California Amendment would give counties more supervisors

A proposed state constitutional amendment with the stated aim of making government more responsive and ethnically diverse would add two members to the Riverside and San Bernardino county boards of supervisors. 

The amendment offered by state Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, is scheduled be heard by a Senate committee Aug. 17. It would require counties with 2 million or more residents -- Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Los Angeles -- to have at least seven people on their supervisorial boards.

Riverside and San Bernardino each have five supervisors. If the amendment passes both houses of the Legislature by a 2/3 vote, it would go on the ballot for voters’ approval.

In a staff report on the amendment, Mendoza’s office wrote that expanding the boards of supervisors “will provide the opportunity for these bodies to be more responsive and reflective of the needs of the people they represent and serve.”

The amendment would add supervisors in counties with sizeable Latino populations. Roughly half of the Inland population is Latino, according to recently released census numbers.

Despite that, no Latinos serve on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. San Bernardino County has one Latino supervisor, Josie Gonzales.

For Luz Gallegos, community programs director at TODEC Legal Center, a grassroots organization serving Inland Empire migrant communities, the measures can help boost Latino representation, but in order for the community to reap the benefits, simply electing a Latino politician wouldn’t be enough.

It's about “making sure they have their heart and the community commitment,” she said.

Electing Latinos and other people of color is important, Gallegos said, because it will inspire youth to run for elected office.

“As a youth, I remember (Los Angeles City Councilman) Gil Cedillo,” she said. “He was out there marching with us and he was part of the unions and now he's in positions where we have youth saying, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’”

“NOT HOMOGENOUS”

Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley said he didn’t think the amendment would make much of a difference when it comes to electing a Latino supervisor.

“Latinos are not a homogenous group,” Ashley said. “They look at the issues and if they see a candidate that’s backing the issues they like … they’ll vote for (that candidate).”

Ashley, who is not seeking re-election when his term ends in 2018, said it’s very likely a Latino will take his place. Ashley’s chief of staff, Jaime Hurtado, already is running to succeed his boss.

San Bernardino County supervisors oppose the amendment. In a letter to the state Senate, Supervisor James Ramos wrote that the amendment would “erode the ability of San Bernardino County voters to determine their form of government.”

“While we appreciate your goal to increase diversity among members of county boards of supervisors to better reflect the changes in the state’s demographics, we feel the composition of our Board achieves that goal, and no legislation is needed,” said Ramos, former chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. His county also has two female supervisors.

Via: http://www.pe.com/articles/supervisors-775582-amendment-san.html

One Homeless Voice Is Heard At LAPD Meeting On Crackdown

Dylan's story is one that many homeless people could tell: emotional problems, school failures and social dysfunction lead to self-medicating with alcohol or drugs.

"I had a good childhood," Dylan insisted. "But once the whole schooling thing started changing, that's where everything got tough."

He's bounced around a lot in the last four years. "But I'm at a good point now, at 26," he said.

He's spent a little time in rehab and done stints in sober-living homes. He's learned to roll with his moods, control his temper and walk away from trouble.

Heroin, he said, numbed the pain he felt when people didn't want him around. When he's sober he's thankful for all the people who've been willing to help at a neighborhood church, where he helps with chores and yardwork and attends weekly Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

He's found a place to sleep outdoors that's cramped but safe and clean. He has a bike, a backpack, a cellphone and a Netflix subscription. He's trying to save for an apartment and would like to enroll in Pierce College this fall.

Still, it's too soon to make this some kind of redemption trope. Living on the streets may have taken an indelible toll.

A few months ago, Dylan found a room for rent on Craigslist that he could afford. He moved in, but left after a few nights. He couldn't sleep inside; it felt hot and claustrophobic and "really crazy," he said.

"Is this some kind of deep psychologically rooted thing? It really shocked me," he said. "I'm going to have to train myself to go back to being a normal person."

Or accept that sleeping outside, in the open air, under the stars is a wonderful thing, when it's a choice not a necessity.

They're tired of side-stepping panhandlers outside the market and letting transients sully their well-kept parks. They're worried about rising crime, fueled by jumps in home burglaries and car break-ins.

That's what drew dozens of Chatsworth residents last week to the LAPD's Neighborhood Watch meeting headlined "The Homeless: A Growing Problem."

Officers blamed the crime surge on transients — reprobates and drug addicts whom cops are trying to round up or run off. In the meantime, they warned, don't keep your garage door open or leave anything in your car.

When they asked for questions, hands shot up: Is it still safe to hike in Stoney Point Park? Are home alarm systems deterrent enough? Can we block off our streets and hire security guards?

The final question came from a tattooed young man with dirt-caked sneakers and grimy hands. "My name is Dylan and I'm homeless," he said. "On nights when I have nowhere to go, where is it OK to sleep?"

I watched two women in the row in front of him reach out and pull their purses closer. The officer with the microphone reminded him that there are plenty of shelters downtown on skid row.

Dylan Fowler, 26, knows that he's part of the problem his suburban neighbors are trying to fix. He's lived on the streets, off and on, for years.

He realizes that locals consider him a nuisance. But Chatsworth is his hometown too.

"I empathize with the people around here," he told me. "I know my dad worked very, very hard for a long time to be able to afford to raise a family here. I can understand the whole thing about being an eyesore.

"But it feels unfair sometimes to be judged constantly. Personally it's just, it's kind of tragic. There are people out there to be afraid of. But I'm not one of them."

After the meeting, I stuck around and talked with Dylan for a while. He's about the same age as my daughters, and went to preschool at the park where they played soccer and basketball.

I found him thoughtful and preternaturally polite. "I make a point to hold doors open for people and make small talk with anybody I pass," he explained. "I'm hoping that just generally people will see me around and know I'm not a problem."

It's important to him that people know he's not a bad guy.

On Sunday, I took him to lunch at a neighborhood deli. He savored a bagel and vegetable omelet as if they were delicacies.

And he talked about the forces that shaped his life.

It sounded to me like he'd spent years feeling that he must be a bad guy.

"I was always a problem child," he began. "I got expelled for the first time in fourth grade." He was the class clown, always causing a ruckus, tipping over desks and tormenting teachers.

By the time he was 14, he'd been suspended so often for fighting that "they ran out of schools to send me to," he said. He landed in a Texas program for teens with emotional problems and left there two years later with a diagnosis of depression, anxiety and attention deficit disorder.

Back in Chatsworth, he became a loner.

He tried other schools geared toward troubled kids, but they didn't work out. "I realized I had no idea how to deal with normal people," he said. When he turned 18, his parents told him "it was time to get out on my own and figure things out."

He worked odd jobs and rented an apartment with a girlfriend. Then he found out that his mental health issues qualified him for federal disability payments of $850 a month.

Those checks allow many homeless people to eke out a subsistence living. But Dylan said they handicapped him: "It totally makes you lazy. It's not enough to live on.... And you can't take a job or your benefits will end."

But what really handicapped him was heroin.

At 22, he was introduced to the drug by an acquaintance. "He told us we were smoking hash," Dylan said. "Pretty much everyone I knew in the whole Valley got caught up in that problem.

"I was struggling with it for a really long time. That has a lot to do with why I ended up on the street."

Dylan's story is one that many homeless people could tell: emotional problems, school failures and social dysfunction lead to self-medicating with alcohol or drugs.

"I had a good childhood," Dylan insisted. "But once the whole schooling thing started changing, that's where everything got tough."

He's bounced around a lot in the last four years. "But I'm at a good point now, at 26," he said.

He's spent a little time in rehab and done stints in sober-living homes. He's learned to roll with his moods, control his temper and walk away from trouble.

Heroin, he said, numbed the pain he felt when people didn't want him around. When he's sober he's thankful for all the people who've been willing to help at a neighborhood church, where he helps with chores and yardwork and attends weekly Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

He's found a place to sleep outdoors that's cramped but safe and clean. He has a bike, a backpack, a cellphone and a Netflix subscription. He's trying to save for an apartment and would like to enroll in Pierce College this fall.

Still, it's too soon to make this some kind of redemption trope. Living on the streets may have taken an indelible toll.

A few months ago, Dylan found a room for rent on Craigslist that he could afford. He moved in, but left after a few nights. He couldn't sleep inside; it felt hot and claustrophobic and "really crazy," he said.

"Is this some kind of deep psychologically rooted thing? It really shocked me," he said. "I'm going to have to train myself to go back to being a normal person."

Or accept that sleeping outside, in the open air, under the stars is a wonderful thing, when it's a choice not a necessity.


Via: http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0630-banks-valley-homeless-20150630-column.html

Suit Accuses L.A. Unified of Diverting Millions Meant for Needy Students

The Los Angeles Unified School District has illegally shortchanged high-needs students of millions of dollars meant for them under the state's new school finance system, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges.

The suit claims that improper accounting will cost those students more than $400 million by next June and up to $2 billion by 2020.

Under the state's landmark reform of its school funding system two years ago, districts receive more dollars for students who are low-income, learning English or in foster care. But districts are required to invest in increased or improved services for them.

At issue is $450 million in special education funds that L.A. Unified counted in 2013-14 as part of its existing spending on high-needs students -- a figure that helped set the amount of new required investments for them. The district has said it is only counting dollars spent on special education students who are also low-income, learning English or in foster care -- all told, 79% of them.

But John Affeldt of Public Advocates Inc., one of three organizations that filed the suit, said that money is being spent on special education needs -- not primarily to help students overcome learning challenges based on language, income or foster placement, as required by state law. He said L.A. Unified appears to be the only major school district in California counting special education funds in this way and that it has artifically inflated its current spending on needy students, lowering the additional amount that will be required.

"L.A. Unified is clearly violating the rules, and when L.A. violates rules the impact is felt in a very large way," Affeldt said. "That's undercutting the heart" of the law.

District officials said they were "disappointed" by the lawsuit, saying its allegations were based on a misinterpretation of the funding law.

"The Legislature clearly granted school districts -- which serve predominantly low-income students, foster youth and English language learners -- the highest degree of flexibility in determining student program needs," a district statement said. "We are confident that the District will be vindicated in this litigation. More importantly, we stand by our continuing commitment to serve our most disadvantaged students."

The plaintiffs, Community Coalition of South Los Angeles and Reyna Frias, a parent, are also suing Los Angeles County Supt. of Schools Arturo Delgado. In a letter last September, Delgado approved the district's accounting methods. County education officials declined to comment.

In addition to San Francisco-based Public Advocates, the lawsuit was also filed by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Covington & Burling law firm of San Francisco. The lawsuit asks that L.A. Unified immediately recalculate its spending and increase funding for the targeted students.

"LAUSD is breaking its promise to provide my children and millions of other students in the future, with the services they need and the law says they should receive," Frias, mother of two students in district schools, said in a statement.

By: Teresa Watanabe
Via: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lausd-funding-lawsuit-20150701-story.html

Los Angeles Lifts Its Minimum Wage to $15 Per Hour

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far for labor groups and their allies who are engaged in a national push to raise the minimum wage.

The increase, which the City Council passed in a 14-to-1 vote, comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same. In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wages by ballot initiative.

The effect is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, almost 50 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour. Under the plan approved Tuesday, the minimum wage will rise over five years.

“The effects here will be the biggest by far,” said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was commissioned by city leaders to conduct several studies on the potential effects of a minimum-wage increase. “The proposal will bring wages up in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s. There’s a sense spreading that this is the new norm, especially in areas that have high costs of housing.”

The groups pressing for higher minimum wages said that the Los Angeles vote could set off a wave of increases across Southern California, and that higher pay scales would improve the way of life for the region’s vast low-wage work force.

Supporters of higher wages say they hope the move will reverberate nationally. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced this month that he was convening a state board to consider a wage increase in the local fast-food industry, which could be enacted without a vote in the State Legislature. Immediately after the Los Angeles vote, pressure began to build on Mr. Cuomo to reject an increase that falls short of $15 an hour.

“The L.A. increase nudges it forward,” said Dan Cantor, the national director of the Working Families Party, which was founded in New York and has helped pass progressive economic measures in several states. “It puts an exclamation point on the need for $15 to be where the wage board ends up.”

The current minimum wage in New York State is $8.75, versus a federal minimum wage of $7.25, and will rise to $9 at the end of 2015. A little more than one-third of workers citywide and statewide now make below $15 an hour.

Los Angeles County is also considering a measure that would lift the wages of thousands of workers in unincorporated parts of the county.

Much of the debate here has centered on potential regional repercussions. Many of the low-wage workers who form the backbone of Southern California’s economy live in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Proponents of the wage increase say they expect that several nearby cities, including Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Pasadena, will also approve higher wages.

AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

But opponents of higher minimum wages, including small-business owners and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, say the increase approved Tuesday could turn Los Angeles into a “wage island,” pushing businesses to nearby places where they can pay employees less.

“They are asking businesses to foot the bill on a social experiment that they would never do on their own employees,” said Stuart Waldman, the president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a trade group that represents companies and other organizations in Southern California. “A lot of businesses aren’t going to make it,” he added. “It’s great that this is an increase for some employees, but the sad truth is that a lot of employees are going to lose their jobs.”

The 67 percent increase from the current state minimum will be phased in over five years, first to $10.50 in July 2016, then to $12 in 2017, $13.25 in 2018 and $14.25 in 2019. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to carry out the plan. Starting in 2022, annual increases will be based on the Consumer Price Index average of the last 20 years. The City Council’s vote will instruct the city attorney to draft the language of the law, which will then come back to the Council for final approval.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, had proposed a slightly different increase last fall and later negotiated the details with the Democratic-controlled Council. Mr. Garcetti said Tuesday that he would sign the legislation and that he hoped other elected officials, including Mr. Cuomo, would follow Los Angeles’s path.

“We’re leading the country; we’re not going to wait for Washington to lift Americans out of poverty,” Mr. Garcetti said in an interview. “We have too many adults struggling to be living off a poverty wage. This will re-establish some of the equilibrium we’ve had in the past.”

New York City does not have a separate minimum wage, but Mayor Bill de Blasio has spoken out in favor of higher wages statewide. “Los Angeles is another example of a city that’s doing the right thing, lifting people up by providing a wage on which they can live,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement “We need Albany to catch up with the times and raise the wage.”Continue reading the main storhe push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage is not confined to populous coastal states. In Kansas City, Mo., activists recently collected enough signatures to put forward an August ballot initiative on whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2020. The City Council is deliberating this week over how to respond and could pass its own measure in advance of the initiative.

As the Los Angeles City Council considered raising the minimum wage over the last several months, the question was not if, but how much. The lone councilman who voted against the bill — a Republican — did not speak during Tuesday’s meeting.

Still, for all their enthusiasm, some Council members acknowledged that it would be difficult to predict what would happen once the increase was fully in effect.

“I would prefer that the cost of this was really burdened by those at the highest income levels,” said Gil Cedillo, a councilman who represents some of the poorest sections of the city and worries that some small businesses will shut down. “Instead, it’s going to be coming from people who are just a rung or two up the ladder here. It’s a risk that rhetoric can’t resolve.”

Even economists who support increasing the minimum wage say there is not enough historical data to predict the effect of a $15 minimum wage, an unprecedented increase. A wage increase to $12 an hour over the next few years would achieve about the same purchasing power as the minimum wage in the late 1960s, the most recent peak.

Many restaurant owners here aggressively fought the increase, saying they would be forced to cut as much as half of their staff. Unlike other states, California state law prohibits tipped employees from receiving lower than the minimum wage. The Council promised to study the potential effect of allowing restaurants to add a service charge to bills to meet the increased costs.

And while labor leaders and the coalition of dozens of community groups celebrated in the rotunda of City Hall after the vote, they acknowledged there was a long way to go.

“This says to Los Angeles workers that they are respected, and that’s an important psychological effect,” said Laphonza Butler, the president of Service Employees International Union-United Long Term Care Workers here and a leader of the coalition. “To know that they have a pathway to $15, to getting themselves off of welfare and out of poverty, that’s huge. This should change the debate of the value of low-wage work.”

L.A. County leads California in poverty rate, new analysis shows

Los Angeles has the highest poverty rate among California counties, according to a new analysis announced Monday that upends traditional views of rural and urban hardship by adding factors such as the soaring price of city housing.

The measurement, developed by researchers with the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, found that 2.6 million, or 27%, of Los Angeles County residents lived in poverty in 2011. The official poverty rate for the county, based on the U.S. Census' 2011 American Community Survey, is 18%.

The new analysis set California's poverty rate at 22%, the highest in the nation, compared with the official rate of 16%. Counties such as Placer and Sacramento, with more moderate housing costs, have lower poverty rates than those of metropolitan areas, researchers said.

"We always see maps of official poverty and think of the Central Valley as the most impoverished," said economist Sarah Bohn, a research fellow at the public policy institute and one of the study's authors. "This really turns that on its head."

The new model aims to present a fuller picture of poverty by taking into account living expenses and government benefits ignored in the official formula.

Social scientists have argued for decades that the federal definition of poverty, which dates to the early 1960s, falls short on two counts: ignoring the benefits of government aid, including food stamps, Social Security, subsidized housing and tax credits, and failing to account for regional cost differences in transportation, healthcare and housing.

