Haiti in chaos after 7.0 quake

Devastation extends from the slums to the presidential palace. Aid groups fear a catastrophic death toll.

by Tracy Wilkinson

January 13, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

A mighty earthquake rocked the small, impoverished island nation of Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital, the presidential palace and other buildings, triggering massive panic and claiming an as-yet uncounted number of lives -- perhaps thousands.

Screams for help emanated from felled buildings, and chaos reigned. One diplomat called the quake a "catastrophe" in one of the countries least equipped to handle it.

As night fell on the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, reports emerged of extensive destruction; homes and buildings a shambles; trapped, seriously injured victims; and residents sleeping in streets.

Tsunami alerts were issued for Cuba, the Bahamas and much of the Caribbean, and numerous aftershocks were reported.

The quake, one of the most powerful ever in the region, measured a preliminary magnitude of 7.0. It was centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince and was shallow, just five miles deep. It struck about 4:53 p.m., hitting one of the city's most densely populated areas.

All of that augured vast damage and overwhelming casualties. Electricity in the capital was out Tuesday night, telephone communications were down, and the airport was closed.

"We are hearing of sheer devastation," said Caryl Stern, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, which has 100 workers in Haiti. UNICEF employees in Port-au-Prince reported seeing a school collapse with children inside.

"It's horrible," Stern said. "The worst earthquake in such a poor region. You are starting from behind the eight ball."

Photos emerging from Haiti showed buildings in rubble and houses tumbled down ravines. Thousands of people gathered in public squares late into the night, singing hymns, the Associated Press reported.

The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti, with a population of about 9 million, shares a border with the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. Some residents reportedly felt some shaking in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, but no serious damage was reported.

Already battered in recent years by storms, military coups and gang violence, much of Haiti is a hodgepodge of slums, shoddy construction and people living on the edge.

"I can hear very distressed people . . . a lot of distress, people wailing, trying to find loved ones trapped under the rubble," Ian Rodgers, with Save the Children in Port-au-Prince, told CNN by telephone Tuesday evening.

A spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services said the group's representative in Haiti, Karel Zelenka, described "total disaster and chaos" before the telephone line went dead. Zelenka told colleagues that the Haitian capital was covered with dust.

"He estimates there must be thousands of people dead," the spokeswoman, Sara Fajardo, said in an interview from the group's office in Maryland.

Fajardo said the group has stockpiles of food and other goods to serve 5,000 families, but aid workers worry that relief efforts could be hampered by poor road conditions and lack of security.

Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph, said in Washington that he spoke to officials in Port-au-Prince and that President Rene Preval was safe but his regal headquarters was badly damaged. He quoted a senior Haitian official as saying that "buildings were crumbling right and left" near the presidential palace.

"I think it is really a catastrophe of major proportions," Joseph said.

The United Nations, which maintains a peacekeeping force in Haiti first established in 2004, said its installations sustained serious damage. Its headquarters collapsed and troops were trying to find survivors amid the wreckage of the five-story building, Alain Le Roy, head of peacekeeping for the U.N, told reporters.

Earlier, Le Roy said in a statement: "For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for."

In Washington, President Obama pledged to help the crippled country. Other countries also announced plans to send assistance.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the disaster as catastrophic.

"The United States is offering our full assistance to Haiti and to others in the region," Clinton said from Honolulu. "We will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. And our prayers are with the people who have suffered, their families, and their loved ones."

Philip J. Crowley, the State Department's senior spokesman, said U.S. Embassy personnel have reported widespread damage, including collapsed buildings and walls, and bodies in the streets. The presidential palace, a graceful white French colonial structure visited by President Clinton in 1995, has sustained heavy damage, Crowley said.

U.S. officials plan to send teams to assess Haiti's needs, but they first need to determine whether airport runways are able to receive cargo planes carrying aid, Crowley said.

A spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, which oversees American military operations in the Caribbean and South America, said officials were assessing what assistance or aid might be needed.

"We are monitoring the situation and staying in close contact with the State Department," said Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for the command.

The Associated Press said its reporters saw a hospital collapse in the wealthy suburb of Petionville, which overlooks the capital.

"Within a minute of the quake . . . soil, dust and smoke rose up over the city, a blanket that completely covered the city and obscured it for about 12 minutes until the atmospheric conditions dissipated the dust," Mike Godfrey, who works as a contractor for USAID, told CNN from Port-au-Prince.

People communicating by social media such as Twitter said they felt the quake in Cap-Haitien, in the north, but there was little damage.

Former President Clinton, the U.N.'s special envoy for Haiti, issued a statement saying his office would do whatever it could to help. Sources said he was likely to be dispatched to the island as one of the Obama administration's first gestures.

Nan Buzard of the American Red Cross, who is mobilizing teams to travel to Haiti, said, "It is very grim."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-quake13-2010jan13,0,3747246,print.story

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The fight against full-body scanners at airports

'We don't need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes,' a lawmaker says. The TSA is adding machines to screen more passengers, much to the chagrin of privacy advocates.

by David G. Savage

January 13, 2010

Reporting from Washington

The government has promised more and better security at airports following the near-disaster on Christmas Day, but privacy advocates are not prepared to accept the use of full-body scanners as the routine screening system.

"We don't need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said last week. "I think it's a false argument to say we have to give up all of our personal privacy in order to have security."

After each major terrorism incident, the balance between privacy and security tilts in favor of greater security. But in the last decade, privacy advocates have been surprisingly successful in blocking or stalling government plans to search in more ways and in more places.

A conservative freshman in the House, Chaffetz won a large bipartisan majority last year for an amendment to oppose the government's use of body-image scanners as the primary screening system for air travelers. He was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the scanners were the equivalent of a "virtual strip search."

The pro-privacy stand does not follow the traditional ideological lines; Republicans and Democrats have joined together on the issue now and in the past.

Advocates of increased security are frustrated.

"Privacy and attacks on profiling have been the big hurdles" to developing a better security system for air travelers, said Stewart Baker, who was a top official in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.

Since 2001, privacy advocates have twice blocked moves to collect more personal data on passengers and to compile it in a computerized government system. Critics said mass databases would give the government too much information about ordinary Americans. And they said too many innocent people showed up on the watch lists.

At the same time, privacy concerns slowed the move to put more body-imaging scanners in airports. Currently, 19 airports have at least one scanner in use. Now, however, the specter of a man authorities say is a young Al Qaeda convert walking onto a transatlantic flight with a plastic explosive in his underwear has spurred the drive to put the full-body scanners in all the major airports.

The Transportation Security Administration had already announced plans to buy 300 devices, and is likely to purchase more.

The Senate did not adopt the Chaffetz amendment, so the TSA is free to press ahead with installing the body scanners.

"They significantly enhance security because they can detect metallic and nonmetallic items hidden under clothing," said Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman. "And on average, it takes 12 to 15 seconds."

He also suggested that privacy concerns were exaggerated. "It is 100% optional for all passengers," he said. "They can choose to be screened with a full-body pat-down."

Moreover, the screener who observes the passenger's body image is "in a remote location" and cannot see the individual's face, he said. And the body image itself "looks like a chalk etching of a passenger."

Chaffetz disputes that point. He said the body scanners give an explicit view of a naked person. "It is a whole-body image, and they can spin it 360 degrees. And they can zoom in and see something as small as a nickel or dime," he said. "But they can't spot something hidden in a body cavity. A good old-fashioned sniffing dog is more effective."

ACLU lawyers said air travelers should not have to face the prospect of exposing potentially embarrassing medical details, such as colostomy bags or mastectomy scars or their use of adult diapers.

"We continue to think the American people are being sold a bill of goods with these body scanners. Giving the government the authority to scrutinize your body is a tremendous invasion of privacy, and the benefits are questionable," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert in the ACLU's Washington office.

If the scanners become standard, "the terrorists will adapt to it," he added. "What will we do the next time if someone inserts an explosive in a body cavity and takes it out in the bathroom of the airplane? At some point, we need to draw the line on how much privacy we are willing to give up."

Despite their disagreements, the defenders of privacy and advocates of increased security agree that a better use of information should permit the government to focus its screening on the individuals who pose a threat.

"We clearly need to move faster to a point where we're looking for terrorists, not just weapons," said Baker, a Washington lawyer and formerly general counsel to the National Security Agency. "And the key to that is having more data and using it with more discretion in screening passengers. The current system condemns children and grandmothers to intrusive screening without any assurance it will catch sophisticated terrorists."

He blames Congress, business travelers and privacy advocates for stalling computerized data systems that could alert airport officials to passengers who pose some risk, so they could be given additional screening. Because of past rebuffs in Congress, the Department of Homeland Security "has been quite gun-shy about programs that could be called profiling or data-mining," he said.

Shortly after the Christmas Day incident, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called for making it easier to add travelers to a government watch list so they will get extra screening or be denied the right to fly.

President Obama and his top aides also said the government needed to focus more on "high-priority threats" and add names quickly to the no-fly list.

Chaffetz said he strongly supported extra screening -- including the use of a full-body scanner -- if a passenger's name appeared on any of the government watch lists.

"I favor secondary screening for all 550,000 persons in the government database. They should be required to go through a mandatory secondary screening," he said. "If there is some basis for doing a secondary screening, do it. But don't do it for every person. You don't have to screen the grandmother from Boise."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-terror-privacy13-2010jan13,0,2019115,print.story

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MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Mexican drug lord Teodoro Garcia Simental, known for his savagery, is captured

The crime boss 'El Teo,' who authorities say is responsible for massacres and beheadings, is quietly arrested in Baja California. Hundreds fled Tijuana to avoid being kidnapped.

by Richard Marosi and Ken Ellingwood

January 13, 2010

Reporting from San Diego and Mexico City

A Mexican drug cartel kingpin accused of dissolving victims in barrels of lye and waging a terror campaign that turned Tijuana into one of Mexico's most dangerous cities was captured early Tuesday in the port city of La Paz, federal authorities said.

Teodoro Garcia Simental, blamed for a years-long campaign of massacres, beheadings and kidnappings that chased away tourists and caused social upheaval in northern Baja California, was arrested by Mexican federal police without the suspect firing a shot, and immediately flown to Mexico City.

The heavyset Garcia, believed to be in his mid-30s, with close-trimmed hair and a goatee, scowled and dabbed at his mouth as he was paraded before television cameras at a police base wearing a zippered warm-up jacket.

Better known for savage killing rampages than narco-business acumen, the man nicknamed "El Teo" bedeviled Mexican authorities for years and narrowly escaped capture several times. Last January, authorities arrested the man they said admitted being Garcia's body disposal expert. Known as El Pozolero, or "the stew maker," he claimed, authorities said, to have dissolved 300 bodies in barrels of caustic chemicals.

Mexican federal authorities, acting on intelligence provided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said they tracked Garcia down after a five-month surveillance operation. He was captured in an upscale area in the southern part of the city.

"Today another Mexican cartel leader was taken off the street and is no longer able to carry out his bloody turf war," said Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the DEA. "This was not an isolated event: It exemplifies the growing effectiveness of our information sharing with [Mexican President Felipe Calderon's] administration, and our continued commitment to defeat the drug traffickers who have plagued both our nations."

Though Garcia was not considered to be in the top echelon of Mexican drug lords, few reputed crime bosses have had such a ruinous effect on a region. Mexican authorities say he was responsible for hundreds of killings during a nearly two-year power struggle with rivals in the Arellano Felix drug cartel, in which he had once been a top-ranking lieutenant.

Garcia is said to have branched out from traditional drug trafficking and focused his criminal empire on extortion and kidnapping, targeting all levels of society. During his reign, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Tijuana residents moved out of the border city to avoid being kidnapped, and more than 42 police officers were killed.

"It's a very good day for Tijuana," said former resident Gabriel Benavides, whose family moved to a San Diego suburb after a loved one was kidnapped by Garcia's crew in 2005. "He caused great pain to so many people."

The arrest was a dose of good news amid a spectacular surge in violence in drug-trafficking zones across Mexico. The country had already seen unprecedented bloodshed resulting from gang turf wars and the government's 3-year-old crackdown on organized crime.

In Tijuana, where more than 30 people have died this month, government officials hope that Garcia's arrest will bring some tranquillity. His main rival, Fernando Sanchez Arellano, could fill the power vacuum and impose order in the criminal underworld. But many observers warned that there could be fresh rounds of violence if one of Garcia's lieutenants makes a power play.

Garcia started as an errand boy for the Arellano Felix cartel and reputedly rose to power as the leader of a cell that turned kidnappings for ransom into a rich vein of revenue. Hundreds of residents -- attorneys, prominent businessmen, doctors -- were abducted and held at safe houses across the city.

When Sanchez Arellano, the cartel leader, tried to rein in his lieutenant, Garcia resisted and war broke out after a shootout between the rival gangs in April 2008 that left at least 13 people dead.

Much of Tijuana became a battleground and Garcia gained notoriety for ruthless and depraved tactics. Rivals were massacred, burned and tossed into vacant lots. Mutilated bodies were hung from freeway overpasses.

Last year, Mexican authorities started striking hard against Garcia, arresting several of his lieutenants in blows that choked off revenue and depleted his ranks of enforcers. Authorities last January came close to arresting Garcia at a resort south of Rosarito Beach where his gang was gathering for a party. He eluded capture by escaping down the beach that is popular with American retirees.

In recent months, the manhunt intensified and Garcia avoided going to Tijuana. Authorities had narrowed his whereabouts to southern Baja California and pinpointed his house through electronic surveillance of his telephone, according to a U.S. law enforcement official.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-arrest13-2010jan13,0,595704,print.story

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Judges approve Schwarzenegger's prison plan

A panel of three federal judges has approved a court-ordered plan submitted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce overcrowding in California prisons, under a decision released today.

Schwarzenegger has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn last year's decision by the federal judges presiding over a pair of lawsuits by inmates who said overcrowding violates their rights to adequate medical and mental healthcare.

In the meantime, the governor was required to submit a plan showing how, if the state loses, he would reduce the inmate population by up to 40,000 over two years. His first plan was rejected by the judges in October because it did not meet the required population targets or timeline.

[Corrected, 5 p.m.: A previous version of this post reported that the governor's first plan was rejected in November. ]

His second, submitted in November, told the judges how the state could achieve the population reduction. Schwarzenegger said the governor would work with lawmakers to approve measures they rejected last year, including home detention with satellite tracking devices for some inmates; permitting some felony offenders to serve time in county jails instead of state prisons; and reducing sentences for property crimes.

If lawmakers refuse to go along with the plan, the judges could waive state law and order the measures implemented, Schwarzenegger said. The governor's aides said they oppose such a solution, but would implement the orders if they lose their appeals.

The judges said they would postpone implementation of the plan pending resolution of the state's appeal.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Study: Legalizing undocumented adult Latinos would be boon to state's economy

California could reap an economic boon worth $16 billion by legalizing its 1.8 million undocumented adult Latino immigrants, according to a USC study released today.

The economic benefits would come as newly legalized immigrants earned higher wages, spent more consumer dollars, paid more taxes and helped create jobs, according to the study by the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.

“People keep using our economic condition as an excuse to not do comprehensive immigration reform,” said Manuel Pastor, one of the study's authors. “It's just the opposite: What we need to do to right our economy and move forward is create a path to legalization.”

But Steven Camarota of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies said that legalization would also cost taxpayers. He said the majority of illegal immigrants already pay taxes, but legalization would make them eligible for scores of public services, including welfare, unemployment insurance and non-emergency healthcare.

“Whatever the drain is now, it just gets bigger with legalization,” he said.

The USC study did not examine the added costs in services to the state.

Angelica Salas of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles said activists plan to hold town halls, identify and register pro-reform voters, and visit all 53 congressional representatives and two senators in the next few months.

The California effort is part of a 50-state campaign to amass enough congressional votes for reform legislation by May 1.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/california-could-reap-an-economic-boon-worth-16-billion-by-legalizing-its-18-million-unauthorized-latino-adult-immigrant.html#more

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OPINION

'If you've got a trade, you've got it made'

Forcing all high school students onto a college-prep track is not only wrong, it's dumb.

by Mike Rustigan

January 13, 2010

One repeated theme in President Obama's education agenda is that he wants the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. As he put it in an address to a joint session of Congress, "We expect all our children not only to graduate from high school but to graduate from college and get a good-paying job."

Although I applaud the president's strong commitment to higher education, he is seriously neglecting the importance of vocational training in school. Not every student needs to go to college. There are plenty of high school kids who find college-prep classes boring and irrelevant. Many drop out because they feel school is not preparing them for anything practical. Most of these kids are not lazy or defiant; they just want to work with their hands, learn a skill and pursue a solid, honorable, blue-collar trade after high school.

For too long, academic elites and politicians -- both Democrats and Republicans -- have oversold us on the necessity of getting a college degree. We have reached the point at which it has become almost un-American to admit that for a sizable number of our young people, college is a waste of time.

According to a growing number of demographers and labor experts, the U.S. soon will be experiencing a severe shortage of skilled workers. Blue-collar baby boomers are retiring, but schools aren't preparing the next generation to take their place. Our nation needs blue- collar workers -- skilled mechanics, machinists, welders, carpenters and electricians, as well as computer, solar and cable technicians, etc. -- just as much as it needs college grads.

As one retired plumber told me: "No one is going to outsource your local repair guy. If you've got a trade, you've got it made."

Most European countries offer a strong two-track system -- one for the trades and one for the university -- whereas the majority of our high school graduates have no employable skills whatsoever. Of course kids should be encouraged to consider college and achieve academically, and they shouldn't be pushed into a noncollege track against their will. But we are currently ignoring an important cadre of students who need something different.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who benefited from vocational education growing up in Austria, has repeatedly sought federal funding for similar training programs. But he is swimming against the tide. In high schools across the nation, vocational programs have declined in number and quality.

Back when California had perhaps the best public education system in the nation, career and technical classes were considered necessary and respectable. The leading educators of the 1960s and the 1970s had a good understanding that there are multiple paths to success. The recent decline in vocational education flies in the face of the growing demand for both male and female high school graduates skilled in the fields of health, electronics, automotive, home improvement, wood and metalwork, culinary, green energy jobs and a vast number of technical support and repair services.

To be sure, basic reading, writing and math proficiency is necessary for all graduates. But for the state of California to expect every high school student to meet university admission requirements is not only foolish, it is tyrannical.

Much has been written about the lack of discipline in kids who skip classes and eventually drop out. As the cynics keep telling us, nothing can be done with these lazy, low-achieving slackers because the root causes are broken homes and lousy parenting.

Yet, in my experience, when you offer these same kids the right form of education, they flourish. The magic of learning something that is useful and relevant sparks a strong desire to achieve. The transformative power of education is convincing. Right now there are hundreds of new, experimental, small-scale shop programs throughout the nation that are showing very promising signs of success.

Obama needs to visit these pioneer programs. His heart is in the right place, but he should be pitching vocational education just as vigorously as he extols a college degree. I'm betting we would then start to see fewer dropouts and more young adults with a chance to become productive members of society.

Mike Rustigan, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at San Jose State University, teaches classes to police and probation officers throughout California.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rustigan13-2010jan13,0,77295,print.story

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From the Daily News

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ACLU is suing Lancaster youth probation camp

In one case, a young man who spent most of his teen years in Los Angeles County probation camps was awarded a high school diploma - despite the fact he couldn't read or write.

In another, teachers and administrators at Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster told students to leave classrooms to paint buildings and pull weeds - and then billed the state for instructional days as though the students were in class.

These and other allegations are outlined in a class-action lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and other legal groups filed Tuesday against the Probation Department and county Office of Education. The lawsuit alleges the practices at Challenger are among the "most egregious failures to deliver education and rehabilitative services to incarcerated youth ever documented in the nation."

"We have been investigating what goes on at Challenger for months now," said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel at the ACLU. "A 2009 county Probation Commission report said the education system is broken. We found even more conscience-shocking practices that would make Dickens shudder."

Among other things, the lawsuit seeks to force the county to provide intensive reading and writing services to illiterate youth, and giving children a chance to challenge being removed from a class.

Margo Minecki, spokeswoman for the county Office of Education, said her office takes any allegations about its educational programs seriously and will address any substantive issues that need to be resolved.

"Young offenders at Challenger enter our school at various points in their high school career with serious gaps in their education and poor academic skills," Minecki said.

"About 40 percent of students are functionally illiterate when they enter the system, and at least one-third have learning and other disabilities that may have been previously undiagnosed."

In the lawsuit, the ACLU, Public Counsel and the Disability Rights Legal Center alleged county officials deprived youths in the county's largest juvenile probation camp of the legally mandated rehabilitative program that should prepare them to re-enter society.

The suit charges that county personnel - including administrators and teachers - have in some instances thrown worksheets under the door of students' cells in lieu of classroom instruction, denied education services when children ask for help or to use the restroom, and systematically denied students access to appropriate instruction and the required minimum school day.

Challenger, which consists of six camps and a school that serves about 650 students, has been the target of a Department of Justice investigation into alleged mistreatment and poor supervision of students, and was cited as having a "broken" school system in a 2009 Probation Commission report.

Rosenbaum said Challenger is producing youths who are functionally illiterate, unable to fill out job applications or medical forms, read menus or newspapers or vote in elections.

"This is a system out of control, with no accountability and no concern for the children under its charge," Rosenbaum said.

Laura Faer, director of the Children's Rights Project at the Public Counsel Law Center, said the students at Challenger are legally entitled to an education.

"What they get instead is abuse, retaliation and needless punishment," Faer said.

"These actions are the hallmarks of an institution that consigns children to a life in the criminal justice system, which is exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to do.

"This is the moral equivalent of placing a child in handcuffs and throwing away the key."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14175878

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Budget proposal 'disaster' for the poor

The governor's proposed state budget could mean a record loss of nearly $4 billion for Los Angeles County, putting hundreds of thousands of needy residents at risk of losing welfare checks, in-home care, health care and other services, officials said Tuesday.

"It's very stressful for us when we hear the state budget has a $20 billion shortfall," said Gloria Molina, who chairs the Board of Supervisors. "We know there is going to be an awful lot of cuts made for many of our services... That is terrifying to all of us."

Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget, Molina said, nearly 400,000 county welfare recipients could lose $1 billion in benefits.

The Department of Public Social Services, which administers the CalWORKS welfare program, could lose an additional $577 million that pays for administrative, child care and other services to low-income people.

Molina said fewer people would qualify for health benefits under Schwarzenegger's proposal to cut $254 million in state Medi-Cal funds. Furthermore, 185,000 seniors, disabled and blind residents could lose in-home care services under the proposal to eliminate the $2 billion In-Home Supportive Services program in the county.

Altogether, the county stands to lose nearly $2 billion in state revenues - or 9 percent of the county's $23.6 billion budget. That doesn't include the $2 billion in IHSS funding the state pays 135,000 workers to provide in-home care services to county residents, Department of Public Social Services Director Phillip Browning said.

In comparison, the county lost $426 million in state revenues over the last two years of budget cuts and recently loaned $360 million in property tax revenues to the state.

"This would be a disaster for poor people in the county and throughout the state," said Neal Dudovitz, director of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, which has offices in Pacoima and Glendale. "The kind of cuts he's suggesting, even if there is some additional federal money, is going to cause enormous harm to families living in poverty in the county."

Instead of raising taxes further or cutting the benefits of poor people, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said the state should trim its bloated, highly paid work force.

From 1997 to 2007, the number of state workers grew 24 percent from 719,000 to nearly 900,000. In 2003, only eight state employees earned more than $200,000 a year. Last year, nearly 1,000 state employees earned more than $200,000 annually.

"When the governor was first elected, he had a group of 250 top people review the state budget and they came up with a 2,500-page, $34 billion way of saving money at the state," Antonovich said. "And they promptly took that proposal and they put it in the trash can. We didn't follow through with any of those structural reforms, and as a result we are now facing a $20 billion deficit affecting every city, county and school in this state."

If Schwarzenegger's budget was ultimately approved by the Legislature, officials say the cuts would dwarf the ones during the county's last serious fiscal crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time, the county had a more than $650 million shortfall but avoided bankruptcy through an infusion of federal funds, layoffs and cuts in services.

But despite Schwarzenegger's "doomsday scenario budget," budget experts note the governor made similar proposals last year, but those were blocked by legal challenges and state lawmakers. And even under the governor's proposal, the plan to eliminate CalWORKS, IHSS and Healthy Families would only occur if the federal government refuses to provide the state with the $6.9 billion the governor has requested.

"These cuts would be very deep and profoundly difficult reductions to make, which is why the governor is putting such a premium on going back to Washington and working with legislative leaders in a bipartisan manner of securing the federal funding that we need and are owed," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Department of Finance.

Last week, the governor proposed to close the $19.9 billion budget gap with $8.5 billion in cuts in health and social services and $4.5 billion in alternative funding and fund shifts.

In response, county CEO Bill Fujioka said he has asked departments to prepare to make up to 9 percent cuts in the fiscal year that begins July 1. That's on top of 5 percent in cuts last year and 3 percent in cuts the year before.

Even under the best case scenarios proposed by the governor, Browning said 160,000 seniors, disabled and blind people would lose in-home care services and a family of three would see their CalWORKS checks reduced from $694 to $585 a month. More than 400,000 parents and children in the county receive CalWORKS benefits.

"It would be much more difficult for them to find a place to live," Browning said.

Frank Mastrolonardo, director of the San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission in North Hollywood, said he already has to turn away about 20 homeless families a day from the shelter. About 8,000 people are homeless in the Valley.

"If this actually happened, it would overwhelming," Mastrolonardo said. "If this happened, you'd have more homeless people and your crime rate would escalate. In the long run, the county and state would spend a lot more money trying to mitigate the problems this would create."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14175894

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Government says bird-plane collisions may surpass 10,000

Reports of airplanes hitting birds and other wildlife surged last year, including serious incidents in which birds crashed through cockpits and crippled engines in flight, according to an Associated Press analysis of new government data.

"Birds and planes are fighting for airspace, and it's getting increasingly crowded," said Richard Dolbeer, an expert on bird-plane collisions who is advising the Federal Aviation Administration and the Agriculture Department.

The government's tally for all bird strikes last year could reach or even exceed 10,000 for the first time - which would represent about 27 strikes every day. There were at least 57 cases in the first seven months of 2009 that caused serious damage and three in which planes and a corporate helicopter were destroyed by birds. At least eight people died, and six more were hurt.

Los Angeles International Airport reported 33 incidents through July 2009, with planes striking one coyote, along with pigeons, meadowlarks, gulls, hawks and several other types of birds, according to the FAA.

There was significant damage reported on June 7, when a a black-crowned night heron flew into the engine of Boeing 747-400 operated by Polar Air Cargo, officials said. Little or no damage resulted from the other incidents.

Long Beach Airport reported 24 wildlife strikes, Torrance Municipal Airport reported one bird strike, Burbank's Bob Hope Airport reported 16 bird strikes and John Wayne Airport in Orange County reported eight bird strikes, according to the FAA. No serious damage or injuries were reported.

Nationally, the destroyed planes include the Airbus A320 that, with 155 passengers and crew, went into the Hudson a year ago this week after hitting a flock of Canada geese. No lives were lost in that dramatic river landing.

But when a Sikorsky helicopter crashed en route to an oil platform last January after hitting a red-tailed hawk near Morgan City, La., the two pilots and six of seven passengers were killed. The lone survivor was critically injured.

Why the increase in bird-strike reports?

Airports and airlines have become more diligent about reporting, said Mike Beiger, national coordinator for the airport wildlife hazards program at the Agriculture Department. Experts also blame increasing populations of large birds like Canada geese that can knock out engines on passenger jets.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14175560

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Nigerian Anger at the U.S. Grows

After Failed Bomb Attempt, Inclusion on Air-Travel Watch List Spurs an Oil Backlash

ABUJA, Nigeria -- The alleged attempt by a Nigerian man to detonate a bomb on a U.S.-bound flight has frayed Nigeria's diplomatic ties with its No. 1 buyer of oil: the U.S.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe said the country doesn't want to alienate its "traditional partners," but when the U.S. Transportation Security Administration recently included Nigeria among 14 countries of interest -- an effective security watch list -- officials and politicians in the West African nation were incensed.

"The goodwill America enjoys here is tremendous," Mr. Maduekwe said in an interview. "Was there no way of dealing with security concerns without putting that goodwill in jeopardy?"

The move, which followed Nigerian Umar Farouk Adulmutallab's alleged attempt to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day, means that Nigerians traveling to the U.S. will face increased security screenings upon arrival. Mr. Abdulmutallab has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Nigeria is the fifth-largest exporter of oil to the U.S. But Nigerian officials lately have said Washington's moves risk pushing the West African nation closer to China and Iran.

The diplomatic sparks have added to tensions in Nigeria, where there is an active antigovernment militancy and mounting dissatisfaction with the long absence of an ill president. On Tuesday, hundreds of Nigerians protested President Umaru Yar'Adua's prolonged convalescence in Saudi Arabia for a heart condition.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute met with Mr. Maduekwe and several other Nigerian officials. The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and the State Department in Washington declined to comment on the meetings and possible frictions between the two countries.

"I think people are making more of it than it is," one Western diplomatic official said. "It's just people posturing."

China, Iran and India have been courting oil and infrastructure deals with Nigeria.

