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From the Los Angeles Times

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Survey finds ethnic divide among voters on DREAM Act

Among Latinos, 79% support government financial aid for illegal immigrants who attend state universities, compared with 30% of whites. And 49% of all respondents say UC and Cal State campuses are not very affordable or are unaffordable.

by Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times

November 19, 2011

Many Californians worry that they are being priced out of the state's public university systems, and they object to allowing illegal immigrants the same financial aid that U.S. citizens can receive at the campuses, a new poll has found.

Fifty-five percent of the voters questioned said they oppose a new state law known as the California DREAM Act. It will permit undocumented students who graduated from California high schools and meet other requirements to receive taxpayer aid to attend the University of California, Cal State and community colleges starting in 2013. Forty percent support it.

But there is a huge ethnic divide on the issue, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey: 79% of Latinos approve of the law, while only 30% of whites do.

"There are not a lot of other issues on which there are such huge differences," said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor of American studies and ethnicity.

Partly, he said, it's easier for many Latinos, because they may know more undocumented people, to "understand the potential of someone who lacks papers but can really contribute to America."

But there are pocketbook factors too, especially in rough economic times, said Pastor, director of USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. The poll shows that more Latinos than whites feel they may be unable to afford a university education; they may be more likely to support aid for all needy students, he said.

The bipartisan survey found that a narrow majority of registered Democrats, 53%, support the new policy, which was signed into law last month by a fellow Democrat, Gov. Jerry Brown. But only 23% of Republicans do.

"I don't think illegal aliens should have any benefits in this country," said respondent Lois Hartman, 64, a Republican who is a retired database supervisor from Downey.

As for arguments that many students were brought to the U.S. as babies and had no choice about where they were raised, she said, "Their parents should have thought about that. I don't have any sympathy for them."

On the other hand, Andrew Haesloop, 25, a Democrat from San Carlos, supports the DREAM Act. Its costs ultimately will be offset, he reasoned, by the higher taxes paid by students who land better jobs because they had the opportunity for a college education.

"It's a benefit that could encourage these people to become contributing members of society," said Haesloop, an admissions counselor at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont.

A decade of tuition increases, including two this year at the 10 University of California and 23 Cal State campuses, has clearly taken a toll. The poll found that 49% of voters consider the universities not very affordable or not at all affordable, compared with 41% who say they are very or somewhat affordable. Fifty-two percent of Latinos said they are concerned about the cost, compared with 48% of whites.

Opinions are harsher among potential bill-payers: 53% of parents or grandparents living with children younger than 18 and 57% of people between the ages of 19 and 29 find the universities somewhat or entirely out of reach.

"I think they are very expensive overall," said Eric Medin, 18, who decided to save money by first enrolling at a community college. He hopes to transfer to UCLA and commute to Westwood from his family home in Calabasas to keep costs down.

"If you look at the total cost and all the loans you might have to pay," said Medin, who works so he can save for tuition, "I feel it would be very problematic."

The UC and Cal State systems say their schools are still good deals and note that they provide hefty financial aid to students. Cal State tuition and fees total $6,521 annually, not including room and board — below the $7,186 national average for similar master's degree campuses, according to a recent survey by the College Board. UC's tuition and fees are about $13,200 this year, above the national average of $9,185 for doctorate-granting institutions.

The poll did yield some good news for higher education in California. A majority of respondents, 55%, view UC and Cal State favorably overall. Only 25% have an unfavorable impression of UC and 27% look askance at Cal State.

The survey was conducted for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and The Times by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic firm, with American Viewpoint, a Republican company. They polled 1,500 registered California voters Oct. 30 through Nov. 9. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.52 percentage points.