The report released Monday found that although many Californians find it difficult to make ends meet, things would be much worse without state, federal and local safety net programs, including food stamps, CalWORKs and the earned income tax credit. Out-of-pocket medical costs, however, increase the hardship, particularly for Californians over 65, the report said.

The U.S. Census Bureau for the last two years has released its own alternative poverty rate that attempts to recalibrate the poverty threshold. The rate is for research purposes only, but if adopted nationally, it could lead to a dramatic redistribution of federal funding in state and local jurisdictions.

The new California estimates could add to the pressure for change.

"People in Los Angeles deserve more help from the federal government than people in Mississippi," said Dowell Myers, professor of policy, planning and development at USC.

Myers said there has been tremendous resistance to adjusting the poverty rate, "even when it makes total sense."

Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable, cautioned the rural poor often have higher transportation costs and fewer social service agencies than their city counterparts.

The rural poor are isolated "and there are very few places to turn for help," he said.

gale.holland@latimes.com

Jerry Brown signs bill to raise California minimum wage

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation to raise California's minimum wage by 25 percent, from $8 an hour to $10 an hour by 2016.

The bill, celebrated by Brown and his labor union allies at an event in Los Angeles, promises the first increase in California's hourly minimum since 2008, when the minimum wage was raised 50 cents to $8.

After appearing in the state's biggest media market this morning, the Democratic governor is scheduled to fly to Oakland to promote the bill at a second event this afternoon.

Assembly Bill 10, by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, will raise the minimum wage from $8 to $9 an hour on July 1, 2014, and to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016.

The bill was the only one of 38 bills designated by the California Chamber of Commerce as a "jobs killers" to make it out of the Legislature this year.
The chamber and other business groups said raising the hourly minimum would unfairly increase business costs and jeopardize California's economic recovery.


California is one of 18 states and the District of Columbia that have minimum wages above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and California's $10 minimum is likely to be among the highest in the nation in 2016.


Washington currently has the nation's highest state minimum wage, at $9.19 an hour, but that state is one of 10 that provide for automatic adjustments to their minimum wages based on cost of living measures, a provision eliminated from an earlier version of the bill Brown signed.

The California legislation is expected to affect about 1.5 million full-time, year-round workers, about 14 percent of the state's full-time workforce, according to a Bee review of U.S. Census data.

The broader effects of a minimum wage increase are the subject of longstanding debate. The California Budget Project, which advocates for low-income residents, said in a brief this month that California's minimum wage has not kept pace with the rising cost of living and that raising the hourly minimum "would help reverse the decline in the purchasing power of workers' wages."

Proponents of raising the minimum wage say workers who earn more will spend more, stimulating the economy, and will require less government assistance.

Opponents of raising the minimum wage say requiring employers to pay higher wages will force them to offset costs by raising prices, hiring fewer workers or reducing workers' hours.

The National Federation of Independent Business, an advocacy group, released a study in March warning that a minimum wage increase under an earlier version of the California bill could result in the loss of more than 68,000 jobs in California over 10 years.

The Bee's Phillip Reese contributed to this report

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/09/jerry-brown-signs-bill-to-raise-california-minimum-wage.html#storylink=cpy

L.A. Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell wins state Senate seat!

SACRAMENTO — Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) has cruised to victory in a special election for the state Senate seat vacated by Democrat Curren Price when he was elected to the Los Angeles City Council this year.

Mitchell received 80.6% of the vote, beating perennial Democratic candidate Mervin Evans, who received 19.4% in Tuesday's contest for the 26th Senate District.

Mitchell, 49, will add to the bare supermajority theDemocrats already have in the Senate.

"We are excited to welcome the passion, perspective and pragmatism she'll bring as our 28th Democratic senator," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), who had endorsed her.

Mitchell noted that she began her public service career in the Senate in 1988, working then for Democratic Sen. Diane Watson of Los Angeles. "I'm excited," Mitchell said. "It feels like coming full circle."

She declined to comment when asked about talk in the Capitol that she may be a contender for Senate leader when Steinberg leaves office next year.

In the Assembly, Democratic membership has fallen below supermajority level because of vacancies.

When Mitchell resigns to take her Senate seat, Democrats in the lower house will hold 52 seats; they need 54 to regain the two-thirds majority they won in last year's elections. They expect to be back to that level after three special elections to fill the vacancies before year's end.