China has expressed interest in a number of oil assets controlled by Western companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., just as the Western companies are considering scaling down their Nigeria operations due to militant violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

On Tuesday, four expatriate oil workers contracted by Royal Dutch Shell PLC were kidnapped while driving to work by unknown attackers in Port Harcourt, the largest city in the Niger Delta. A pipeline operated by Chevron was attacked last week, forcing the company to cut oil production by 20,000 barrels a day.

Meanwhile, China's biggest energy companies are eager to tap the country. China National Petroleum Corp. is a possible buyer of several assets, officials say. Iran and Nigeria signed an agreement in 2008 to share nuclear technology for power generation.

Taminu Yakubu, President Yar'Adua's economic adviser, played down the potential damage to business due to diplomatic trouble. But he added: "It is not good to put unnecessary pressure on a friend who has always cooperated, been helpful and helped America with international responsibility."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126329461733325975.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews#printMode

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Justices Hear Sex-Offender Case

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court seemed likely to permit the federal government to keep "sexually dangerous" prisoners in custody past the completion of their sentences, after hearing arguments Tuesday that only states hold such power.

More than 20 states have laws permitting "civil commitment" of prisoners deemed sexually violent or otherwise mentally ill after they have served sentences for specific crimes. In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which authorizes the Justice Department to similarly hold federal prisoners who are nearing release or were found mentally incompetent for trial.

At arguments Tuesday, Solicitor General Elena Kagan told the court that federal prison officials found about 15,000 inmates with histories of sexual violence or child molestation, but only 105 who were determined to have a mental illness making it "reasonably likely" they would commit such offenses in the future.

One of those prisoners was Graydon Comstock, who in November 2006, six days before completing a 37-month federal sentence for possession of child pornography, was certified as sexually dangerous and denied release. He and several other such prisoners sued, claiming that Congress assumed powers only states can exercise.

The issue has divided trial courts, but the first federal appeals court to consider the question, the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., sided with the inmates and ruled the law unconstitutional.

States hold general police powers over public health and safety, and Congress has certain powers denied to states, such as declaring war. But federal criminal law can relate only to specific powers of the federal government. There is no general federal murder statute, for example, but there are laws against killing a federal officer.

Because the sex crimes that federal prisoners were considered likely to commit in the future fall under state rather than federal law, the appeals court found that Congress lacked authority to detain the inmates.

But during Supreme Court arguments Tuesday, only Justice Antonin Scalia seemed convinced that Congress had overstepped its bounds.

"There is no constitutional power on the part of the federal government to protect society from sexual predators," he told Ms. Kagan. "Once the federal custody is at an end, it seems to me that's the only power you could be relying upon."

Ms. Kagan said that the power to confine such prisoners was implicit in the government's duty "to run a responsible criminal justice system." The law aims "to make sure that sexually dangerous, mentally ill people don't fall through the cracks between federal custody and the re-establishment of state control," she said.

Justice Samuel Alito, a former U.S. attorney, seemed sympathetic to the government's position. He suggested that when people go to federal prison, they become the federal government's problem and Congress could act to protect the public.

The prisoners' lawyer, Alan DuBois, said the federal government could punish people for federal crimes committed, not protect the public from potential state crimes in the future.

With the prisoners' sentences complete, "the government has no live federal interest," said Mr. DuBois, a federal public defender from Raleigh, N.C. "They have fully vindicated the criminal law that brought them into the prisons."

A decision is expected before July.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126332921615526621.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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OPINION

What Our Spies Can Learn From Toyota

We have 16 separate intelligence agencies. No wonder people aren't connecting the dots.

Until recently, the United States had become complacent about terrorism. The general view was that al Qaeda was on the run and Islamic terrorism was a receding threat. We now know better.

A string of attacks by Islamic terrorists—an officer murdering his fellow soldiers at a U.S. army base, a passenger's attempted bombing on a Detroit-bound airplane, and a double agent's suicide bombing a CIA base in Afghanistan—reveals the continuing and growing danger of Islamic terrorism. Hostility to the U.S. appears to be increasing among Muslim populations, and, with it, the number of potential terrorists. It is alarming that none of the three attackers—an American, a Nigerian and a Jordanian—was from one of the traditional hotbeds of terrorism.

Real reform of complex institutions is always hard, but it is possible. Consider a storied, historic, indeed iconic American institution that had developed an internal structure so convoluted that information did not flow through it—fiefdoms abounded, and duplication and delays were the rule. After many failed efforts at reform, only the threat and actuality of bankruptcy forced this institution to slim down, streamline and focus.

We are referring, of course, to the U.S. auto industry. The domestic automakers' organizational structures were notoriously complex and top-heavy. While Toyota had been selling the same car worldwide, Ford had insisted that American consumers would not buy the cars successfully produced by Ford for sale in Europe. As a result, every stage of production from R&D to actual manufacturing was duplicated in the two markets.

When General Motors dealers in Florida tried to stop GM from promoting its SUVs in the state's 70-degree Christmas season with ads bragging about the vehicles' performance in snow, they found no way to get their message across. GM had 325,000 employees, yet was run as a matrix with overlapping functional and geographic management structures. As Rick Wagoner, its ousted CEO, had confessed: "People really have trouble because they want to know who's in charge," he said, "and the answer is going to be, increasingly: It depends."

The national intelligence apparatus of the U.S. has fewer employees than GM had in its prime, yet it consists officially of 16 separate agencies, and unofficially of more than 20. Each of these agencies is protected by strong political and bureaucratic constituencies, so that after each intelligence failure everything continues pretty much the same and usually with the same people in charge.

Five and a half years after the report of the 9/11 Commission identified the cascade of intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attackers to achieve total surprise, the problems it highlighted persist: We learn of multiple, separate and unshared terrorist lists; of multiple agencies (State Department, CIA and the National Counterterrorism Center) unable to combine the tips they receive; of arbitrary rules, such as requiring proof of "reasonable suspicion," rather than mere suspicion, to deny a visa to a foreigner; and of terrorists released from American custody to become leaders of al Qaeda abroad. There is the sense that nobody is in charge.

The government's response to the attempted airline bombing—the most recent failure—has been to blame every agency that had some information that if pooled would have alerted the airport authorities to the menace of Abdulmutallab. To blame all is to blame none.

We have an unwieldy multiplicity of agencies that operate largely independently. Dysfunctional bureaucratic incentives decree that an attack involving a repetition of a known terrorist procedure is the most damaging politically, so shoes are scanned because a shoe was used in an attempted airplane bombing. Now underwear will be scanned as well. The government seems always to be playing catch-up to the terrorists.

We can fix this. As with the auto industry, the moment of crisis is the right moment to tackle in-depth reform of the intelligence services. One possibility that deserves serious consideration would be a consolidation of most existing agencies into four primary agencies: a foreign intelligence agency, a military intelligence agency, a domestic intelligence agency, and a technical data collection agency (satellite mapping, electronic interception, etc.).

This structure would mimic the United Kingdom's MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service), Defence Intelligence Agency, MI5 (the Security Service), and GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters). In a streamlined system, the Director of National Intelligence would be a coordinator, rather than combining the role of a coordinator with that of the president's senior substantive intelligence officer. (As if the CEO of Boeing also designed the companies planes).

The members of our intelligence community will protest that simplifying the structure of the intelligence community is impossible—echoing the protests of auto workers, until bankruptcy forced their hand. The national intelligence system is similarly bankrupt: More than eight years after the 9/11 attacks, there is no excuse for such egregious failures. The time to act is now.

Mr. Garicano is a professor of management and economics at the London School of Economics. Mr. Posner, a federal circuit judge and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, is the author of "A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent Into Depression" (Harvard, 2009).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654261998633746.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion#printMode

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OPINION

Taxing Details That Harm Patients

A new levy on Medicare Advantage plans would hurt lower-income seniors the most.

While rushing to save a patient, a physician's first responsibility is to "do no harm." That requires remembering that sometimes a treatment can make things worse. And so it should be with the health-care reform moving through Congress. Clearly this issue is too big and too important to ignore. For America's sake, reform needs to happen. But it's also too complex an issue to rush a treatment with details that might cause harm.

Most of us agree that America's health-care system needs to be fixed. Families and businesses are struggling to keep pace with soaring costs. Too many Americans are without adequate coverage. And all of this is damaging our economy. But it will do no good to reform the system if it ends up degrading the quality of care most of us currently receive or saddling future generations of Americans with unconscionable debt.

As always, the devil is in the details, and we'd better be paying very close attention to their rich potential for unintended consequences. For example, one provision in the Senate's version of health-care reform would impose a new tax on a number of federally-funded health-care benefits.

In effect, the federal government would be taxing the money it provides for Medicare and a host of other important programs. By so doing, it would unintentionally jeopardize the quality of care that many of our oldest, sickest and most vulnerable citizens depend on.

Large private-sector health plans offering a diverse line of products would likely recover the cost of the tax by raising premiums on their other products.

But for those health plans specializing in Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs, there would be no such option. These providers are strictly bound by federal contracts and frequently operate at or near cost, serving America's older, higher-risk and higher-cost patient populations. Since they have no profits with which to absorb the tax or any ability to pass it on, they'll have only one option—to reduce the health-care services they provide. Certainly this isn't what the Senate intends.

Nonetheless, some 10.2 million Americans who now choose to purchase Medicare Advantage through private providers because it gives them better benefits at lower cost may be hurt. These are frequently lower-income elderly people with a multitude of serious health problems. The services they receive allow many of them to remain in their homes close to friends and family during their final years, rather than be moved into nursing homes where their care would be far more expensive and their days much emptier. They would be among the victims of this new federal tax.

What kind of Americans are we talking about? Here are a few real examples: An 89-year-old woman who lives alone recovering from a mastectomy, who has osteoarthritis, glaucoma and degenerative joint disease. An 81-year-old gentleman living in his daughter's home who has bone, liver and bladder cancer. An elderly couple where the wife has trouble walking because of arthritis, while the husband suffers from Alzheimer's requiring 24-hour care. These are the kind of people health-care reform should be helping, not hurting. Extending benefits to some Americans by cutting care for others isn't reform—it's unfair.

Fixing our nation's health-care system is a historic undertaking. As Congress works toward a solution, I encourage my former colleagues to pay very close attention to the details and be mindful of the unintended consequences of what they do today, because the impact of their decisions will be with us for generations. A treatment that leaves the system in worse shape isn't a cure.

Mr. Dole, a former Senate majority leader, was the 1996 Republican nominee for president. He is a founding advisory board member of the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center, which is working for principled compromise on health care and other issues. His firm, Alston & Bird, represents a range of health-care organizations.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654342147408888.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion#printMode

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From Fox News

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Mexico Opens New Year With 69 Drug Murders in One Day

Tuesday , January 12, 2010

MEXICO CITY — 

Mexico opened the new year with what could be its most dubious distinction yet in the 3-year-old battle against drug trafficking — 69 murders in one day.

The country resembled a grim, statistical dart board Saturday as law enforcement and media reported the deaths from various regions, including 26 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, 13 in and around Mexico City and 10 in the northern city of Chihuahua.

More than 6,500 drug-related killings made 2009 the bloodiest year since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in late 2006 and deployed 45,000 soldiers to fight organized crime, according to death tallies by San Diego's Trans-Border Institute.

Two weeks into 2010, gang bloodshed is becoming more grotesque as drug lords ramp up their attempts at intimidation. Last week a victim's face was peeled from his skull and sewn onto a soccer ball. On Monday, prosecutors in Culiacan identified the remains of 41-year-old former police officer divided into two separate ice chests.

"You wonder how this will end, and it seems impossible," said Daniel Vega, an architect in the northern city of Monterrey. "I doubt Mexico can override drug use, especially since demand for the drugs, as well as all the money and weapons, come from the United States."

Using their so-called Narcobarometer, researchers at the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute track and analyze murders in Mexico, hoping to find ways to quell the violence. Their tally? More than 20,000 murders since 2001, more than half in the past two years.

"It does appear that the violence has grown exponentially, but it's not clear that it's necessarily a slippery downward slope from here," institute director David Shirk said, noting that government operations — including a December raid that killed cartel boss Arturo Beltran Leyva — have hit seven of Mexico's eight significant cartels.

Shirk said the remaining, mostly unscathed Sinaloa cartel headed by billionaire gang boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman may now become dominant, reducing the deadly power struggles.

"If that happens, it's quite possible that six months from now things will be much calmer," Shirk said.

Though almost all of drug-violence victims are somehow involved with cartels, the impact is felt well beyond law enforcement and organized crime.

"I'm afraid to take to the streets every day because of the violence, and I no longer want to excel economically because it could make me an easy target for a kidnapping," said Silvana Cervantes, a Monterrey nurse.

Tijuana resident Fernando Escobedo said he used to spend his evenings at a vibrant strip of clubs in the border city until a recent massacre at one of his hangouts.

"Now I prefer socializing at houses or parties, with family or lifetime friends," he said.

As Mexico tries to develop both politically and economically, the killings jeopardize its international reputation, said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington.

"The figures in Mexico are so scary that it has produced a subliminal sense that Mexico is a dangerous place and you'd better keep away," he said.

Calderon said last week he would shift focus to job creation and reducing poverty and move the fight against drug cartels that dominated the first half of his presidency to No. 3.

Monterrey police officer Delfino Ramos, who grapples with the violence in his daily work, said economic issues are at the root of the problems.

"So much unemployment pushes people toward crime," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,582855,00.html

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Missouri White Supremacist Convicted on Weapons Charges

Tuesday , January 12, 2010

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — 

A former Eagle Scout and U.S. Air Force Academy cadet was convicted Tuesday on federal weapons charges after being caught up in an undercover sweep of white supremacists who claimed they used his 200-acre Ozarks spread for survival training.

Robert N. Joos Jr., 57, was arrested at his home in rural McDonald County in June, when brothers Daniel and Dennis Mahon were taken into custody in Illinois and charged in a 2004 mail bombing that injured a black city official in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Joos was not charged in the bombing, but the Mahons told investigators members of the "movement" used Joos' isolated home for training. They described Joos as a "longtime white supremacist associate and an expert on weapons, explosives, bomb making and general survival skills."

Joos has acknowledged in the past giving survivalist tips but said they involved identifying plants that could be use for food or medicine. He testified Tuesday that he "is not a terrorist" and "absolutely not" a white supremacist.

"I don't condone any of that crap," he testified.

In an interview with the Associated Press before his trial, however, he said he believes in keeping the races separate.

Joos did not react when the verdict was read about a half hour after the jury left to deliberate. His lawyer, Darryl Johnson, said Joos would appeal.

Johnson had advised Joos not to testify and said after the trial that he felt Joos' testimony hurt his case because of its "vagueness" and "because he changed his mind when I asked him direct questions."

Jim Kelleher, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said after the verdict that he could not comment.

