launched an official investigation into the courts.

California Enacts Law Allowing Nurses to Perform Some Abortions

California's Democratic governor signed a law on Wednesday that will allow nurses and midwives to perform some abortions, a move aimed at increasing access to the procedure even as other states are tightening the rules.

Under the law, the most populous U.S. state would allow nurse-practitioners, nurse-midwives and physician assistants to perform a procedure known as aspiration, which uses suction to dislodge an embryo from the uterine wall during the first few weeks of pregnancy.

Four other states - Oregon, Montana, Vermont and New Hampshire - already allow non-physicians to perform early stage abortions, but California is the first to codify the practice into law.

"Timely access to reproductive health services is critical to women's health," the bill's author, California state Assemblywoman Toni Atkins said in a statement after Governor Jerry Brown announced the signing of the law.

The intent of the law, said Atkins' spokeswoman, Dale Kelly Bankhead, is to expand access to abortion in areas of the state where there are no providers.

"In more than half of the counties in California there is no abortion provider," Bankhead said. "Women have to travel long distances to access these services."

California Assemblyman Brian Jones, the Republican caucus leader, said he was disappointed in the governor, calling the new law "dangerous for women."

"It's truly disheartening and disingenuous that Governor Brown and legislative Democrats created a law to lower the standard of care for the women under the guise of creating access," Jones said.

The measure, the progress of which has been closely followed by activists on both sides of the abortion debate, comes as a handful of states, primarily in the country's South and middle, have passed or enacted laws restricting abortion

Via: Newsmax

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A Difficult 2016 (For California)

2016 is shaping up to be an unpleasant year to be California’s governor. Or a legislator for that matter. Because the state might have to reckon with its bigger problems that year.

The Democrats’ fondness for temporary policies is at the root of the issue. Prop 30, the tax hike ballot initiative that has saved California (if you believe the national press), is actually based on temporary tax increases on sales and income. The sales tax increase expires that year. Without those revenues, the state budget – which remains stuck at austerity levels even with the Prop 30 increases – will look even worse. And things could look worse at the end of 2018, when the income tax increases expire.

Now comes the prison crisis, and the courts’ requirements that the state reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of capacity. Gov. Brown proposes to do that by increasing bed capacity, but the change is only temporary. The additional bed capacity lasts only through the 2014-15 budget year.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office says that the state would need to find additional solutions by the 2015-16, creating more stress then. The administration says it would then offer a long-term plan in 2015.

It’s peculiar that state leadership is being credited for taking on the state problems and fixing California. Core problems are being kicked down the road.

This is understandable – since the budget and governing systems make it so difficult to do much more than delay. But state leaders should stop pretending that they’ve dealt with the state’s budget and governance problems.

(Joe Mathews is a Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. Originally published on Fox and Hounds.)

Via: California Political Review

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POLL: CALIFORNIA WARMING TO WISCONSIN-STYLE REFORMS

 California voters, tired of the state’s tax increases, are increasingly leaning toward Wisconsin-like reforms that encourage austerity. California's Proposition 30 and Proposition 32, two propositions that raise taxes, are too close to call, according to a new Reason-Rupe statewide poll.

Adjusted for inflation, California’s government spending rose 42 percent per capita from 2000 to 2010, but only 14 percent of likely voters believe that the rise in spending improved the quality of life in the state. 52 percent say the state spending so much actuallydecreased the quality of life. Now, 56 percent of Californians favor cutting state government spending to what was spent per capita in 2000.

Even though the poll sampled 44 percent Democrats and only 26 percent Republicans and 24 percent independents, a whopping 62 percent of those polled support reducing the number of state government employees.

59 percent said government regulations often do more harm than good. 65 percent believe the state’s laws and regulations make it more likely that businesses will pick up and move to other states. 77 percent say they want government workers to pay more for their own health care and retirement benefits.

California is teetering on the edge of the financial cliff. The question is: will the growing awareness of the virtues of austerity be too little, too late? And if the public wises up, will they throw out the Democratic legislature that’s been responsible?

Via: Breitbart

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California poised to grant driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants

California is on the verge of allowing hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to receive driver's licenses for the first time in nearly two decades.

The key question is how to do it.

The issue of granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants has raged in the Legislature for much of the past decade, without resolution, but fighting is largely moot now due to a new federal policy.

President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals gives a select group of undocumented immigrants the right to live and work in the United States for two years without fear of deportation.

California is laying the groundwork for extending the privilege to driving, too, for an estimated 400,000 immigrants.

"It appears that young people who receive federal deferrals will be eligible for California driver's licenses," the Department of Motor Vehicles said in a written statement Tuesday.

"But it remains uncertain whether clarifying legislation or regulations will be necessary," the DMV statement said.

Gil Duran, spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, said the DMV statement reflects the governor's position but that he could not elaborate.

The glitch is that state regulations allow only certain types of federal immigration documents to support the issuance of a driver's license.

If President Obama's Deferred Action program provides participants with "new or different immigration documents," then legislation or regulatory clarification may be needed, the DMV said.

Via: Sacramento Bee

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Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/22/4746634/california-poised-to-grant-drivers.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy