Former L.A. schools chief calls iPad program illegal

A former L.A. schools superintendent has stepped forward to criticize a $1 billion effort to provide every student, teacher and campus administrator with a tablet or laptop computer. William J. Johnston, 87, did not object to the goal, but focused instead on using school-construction bonds to fund the project, which, so far, has involved purchasing iPads.

“I  believe the current purchase of iPads from school bonds is illegal,” Johnston wrote in a Feb. 6 letter to the committee that oversees the spending of the voter-approved funding. The bonds are paid back through increases in property taxes.

The letter was included in materials for the committee's Thursday meeting. 

“iPads are known to last for approximatey three years,” Johnston wrote. “New developments and technology will make them obsolete, requiring replacements. School bonds are designed to buy property, build schools, equip schools with lasting equipment. School bonds are paid for over a 25-year period.”

He added: “Voters approved the school bonds because they needed schools built, schools repaired, school equipment updated. They did not vote for iPads, a three-year consumable product.”

Johnston, who served as superintendent from 1971 to 1981, is hardly alone in his concerns, which the district recently addressed publicly. Officials have maintained that state law, over time, has been clarified to affirm that bonds can be used for technology. And bond measures specifically list funding for technology.

A Los Angeles Unified School District legal opinion asserts further that portable computers that can be taken home are a logical, updated extension of technology, which used to be available to students only in computer labs with bolted-down desktop devices.

Via: LA Times

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Veterans Affairs ‘Falsifying Reported Wait-Times’

Veterans Affairs purged thousands of medical tests to 'game' its backlog stats

 Thousands of orders for diagnostic medical tests have been purged en masse by the Department of Veterans Affairs to make it appear its decade-long backlog is being eliminated, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

About 40,000 appointments were “administratively closed” in Los Angeles, and another 13,000 were cancelled in Dallas in 2012.

That means the patients did not receive the tests or treatment that had been ordered, but rather the orders for the follow-up procedures were simply deleted from the agency’s records.

It is not known how widespread the practice is, or how many veterans hospitals have mass-purged appointment orders to clear their backlogs.

Alas, this feels all too familiar to someone who grew up with Britain’s National Health Service.

Here’s the thing: when one subordinates healthcare to government, one inevitably gets all of the usual government games. A favorite trick: Mrs. Jones needs a hip replacement, so she calls up her local NHS hospital to arrange it; the NHS tells Mrs. Jones that she should call back in a given amount of time, after which she will be treated within 24 or 48 or 72 hours — or however long the government has promised would elapse between “phone call” and “treatment”; Mrs. Jones waits the requisite amount of time, then calls, then gets her appointment; the state then says semi-truthfully that Mrs. Jones was given a hip replacement “quickly” and that the gap between her requesting the treatment and her receiving the treatment was short. Now, did Mrs. Jones actually get her hip replacement “quickly”? Of course not. She waited both the amount of time that the government recorded and the amount of time that it did not. But who cares? All that matters when the government is elected or fired based on its performance running the health system is what the government is able to say about how it is running the health system. So it lies its damn head off.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Some immigrants may lack documents for new driver's licenses

At a community meeting Thursday night in Bell, DMV officials listen to testimony on driver's licenses for immigrants without legal status. Immigrants can apply for the new licenses beginning Jan. 1, 2015, but some lack official documents proving who they are or where they live. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / February 13, 2014)

By Cindy Chang

February 14, 2014, 5:13 p.m.

As the California Department of Motor Vehicles prepares for a historic expansion of driving privileges, some immigrants may be left out because they lack documents proving who they are or where they live.

The DMV is hiring about 1,000 workers and opening five temporary offices to handle a flood of driver’s license applications beginning Jan. 1, 2015, from immigrants without legal status. In a few months, the agency will issue regulations on the documents required to obtain the new license.

According to a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last October, the immigrant driver’s licenses will contain a distinguishing mark but will otherwise resemble regular licenses. The applicants may include people from rural villages who never obtained birth certificates as well as day laborers with no fixed address to prove California residency.

At a meeting with DMV officials Thursday night in Bell that drew hundreds of potential applicants, many speakers asked the agency to accept church records, school IDs and other non-government documents.