Joos faces up to 10 years in prison on each of charge of being a felon in possession of firearms and a felon in possession of explosives. Sentencing has not yet been set.

The government's case stemmed from three recent visits undercover agents made to the property outside Pineville where Joos has lived for more than 20 years. During those visits, undercover agents said they saw weapons and ammunition and Joos told them he had "rifles loaded with armor piercing ammunition" and caves for storing food, weapons and ammunition "to avoid capture or attack by the government or other adversaries," according to an affidavit filed after his arrest.

During the trial, Kelleher repeatedly referred to the 19,000 rounds of ammunition confiscated from Joos' home.

"That's the amount of ammunition Bass Pro might have here in their showroom," he said, referring to the outdoor outfitter.

Several rifles, shotguns and handguns taken from the property were also submitted as evidence.

Joos testified he didn't know who owned the weapons and ammunition and ticked off the names of several people who had access to the rooms where they were found.

He described himself as a "Christian Isrealite" and said he's been a pastor in a small branch of a church called the Sacerdotal Order of the David, which has a handful of followers. A wiry man with graying hair and beard that falls past his chest, Joos said the government has been after him since he started studying for the ministry.

But Kelleher accused Joos of using the church as a cover and characterized him as a weapons expert, who learned a great deal while studying for two and a half years at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Joos left the academy in January 1974 after refusing to retake a test he failed.

Before the Air Force Academy, Joos attended Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School in suburban St. Louis, where he graduated third in his class in 1971 and was a highly decorated Eagle Scout, according to his testimony.

"He probably has a higher IQ than all the attorneys in here," Johnson said after the trial. "He had a lot of potential."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,582886,00.html

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Mapping an Emergency

Making communications among first responders interoperable

Natural disasters rarely color inside the lines. Like a toddler with his first box of crayons, they leave a mess all over the map—spilling across federal, state, and local lines. To clean up, different agencies and jurisdictions must come together and share what they know. But far too often, critical information goes unseen by those who need it most: our  emergency responders .

In the past, there were incidents where deficiencies in communication caused problems for the emergency response community. In one case, while the National Guard was dispatching hundreds of trucks to a hurricane-ravaged area in the Southeast, drivers were unaware of a key road closure. In another instance, a neighboring state did not receive notification that planned evacuation routes were jammed with fleeing motorists. And at times, responders hurrying to aid residents outside their jurisdictions had limited information on what local resources were available.

Even though many authorities track incident management data, these records typically are walled off from one another by incompatible computer systems, proprietary technological platforms, or simply a culture of reluctance to share information.

Recognizing this urgent predicament, the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is working on a solution. Led by Dr. David Boyd, director of the  Command, Control, and Interoperability Division  (CCI), and patterned after the state of Alabama's Virtual Alabama program, the project has been dubbed “ Virtual USA ” (vUSA). Its goal: to create a nationwide capability to share and standardize life-saving emergency data in real time.

A collaboration among CCI, first responders, and state governments, vUSA provides a 3-D platform of interactive maps that displays the location and status of critical assets—helicopter landing sites, evacuation routes, shelters, gas supplies, water lines, power grids, and everything in between. Whether you're a county firefighter on the scene, a state-based EMT en route, or a federal FEMA official at your desk, the system equips responders at all levels with the same richly detailed data.

This coordination makes information sharing more comprehensive and decision making more informed, which is why vUSA was included in the recently announced White House Open Government Initiative, which emphasizes transparency, participation, and collaboration.

But one of vUSA's most exciting attributes is platform agnosticism—the ability to integrate disparate data sources seamlessly (as long as the sources use the same standards). To a layman, this might not sound like a big deal. But to a first responder, who must contend with Alabama's preference for Google Earth, Virginia's need for ArcGIS, and X's comfort with Y, interoperability constitutes a revolution.

Most importantly, the price is right. Typically, when an IT department is told it needs a new software system, what it hears is a request for a large amount of money. But whereas proprietary systems can fetch up to $5 million, the enterprise license—in perpetuity—for Google Earth costs about $150,000, which makes vUSA a relative bargain.

Since February, Virtual USA has been operating as a pilot program in eight southeastern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. In September, CCI met with five northwestern states (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and Wyoming), followed by talks with six northeastern states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont) earlier this month. The goal: to match the number of vUSA states with the number of stars on the American flag.

Yet, according to Director Boyd, standing up an interstate initiative rivals the difficulty of running it. “Just to socialize the concept of data-sharing—to get everyone communicating, to localize solutions—takes six months,” he says. But that's not the end of the process. A plenary meeting for technical and governance matters comes next, after which a plan is designed. By this time, almost a year has passed.

Indeed, the chief challenge that vUSA faces isn't the lack of data. It's the lack of interoperable data. In order for data to be shared, you need to get people to share them. Put another way, mastering the software is the easy part. Getting human beings to collaborate is the hard part.

“Too many federal and state programs fall short of their potential because they're driven from the top-down without buy-in at the local level,” Boyd continues. So in order to facilitate steadfast local participation, vUSA starts from a set of three principles:

Shaped by this bottom-up foundation, Virtual USA is helping responders across the country to communicate better, to work together, play nice in the sandbox and share their crayons.

http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1214511688798.shtm

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From ICE

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ICE Secure Communities criminal alien initiative expanded to Sacramento, Solano counties

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Law enforcement agencies in Sacramento and Solano counties Tuesday became the first in northern California to benefit from an initiative developed by the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) that modernizes the process used to accurately identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens from the community.

The initiative, Secure Communities, is administered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Secure Communities enables ICE to determine whether an individual arrested by a participating state or local law enforcement agency is a dangerous criminal alien and take the appropriate action to remove the individual from the community.

The Secure Communities biometric identification technology is now accessible to the local law enforcement agencies in Sacramento and Solano counties that use electronic booking machines. Formerly as part of the booking process, local arrestees' fingerprints were taken and checked for criminal history information against the DOJ biometric system maintained by the FBI. With the implementation of Secure Communities, that fingerprint information will now be simultaneously checked against both the FBI criminal history records and the biometrics-based immigration records maintained by the DHS.

If any fingerprints match those of someone in DHS's biometric system, the new automated process notifies ICE, enabling the agency to take appropriate action to ensure dangerous criminal aliens are not released back into communities. Top priority is given to individuals who pose the greatest threat to public safety, such as those with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping.

"Secure Communities provides local law enforcement with an effective tool to identify dangerous criminal aliens," said Acting Secure Communities Executive Director Marc Rapp. "Enhancing public safety is at the core of ICE's mission. Our goal with Secure Communities is to use information sharing to prevent criminal aliens from being released back into the community, with little or no additional burden on our law enforcement partners."

With the expansion of Secure Communities to Sacramento and Solano counties, there are now eight California counties participating in the initiative, including Los Angeles, Ventura, San Diego, Imperial, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Across the country, Secure Communities is being used by 108 jurisdictions in 15 states. By next year, ICE expects Secure Communities to have a presence in every state, with nationwide coverage anticipated by 2013.

"This new biometric system is a welcome tool for local Sacramento law enforcement," said Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness. "Our number one priority is public safety and this system will help us identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens from our community."

Since its inception in October 2008, Secure Communities has identified more than 11,000 aliens charged or convicted with Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping- 1,900 of whom have already been removed from the United States- and more than 100,000 aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes.

Secure Communities is part of DHS's comprehensive plan to distribute technology that links local law enforcement agencies to both FBI and DHS biometric systems. DHS's US VISIT Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) holds biometrics-based immigration records, while the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) contains biometrics-based criminal records.