Many of the results reflect similar attitudes found in a survey issued this week by the Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco think tank.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poll-higher-ed-20111119,0,7671324,print.story

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Gadhafi's son captured, militia leader says

Seif Islam, the last of Moammar Gadhafi's sons to remain unaccounted for, is nabbed in the southern Libya town of Obari.

from the Associated Press

November 19, 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya

Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif Islam was captured in a southern Libyan city along with two of his aides who were trying to smuggle him out of the country, a militia commander said Saturday

Bashir Tlayeb of the Zintan brigades said that Seif Islam was caught in the desert town of Obari, near the southern city of Sabha about 400 miles south of Tripoli.

He didn't elaborate on how Seif Islam was captured, but said that he was brought to the city of Zintan, the home of one of the largest revolutionary brigades in Libya.

Tlayeb said that it would be up to Libya's ruling National Transitional Council to decide on where the former Libyan leader would be tried.

He also said that there was still no information about wanted former intelligence director Abdullah Senoussi or where he is located.

Seif Islam is the last of Moammar Gadhafi's sons to remain unaccounted for.

Born in 1972, Seif Islam Gadhafi is the oldest of seven children of Moammar and Safiya Gadhafi.

He drew Western favor in previous years by touting himself as a liberalizing reformer but then staunchly backed his father, Moammar Gadhafi, in his brutal crackdown on rebels in the regime's final days.

Seif had gone underground after Tripoli fell to revolutionary forces.

The International Criminal Court had earlier said that it was in indirect negotiations with a son of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi about his possible surrender for trial.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-gadhafi-son-20111120,0,4360062,print.story

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Judicial misconduct alleged in North Carolina

An extraordinary legal shouting match has broken out in Durham, N.C., between the county's beleaguered local district attorney and its senior Superior Court judge, who has chastised the D.A. in open court.

In a harshly worded court filing, Durham Dist. Atty. Tracey Cline accused Judge Orlando F. Hudson Jr. of "moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption" and complained that the judge "harbors animosity" toward her and has engaged in "retaliatory conduct" and "gross misconduct."

Court filings are typically written in dry, obtuse legal argot. But Cline's filing contains unusually accusatory and vituperative language replete with fractured syntax and spelling errors. She wrote that Hudson's actions "striped away" her rights, and that credibility of the criminal justice system is a "causality" of Hudson's conduct. She described Hudson's behavior as "without responsibility or conscious."

Saying crime victims have been "emotionally and relentlessly repeatedly raped" by the judge's rulings, Cline said she will attempt to have Hudson removed from overseeing criminal cases. She also wrote that she has filed a misconduct complaint against Hudson with the state commission that oversees judges.

Cline's filing, submitted late Thursday, accuses Hudson of "intentional and malicious acts with GROSS UNCONCERN for this conduct and done in BAD FAITH."

Hudson, the senior resident judge in Durham since 1995, has dismissed murder charges in two cases prosecuted by Cline's office. The judge has ruled that Cline "flagrantly violated" a defendant's rights in one case, in which Hudson said Cline deliberately misstated facts in court. Cline was elected district attorney in 2008, after former Dist. Atty. Mike Nifong was removed from office and disbarred for falsely accusing Duke University lacrosse players of raping a stripper. Cline was reelected last year after running unopposed.

In a three-part series titled "Twisted Truth," published in September, the News and Observer of Raleigh reported that Cline withheld evidence favorable to defendants and misstated facts to judges. Cline has sharply criticized the series, portraying herself as a victim of "injustice."

In an apparent reference to the series, Cline wrote in her filing that Hudson has been "swayed by partisan interests, public clamor, or fear of criticism."

Cline wrote that Hudson's conduct in cases she has prosecuted amounts to "more than an error of judgment or a mere lack of diligence." She said the judge attempted to coerce her into dropping murder charges in a case that Hudson later dismissed.

Hudson dismissed a murder charge last year against Derrick Allen, who was accused of killing a 2-year-old girl. Cline's filing briefly recounts details of the case, but offers no new evidence or arguments beyond what has appeared in court.

Hudson also dismissed a murder charge in August against Michael C. Dorman II. He ruled that Cline misrepresented facts in court and violated the defendant's rights by allowing the female murder victim's bones to be destroyed before defense lawyers could have them tested.