“A lot of day laborers have lost all their personal identification,” said Ana Garcia of the Central American Resource Center. “We provide worker center IDs, and that’s all they have. They don’t have a permanent home.”

Moises Alfaro, a day laborer in the San Fernando Valley, said many of his coworkers do not have an ITIN – an identification number used to pay taxes – because jobs have been scarce. An income tax return is listed in the driver’s license law as an accepted document, along with official IDs such as a passport. The new DMV regulations may expand on the options mentioned in the law.

“I also drive and I would like a license, like all of us,” Alfaro said. “For all of us, it would be an improvement to get a car.”

Some immigrants do not have birth certificates because their births were never registered in their home countries. They are then unable to obtain official documents such as a passport or the matricula consular used as identification by many Mexican immigrants.

Over 40% of births in the developing world are unregistered, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. The figure may be as high as 60% in some Mexican states.

Via: Los Angeles Times

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Tenure, Temerity and the Truth

Los Angeles Times op-ed and teachers union defense of educational status quo are packed with malarkey.

Now in its third week, the Students Matter trial still has a ways to go. Initially scheduled to last four weeks, the proceedings are set to run longer. On Friday, Prosecutor Marcellus McRae told Judge Rolf Treu that the plaintiffs need another week and a half or so to conclude their case before the defense takes over. The coverage of the trial has been thorough, with the Students Matter website providing daily updates, as has the always reliable LA School Report.

The media have generally been either neutral or supportive of the case, which claims that the tenure, seniority and dismissal statutes enshrined in the state Ed Code hurt the education process in the Golden State, especially for minority and poor kids. The defendants are the state of California and the two state teachers unions – the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers.

Having studied and written about the case extensively, I am of the opinion that the defense has no defense and that the best that they can do is to muddy the waters to gain favor with judge. In an effort to learn what the defense will come up with, I have tried to read everything I can by folks who think the lawsuit is misguided. I have written before about California Teachers Association president Dean Vogel’s rather inept argument presented in the December issue of CTA’s magazine.

The CTA website has been posting more about the case as the trial has progressed, and it would appear that desperation has set in. The union’s old bromides hold about as much water as a ratty sponge.

The problems we face with layoffs are not because of Education Code provisions or local collective bargaining agreements, but lack of funding.

No, the problem is who is getting laid off; we are losing some of the best and the brightest, includingteachers-of-the-year due to ridiculous seniority laws.

The lawsuit ignores all research that shows teaching experience contributes to student learning.

Not true. Studies have shown that after 3-5 years, the majority of teachers don’t improve over time.

The backers of this lawsuit include a “who’s who” of the billionaire boys club and their front groups whose real agendas have nothing to do with protecting students, but are really about privatizing public schools.

Oh please – the evil rich and the privatization bogeyman! Really! Zzzzz.

Via: California Political Review

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State of Union Disregards Economic Freedom

The Los Angeles Rams announced they were moving to St Louis. President Clinton gave Mexico $20 billion to bail out the peso. Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson married rock-n-roll bad boy Tommy Lee. And, the Index of Economic Freedom made its debut.

It was 1995.

This month, the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation published the 20th edition of the Index. Its findings starkly rebut President Obama’s State of the Union assertion that “opportunity is who we are.”

>>> Check Out: The IRS Drive to Silence the Right

As for his claim that “the defining project of our geneation is to restore that promise [of opportunity]. We know where to start” … well, the index suggests otherwise. At least when it comes to this administration.

In every year of the Obama presidency, America has lost ground in economic freedom. When Mr. Obama first entered the Oval Office, the U.S. ranked sixth in the world. This year it dropped out of the Top 10, tumbling into 12th place.

Indeed, economic freedom has declined for seven straight years in America, and it’s the longest losing streak of any nation in the world. We are no longer even counted among the world’s “free” economies. Two years ago, the Index reported that the U.S. had become merely the land of the “mostly free.”

The Bush-era recession can’t be blamed for this sorry state of affairs. That recession’s impact spread worldwide. Other nations had to grapple with the same challenges, and did so far more successfully.

The president’s speech might lead you to believe the decline results from all the stuff Washington hasn’t done. But that’s got it completely backwards. All of the government initiatives pushed through by the administration — higher taxes, even greater spending and vast new regulatory regimes–have acted like a giant millstone weighing down the American economy.

Via: The Foundry

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Hollywood's new financiers make deals with state tax credits

ATLANTA — Ric Reitz makes movies. He helped bankroll the Matt Damon thriller "Contagion," Clint Eastwood's "Trouble With the Curve" and the Robert Downey comedy "Due Date."

Reitz, an energetic 58-year-old, doesn't hang out at the Polo Lounge, red-carpet premieres or swank offices in Century City. Instead, he works out of a former cotton mill near Martin Luther King Jr.'s boyhood home, hustling for business at Chamber of Commerce dinners and Rotary Club lunches. Recently, he was looking forward to attending a meeting of prosperous chicken farmers.

Reitz is one of Hollywood's new financiers. Just about every major movie filmed on location gets a tax incentive, and Reitz is part of an expanding web of brokers, tax attorneys, financial planners and consultants who help filmmakers exploit the patchwork of state programs to attract film and TV production.

ON LOCATION: Where the cameras roll

In his case, he takes the tax credits given to Hollywood studios for location filming and sells them to wealthy Georgians looking to shave their tax bills — doctors, pro athletes, seafood suppliers, beer distributors and the like.

"I've got a giant state of people who are potential buyers," he said. "It's the funniest people who are hiding under stones."

The trade benefits both sides. The studios get their money more quickly than if they had to wait for a tax refund from the state, and the buyers get a certificate that enables them to cut their state tax bills as much 15%.

Via: LA Times
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Have Los Angeles Teachers Unions Gone Too Far?

The American Federation of Teachers sponsored a “day of action” Monday to ostensibly shed light on educational issues. Teachers throughout the country — with varying success — staged demonstrations discussing a laundry list of union priorities. Its state affiliate here is the California Federation of Teaches.

In California, where unions have long wielded more influence than in most states, the protests took an interesting turn. That is, Los Angeles teachers mostly just focused on themselves — not students.

Los Angeles teachers, who are relatively powerful, drew light to a very specific issue, one they are facing heat for (even from Democratic legislators). The Los Angeles Times reported that United Teachers Los Angeles members protested “against the conditions under which the L.A. Unified School District handles teachers who are facing allegations of misconduct.”

L.A. Unified teachers are represented by both the CFT and the larger California Teachers Association.

The union members held “vigils” for teachers who were spending time in Los Angeles Unified School District offices because of their impending misconduct cases. The union focused on defending teachers plausibly accused of wrongdoing — from sexual misconduct to aggressive behavior against students.

One teacher, explaining the protest, asked the Times, “What kind of school district removes a teacher from the classroom if a 13-year-old said so?”

The protests are a response to a crackdown on misbehaving teachers. After the district was forced to pay Miramonte Elementary teacher Mark Berndt — who sexually molested countless children and photographed them ingesting his bodily fluids — $40,000 to settle his case, the district opened up hundreds of cases against teachers. Those protesting said that the district had gone too far and was no longer defending students, but attacking teachers.

Via: California Political Review

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Los Angeles: Will the City of the Future Make it There?

When I arrived in Los Angeles almost 40 years ago, there was a palpable sense that here, for better or worse, lay the future of America, and even the world. Los Angeles dominated so many areas — film, international trade, fashion, manufacturing, aerospace — that its ascendency seemed assured. Even in terms of the urban form, L.A.’s car-dominated, multipolar configuration was being imitated almost everywhere; it was becoming, as one writer noted, “the original in the Xerox” machine.

Yet today the nation’s second-largest city seems to have fallen off the map of ascendant urban areas. Today’s dynamic cities in terms of job and population growth are the “new Los Angeleses,” such as Houston, Dallas, Phoenix or Charlotte; at the same time L.A. lags many more traditional “legacy” cities in job creation and growth, notably New York, Boston and Seattle. Worst of all, L.A. has lost its status as the dominant city on the West Coast; that title, in terms of both economic and political power, has shifted to the tech-heavy Bay Area.