One of those contests will be a runoff between the two candidates who finished first in Tuesday's election for the 45th Assembly District seat, which includes parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Democrat Robert Blumenfield of Woodland Hills vacated the seat when he won election to the Los Angeles City Council.

Democrat Matt Dababneh, an Encino resident who is an aide to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), will compete in the runoff against Republican Susan Shelley, a writer and publisher from Woodland Hills, if the results stand after provisional ballots are counted in coming days. Dababneh received 24.6% of the vote Tuesday; Shelley, 21.4%.

The runoff is set for Nov. 19.

Encino Democrat Jeff Ebenstein finished third Tuesday, followed by Republican Chris Kolski of West Hills and seven other contestants.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

No More Jails!

July 16, 2013

9 am

CREATIVE ACTION

PRESS CONFERENCE

RALLY

SPEAKOUT

Health roundup: Meatless Mondays are official in LA

8:53AM EST November 12. 2012 - Your Monday morning health roundup:

Meatless in LA: If you are reading this over breakfast in Los Angeles, you better put down the bacon -- at least if you want to stay in line with a city-wide "Meatless Monday" effort just endorsed by the city council. Participation is voluntary, of course, but backers of the international movement say that going vegetarian at least one day a week is good for health and the environment. Los Angeles is the largest city in the nation to join the campaign. (NBC News)

Trouble with zippers: More than 16,000 adults each year show up in U.S. emergency rooms with genital injuries caused by products ranging from bicycles to zippers, a new study shows. Men suffer more of these mishaps than women, researchers say. (ABC News)

Poison mushrooms: Two elderly women have died and four other people have been hospitalized after eating poison mushrooms accidentally served in a soup at a California assisted living facility. California health officials are repeating warnings that it's not safe to eat mushrooms grown in the wild. (Associated Press)

STORY: Study examines infection, pregnancy, autism risk

STORY: Arthritis pain can turn up in surprising places

Today's talker: Can you eat your way to better body odor? The makers of a new edible deodorant suggest that you can -- and that eating rose-flavored Deo Perfume Candy will "leave your skin with a beautiful rose fragrance." But scientists are skeptical, ABC News reports. The whole popular idea that sweat smells like what you eat -- even if it's garlic or curry -- is untested, the experts say.

via USA TODAY

A soda ban, L.A.-style

For too many years, Los Angeles city schools were purveyors of empty-calorie, health-jeopardizing, sugary soda pop, sold to captive audiences of young students who were forming the eating and drinking habits they would take with them into adulthood. The Los Angeles Unified School District boldly and wisely banned sodas from school vending machines and cafeterias in 2002. But in an era in which people are experiencing increases in obesity and diabetes, the city continues to peddle sugar-loaded drinks to Angelenos via vending machines in libraries and parks. Now Councilman Mitchell Englander wants to end such sales. It's a good idea. The ban should move forward.

Englander's proposal is nothing like the clunky, nanny-state tactics of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is seeking to ban big cups of sugary drinks from his city's restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums and street carts. Unlike Bloomberg, Englander isn't trying to tell private companies what they can sell or private citizens how much they can buy, eat or drink. No one would be blocked from leaving the basketball court and crossing the street to the food truck to buy and guzzle 64 ounces and 700-something calories of carbonated sugar water, if that's what they really want to do. The point is that the city should be providing its people with healthier refreshment choices on site. It need not be in the junk-drink business. At a Tuesday hearing, vending machine operators complained, predictably, that a ban would cost them money and jobs. And to be sure, the city library and parks vending machine contracts are huge, and they supply drink companies with thousands of thirsty potential customers. But no one is suggesting tossing out the vending machines. They could and should be stocked with more wholesome options.

Others testified that too little fresh, clean — and free — water is available at city facilities. Drinking fountains used to be commonplace but are harder to find. Properly operated and maintained, they need not be public health hazards. Los Angeles, after all, owns and operates a water utility, and shouldn't we make its product more freely available to young (and middle-aged and old) athletes and readers? We should — and the council should make sure its study addresses how to make certain that city parks and libraries supply enough opportunities for a fresh drink of water even to those who don't want to stuff a dollar in a machine.

But we can have both free water and vending machines that dispense healthy beverages. The primary purpose of cities should not be to package their citizens and sell them to soda pop vendors. Public parks and libraries, like schools, should be refuges from the  sugar-smack frenzy of the commercial world.