"US VISIT is proud to support ICE, helping provide decision makers with comprehensive, reliable information when and where they need it," said US VISIT Director Robert Mocny. "By enhancing the interoperability of DHS's and the FBI's biometric systems, we are able to give federal, state and local decision makers information that helps them better protect our communities and our nation."

"Under this plan, ICE will be utilizing FBI system enhancements that allow improved information sharing at the state and local law enforcement level based on positive identification of incarcerated criminal aliens," said Daniel D. Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division. "Additionally, ICE and the FBI are working together to take advantage of the strong relationships already forged between the FBI and state and local law enforcement necessary to assist ICE in achieving its goals."

For more information, visit the Secure Communities page.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1001/100112sacramento.htm

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Federal jury convicts previously deported man on sex trafficking charges

Joint investigation dismantles family-operated outdoor brothel

SAN DIEGO - A previously deported Mexican national, who operated an outdoor brothel in a remote local canyon, could receive life in prison following his conviction on federal human trafficking charges, including two counts of sex trafficking by force.

Adrian Zitlalpopoca-Hernandez, 32, of Tlaxcala, Mexico, was found guilty by a jury last week on charges stemming from a year-long joint investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the San Diego Sheriff's Office (SDSO). Zitlalpopoca is scheduled to be sentenced April 12 before District Court Judge Rodger T. Benitez.

Zitlalpopoca-Hernandez was arrested in November 2008 during a vehicle stop while transporting two female passengers. The women were later identified as sex trafficking victims who had been forced by Zitlalpopoca to work as prostitutes at an outdoor brothel in Valley Center that catered to illegal aliens in North County.

Several days after Zitlalpopoca was taken into custody, ICE agents arrested two co-defendants, also from Tlaxcala, Mexico, at an apartment in North County. In April 2009, all three men were named in a superseding indictment after the investigation revealed they had operated the family-run, outdoor brothel for at least six months.

Eduardo Aguila-Tecuapacho, 26, and Carlos Txompantzi-Serrano, 36, both pleaded guilty to charges of importation of an alien for immoral purposes in November 2008. They are also expected to be sentenced in April.

All three men are illegal aliens and face deportation after completing their criminal sentences.

"This verdict is gratifying given the deplorable conditions the victims in this case were forced to endure," said Jose Garcia, acting special agent in charge for ICE Office of Investigations in San Diego. "While we can't erase the suffering these women experienced, by aggressively investigating and prosecuting these cases, ICE and its law enforcement partners are sending a powerful warning about the consequences facing those responsible for such schemes."

The verdict came on the eve of National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, established to heighten public awareness about human trafficking, including the link to cross-border smuggling activity at the U.S.-Mexico border.

ICE's overall goal is to prevent human trafficking in the United States by prosecuting the traffickers, and rescuing and protecting the victims. In fiscal year 2008, ICE initiated 432 human trafficking investigations. That figure includes 262 investigations involving commercial sexual exploitation and 170 investigations of forced labor. During that same time frame, ICE human trafficking investigations resulted in 189 arrests, 126 indictments and 126 convictions.

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1001/100113sandiego.htm

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Op-Ed on FBI's Post-9/11 Counterterrorism Efforts

The following op-ed, published on January 11, 2010 in The New York Post , was written by former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom. Kallstrom, who is currently a member of the FBI Director's Advisory Group, was also director of the New York Homeland Security Agency.

Ever since 9/11, critics have suggested that the FBI isn't up to its task as our nation's lead counterterrorism agency.

Yet, as the nation focused on the failures of the intelligence community in the Christmas Day bombing attempt over Detroit, last Friday saw two more arrests in the ongoing FBI investigation of a plot to bomb New York City first exposed by the September arrest of Najibullah Zazi.

It's easy to stand on the periphery, without the benefit of real-world experience, and render judgments with the benefit of hindsight. But counterterrorism cases are extremely complex and often require a relatively quick series of judgments, often with incomplete information. Counterterror investigations and intelligence gathering aren't black and white, simple, or easy.

America went on a war footing against terrorism only after 9/11. Before then, our government viewed international terrorism strictly as a law-enforcement matter, giving the FBI the responsibility to address it. In that period, the FBI had significant accomplishments, including the apprehension of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers within six days; preventing attacks on New York's most important landmarks with the arrest and conviction of the "Blind Sheik;" sending agents in 1998 to East Africa, where they quickly solved the two US embassy bombing cases without the assets normally available to investigators in America; and, in 2000, dispatching agents after the USS Cole bombing to Yemen, where they determined that al Qaeda terrorists had carried out the bombing. During this period, the Justice Department severely and unnecessarily restricted the FBI's ability to share intelligence information, and Congress acted haltingly to properly resource, fund and provide the legal framework for the FBI's counterterrorism program, including new technology required to defend the nation.

Post-9/11, as al Qaeda and other Muslim extremist groups have demonstrated their obsession with radicalizing U.S. Muslims, the FBI has disrupted a number of plots.

While some claim that collecting and analyzing intelligence is a new phenomenon in the FBI culture, in fact, the FBI's intelligence and counterintelligence mission began before World War II and predates the creation of the fabled OSS and the CIA. Indeed, the FBI has long honed the skills and techniques necessary for success in protecting against international terrorism—using informants, undercover operations, and court-ordered electronic surveillance. Historically, the FBI has collected and analyzed information, whether the threat was the Soviet Union, domestic terrorist groups like the Klu Klux Klan, or organized crime.

Yet such critics as Gabriel Schoenfeld (in his Dec. 4 Post op-ed, "The FBI Bungles on Terror Again") assert, "It's high time to look at creating a new and separate domestic counterterrorism…agency along the lines of Great Britain's MI5."

In evaluating this naive and discredited suggestion, we need to consider the following:

• Americans have rejected the notion of a national police force for over 200 years. The FBI was not established as a law-enforcement agency until 1933, precisely because the republic wanted to limit the authority of those whom protect our civil liberties.
  
• The FBI is designed to be as transparent as possible for the purpose of protecting the nation, as well as the rights and liberties enshrined in the Constitution. The oversight provided by Congress, the courts, and others have ensured the FBI did not evolve into a secret police force operating in the "Perpetual Black."
  
• While England's MI-5 might be viewed as a panacea, it needs to be examined in light of the long, painful history of its operations in Northern Ireland. Moreover, MI-5 didn't protect England from the London Subway bombings and other acts of terrorism.
  
• It would be difficult, if not impossible, for a myriad of state, local, and federal law-enforcement officials to have effective liaison with a secret domestic police operation.
  
• A painful lesson learned from 9/11 is that the bifurcation of our intelligence and law-enforcement competencies leads to "stove piping" of information—a formula for disaster. Creating a separate secret-police organization would revive that failed model—weakening and balkanizing the law-enforcement and intelligence communities, rather than creating a united, seamless effort.
  
• While many terrorism and legal experts have weighed in, the most qualified critics are the Brits themselves. If fact, many senior British law-enforcement officials criticize the MI-5 model and prefer the FBI's dual criminal and intelligence/terrorism roles.

This isn't to say the FBI can't do a better job integrating these disciplines and more broadly coordinating within the larger intelligence and law enforcement communities. Yet the fact these structures don't always perform seamlessly doesn't suggest the current process is dysfunctional.

Having devoted a considerable amount of my life in the "arena," I am confident the dedicated men and women of the FBI will continue to perform at a very high professional level to protect this great nation, while adhering to constitutional principles and the rule of law.

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel10/oped_011210.htm

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