With a weak economy and little media outside Hollywood, the city has lost much of its cachet. A Businessweek survey last year ranked San Francisco as America’s best city to live in. Los Angeles was 50th, behind such unlikely competitors as Cleveland, Omaha, Tulsa, Indianapolis and Phoenix. In another survey that purported to identify the top 10 cities for millennials, Seattle ranked first, followed by Houston, Minneapolis, Dallas, Washington, Boston and New York. Neither L.A. nor Orange County made the cut.

L.A.’s relative decline reflects a collective inability to readjust to changing economic conditions. Some of this has to do with the end of the Cold War, but also with the loss of the headquarters of many of the area’s top defense contractors, such as Lockheed and, most recently, Northrop Grumman. In 1990, the county had 130,100 aerospace workers. A decade later, that number dropped by more than half to 52,400. By 2010, the county’s aerospace jobs numbered 39,100.

Via: California Political Review

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[VIDEO] Kimmel: President's Visit 'Turned LA Into the Traffic Equivalent of ObamaCare'

As NewsBusters has been reporting for almost two months, the disastrous rollout of Barack Obama's signature piece of legislation has made him the butt of late night jokes.

On ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live Monday, the host repeatedly mocked the President's fundraising trip to California saying, "He basically turned the westside of Los Angeles into the traffic equivalent of the ObamaCare website" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

JIMMY KIMMEL: This is definitely a boost for President Obama who arrived here in Los Angeles today. He's here to congratulate Taylor Swift on her American Music Awards in person. [Laughter and applause]

As usual, the President’s motorcade made our normally miserable traffic even worse. He basically turned the westside of Los Angeles into the traffic equivalent of the ObamaCare website. [Laughter and applause]

The President is, I guess he's here for the same reason he's usually here: to attend a few Democratic fundraisers and to go to In-N-Out burger without his wife finding out. [Laughter and applause]

And I don't know what it is, but It seems like the only time the President comes to LA is for money. He’s like a college student who only comes home to do his laundry and steal leftovers from the fridge.

Via: Newsbusters

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There ought not be a law: Kooky codes take aim at oysters, costumes and slingshots

Can you wear a costume outdoors, without a government permit?

Not if you live in Walnut, Calif., or at least a half-dozen other towns in America – and they have some other eyebrow-raising laws as well.

Other laws in the affluent Los Angeles suburb include a ban on men cross-dressing without a government permit, one that forbids possession of a horse-racing tip sheet and yet another banning slingshots. City officials admit those laws, which were added in 1959 when the city was incorporated, are outdated.

“These obsolete laws are not harmless."

- Harvey Silverglate, author of "Three Felonies a Day"

“They’re a little antiquated -- that’s what it is,” city spokeswoman Fabiola Huerta told FoxNews.com. “At times, some ordinances are overlooked and are not deleted from the Municipal Code once they are outdated. These ordinances have not been enforced and will be subject to a code cleanup in the upcoming year.”

But not all of the rules will necessarily be repealed. Some sound silly, but may have a reasonable justification.

Via: FoxNews.com

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IRS mistakenly sent 'sensitive taxpayer data' to California small business

The IRS mistakenly sent “sensitive taxpayer data” intended for a California accountant to a nearby small business in September, exposing one man’s Social Security number, wage and tax information and third-party network payments, FoxNews.com has learned.

The 10-page document, dated Sept. 10, was addressed to certified public accountant David Reinus in Thousand Oaks but was erroneously sent to a fax machine at a tire supply warehouse in the same town, which is roughly 35 miles outside Los Angeles. It contains “wage and income” data, according to its cover page, from 2010-12 of a Simi Valley man whose sensitive data was seemingly exposed without his knowledge.

“This communication is intended for the sole use of the individual to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law,” a disclaimer on the cover page reads. “If the reader of this communication is not the intended recipient or the employee or the agent for delivering the communication to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication may be strictly prohibited.”

Derek Broes, a Seattle-based technology and media entrepreneur, learned of the errant fax from his cousin, who is married to the owner of TO Tire Supply. Broes said he was shocked to learn that IRS officials did not use a verified number to send the information, which he claims could easily be used to deplete the man’s bank account and launch a new identity within minutes.

VIA: FOX NEWS POLITICS

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