Via: LA TIMES

Blacks in South L.A. have a bleaker jobs picture than in 1992

Median income in South Los Angeles is lower now than during the 1992 riots, and the unemployment rate has reached even more dire levels.

 

People line up at a job fair at the Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles last August. Yolanda White, center, was a former L.A. Unified teacher and had been looking for work for more than a year.

 

Two decades after the L.A. riots brought pledges of help to rebuild South Los Angeles, the area is worse off in many ways than it was in 1992.

Median income, when adjusted for inflation, is lower. Many middle-class blacks have fled in search of safer neighborhoods and better schools.

And the unemployment rate, which was bad at the time of the riots, has reached even more dire levels. In two areas of South Los Angeles — Florence Graham and Westmont — unemployment is almost 24%. Back in 1992, it was 21% in Florence Graham and 17% in Westmont.

Last summer, thousands of South Los Angeles residents showed up to a job fair that brought out almost 200 employers at Crenshaw Christian Center on Vermont Avenue. The event, organized by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), was seen by some as grandstanding.

"People were really skeptical," said Kokayi Kwa Jitahidi, a community organizer with the nonprofit Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. "People thought, 'Another job fair?'"

There have been training and other job programs — both privately and government-funded — in the roughly 51-square-mile area in the last two decades. A post-riots report said the area needed an investment of about $6 billion and the creation of 75,000 to 94,000 jobs.

The federal and state governments spent as much as $768 million, according to a 1994 estimate, but the main aim of Rebuild L.A. — the group leading the revitalization effort — was to steer the private sector to create jobs in the area.

Toyota, Pioneer Electronics and IBM were among the corporations that held seminars and classes.

The training center started by Toyota, in conjunction with the Los Angeles Urban League, was one of the few that succeeded in the decade after the riots. It's now closed, but it produced about 1,000 graduates trained in entry-level automotive skills.

Most of the private-sector programs, however, had little effect.

"There are many things the private sector does well, but investment in depressed areas is not often one of them," said Chris Tilly, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. "The nature of private-sector investors is to look where the payoff is. If you've got large swaths of the city where there are bad schools, poor people and crime, that's not where private investment will go."

During the 1970s and '80s, many South Los Angeles residents were able to make a middle-class living working in manufacturing and aerospace. But those jobs disappeared when those employers closed up shop, resulting in mass layoffs.

Labor activists and residents said that when jobs now become available in the area, they often don't pay living wages.

The situation "is worse today," said the Rev. Richard Byrd of Krst Unity Center of Afrakan Spiritual Science, near Western and Florence avenues. "From the standpoint of where we ought to be today, we've failed to make any progress."

At the time of the riots, South L.A. was almost 50% African American. Many with the means to leave have since moved to areas such as the Inland Empire and Lancaster and Palmdale in the Antelope Valley.

Now South Los Angeles is 30% African American, according to U.S. Census data, and black-owned businesses that once had a stronghold in the area have declined steadily.

Meanwhile, Latinos attracted by affordable housing have settled in the area and now make up about 64% of the population. Latino-owned businesses have cropped up along the main corridors. Mexican grocery stores are thriving. Immigrants flock to money-wiring outlets to send funds to relatives in Mexico and Central America. Spanish has become the language most commonly heard in the streets of South Los Angeles.

The demographic shift has made it even more difficult for African Americans to find good jobs, said Vernon M. Briggs Jr., a Cornell University labor economist who has studied the effect of immigration on blacks for more than three decades.

Latino immigrants, he said, tend to form tight-knit job networks. "What employers learn to do, if they find workers they're content with, they ask those workers to bring any relatives or friends and become more dependent on them."

Michael Richardson, assistant manager of We Build, a pre-apprenticeship construction training program run by the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that's been the case in South Los Angeles.

"We have to have that same mentality that we have to look out for each other," said Richardson, who is African American.

Other economists say that residents of South L.A. are also stigmatized simply because they live in the area, which still suffers from the perception that residents are not highly educated, even though progress in that area has been made.

It's unlikely that the area will see much improvement any time soon, UCLA's Tilly said.

What's lacking, he said, is "muscular public investment" in education. And, he said, the economic recovery needs to get stronger.

"Those folks are most likely to advance when there's strong economic growth and a strong public-sector investment," he said. "I don't want to say there's no hope, but I will say that aspect of the national political environment makes me pessimistic at the moment."

via: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/28/business/la-fi-black-unemployment-20120428

State convicts arrive in L.A. County with costly mental illnesses

Via latimes.com

Newly released state prisoners are arriving in Los Angeles and other counties with incomplete medical records and mental illnesses that have officials struggling to provide treatment.

As California begins shifting supervision of thousands of newly released state prisoners to local probation agencies, ex-convicts are arriving with incomplete medical records and more serious mental illnesses than anticipated. And mental health officials are scrambling to provide appropriate — and often costly — treatment.

"At the start, every day ... there was a crisis," said Dr. Marvin Southard, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. "There was somebody we didn't know what to do with."

In some cases, he said, released inmates have had to be immediately transferred to hospitals or residential centers for psychiatric care.

A new state law designed to reduce prison crowding and cut costs requires that certain nonviolent convicts serve their time in county lockups rather than state prisons. It also makes counties — rather than the state parole agency — responsible for supervising such inmates after their release.

The transition, called "realignment" by Gov. Jerry Brown, has raised well-publicized concerns among law enforcement officers across the state, as they try to accommodate more inmates in already crowded local jails. But realignment also presents less-visible challenges for local probation and mental health officials dealing with an influx of patients with drug and alcohol addictions, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

Mental illness and drug addiction are common in California prisons, where more than half of inmates report a recent mental health problem and two-thirds report having a drug abuse problem, according to a Rand Corp. study. Many don't receive the treatment they need while incarcerated and may skip care once released, said the study's author, Lois Davis.

"If you have individuals struggling with depression and anxiety ... they are going to have a much harder time linking to services," she said. "It limits their ability to find a job and reunite with their family, and they will be at greater risk for recidivism."

Roughly 3,300 people have been released to Los Angeles County so far. The probation department is expecting about 6,000 more. County mental health officials estimated that about 30% will require mental health services and about 60% will have drug addictions.

Continuing treatment after inmates are freed is essential to preventing them from relapsing, having mental breakdowns, ending up in hospitals or landing back behind bars, officials said.

"We took it very seriously from the start," said Reaver Bingham, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Probation Department. "We knew that if we didn't address those risk factors, people would revert to what they know, and that is committing criminal activity."

Realignment, which began Oct. 1, has been bumpy. Many released inmates came without comprehensive medical records. It was up to the patients to pass along information about their diagnoses and medications to probation and mental health staffers. When county workers requested mental health records from the state, they often were told to get the information from individual prisons.

Communication has improved, but getting complete medical and mental health records remains difficult, officials said. One complication: Prisoners can block the transfer of records.

"A lot of it depends on the inmates' attitude at the point of the release — do they want to be treated more or to be left alone?" said Don Kingdon, deputy director of the California Mental Health Directors Assn.

Kingdon stressed the importance of counties having complete information on prisoners before they are released to local supervision. "That can create a problem in the community if they release prisoners and they have mental health needs and you didn't know," he said.

California prison officials "made a whole lot of effort to make the [transition] be as smooth as possible," said Denny Sallade, deputy director of the state's Division of Correctional Health Care Services. But inmates may be in one mental state when they leave the prison and another when they arrive in the community, often because they stop taking their medication along the way, she noted.

The inmates also may turn down help once they arrive. In Los Angeles County, about 30% of the released state inmates seen by mental health staff refused to either meet with clinicians or be referred for treatment.

Bingham, of the probation department, said the state has tried to address problems. "If we can be successful in Los Angeles County, we can be successful in the rest of the state," he said.

But county officials are warning there may not be enough resources to accommodate former inmates in need of supervision. The state allocated $18 million to Los Angeles County to pay for mental health and substance abuse treatment and other social services. But the money isn't guaranteed to continue past June.

"Supervisor Mike Antonovich is very concerned about the inadequacy of realignment funding to effectively rehabilitate this population, which includes costly mental health services, housing and supervision," said his justice deputy, Anna Pembedjian. "It all boils down to resources."

Los Angeles, like most counties around the state, is already stretched thin after years of budget cuts and may not be equipped to close gaps in health and social services for the newly released inmates, said Davis, of Rand. To help defray some costs, counties across the state are working to enroll the eligible released prisoners in public programs such as Medi-Cal.

Counties are at the very early stages of understanding how to make realignment work, especially for those former inmates with mental illness, Davis said. "It is going to be a challenging time for the next couple years," she said.