Neither Cline's nor Hudson's offices returned calls from The Times seeking comment Friday. In a brief interview with the News and Observer on Thursday, Hudson disputed the district attorney's allegations and said he welcomed a judicial review.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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From Google News

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Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor' Startle the Census

WASHINGTON — They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.

The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau's number crunchers by surprise.

“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau's chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”

Outside the bureau, skeptics of the new measure warned that the phrase “near poor” — a common term, but not one the government officially uses — may suggest more hardship than most families in this income level experience. A family of four can fall into this range, adjusted for regional living costs, with an income of up to $25,500 in rural North Dakota or $51,000 in Silicon Valley.

But most economists called the new measure better than the old, and many said the findings, while disturbing, comported with what was previously known about stagnant wages.

“It's very consistent with everything we've been hearing in the last few years about families' struggle, earnings not keeping up for the bottom half,” said Sheila Zedlewski, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social research group.

Patched together a half-century ago, the official poverty measure has long been seen as flawed. It ignores hundreds of billions the needy receive in food stamps, tax credits and other programs, and the similarly large sums paid in taxes, medical care and work expenses. The new method, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure , counts all those factors and adjusts for differences in the cost of living, which the official measure ignores.

The results scrambled the picture of poverty in many surprising ways. The measure shows less severe destitution, but a bit more overall poverty; fewer poor children, but more poor people over 65.

Of the 51 million who appear near poor under the fuller measure, nearly 20 percent were lifted up from poverty by benefits the official count overlooks. But more than half were pushed down from higher income levels: more than eight million by taxes, six million by medical expenses, and four million by work expenses like transportation and child care.

Demographically, they look more like “The Brady Bunch” than “The Wire.” Half live in households headed by a married couple; 49 percent live in the suburbs. Nearly half are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are black and 26 percent are Latino.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 28 percent work full-time, year round. “These estimates defy the stereotypes of low-income families,” Ms. Renwick said.

Among them is Phyllis Pendleton, a social worker with Catholic Charities in Washington, who proudly displays the signs of a hard-won middle-class life. She has one BlackBerry and two cars (both Buicks from the 1990s), and a $230,000 house that she, her husband and two daughters will move into next week.

Combined, she and her husband, a janitor, make about $51,000 a year, more than 200 percent of the official poverty line. But they lose about a fifth to taxes, medical care and transportation to work — giving them a disposable income of about $40,000 a year.

Adjust the poverty threshold, as the new measure does, to $31,000 for the region's high cost of living, and Ms. Pendleton's income is 29 percent above the poverty line. That is to say, she is near poor.

While the phrase is new to her, the struggle it evokes is not.

“Living paycheck to paycheck,” is how she describes her survival strategy. “One bad bill will wipe you out.”

It took her three years to save $3,000 for the down payment on her house, which she got with subsidies from a nonprofit group, Capital Area Asset Builders. But even after cutting out meals at Red Lobster, movie nights and new clothes, she had to rely on government aid to get health insurance for her daughters, 11 and 13, and she is already worried about college tuition.

“I'm turning over every rock looking for scholarships,” she said. “The money's out there, you just have to find it.”

The findings, which the Census Bureau plans to release on Monday, have already set off a contentious debate about how to describe such families: struggling, straitened, economically insecure?

Robert Rector, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, rejects the phrase “near poverty,” arguing that it conjures levels of dire need like hunger and homelessness experienced by a minority even among those actually poor.

“I don't have any objection to this measure if you use the term ‘low-income,' ” he said. “But the emotionally charged terms ‘poor' or ‘near poor' clearly suggest to most people a level of material hardship that doesn't exist. It is deliberately used to mislead people.”

Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago, warned that the numbers are likely to mask considerable diversity. Some households, especially the elderly, may have considerable savings. (Indeed, nearly one in five of the near poor own their homes mortgage-free.) But others may be getting help with public housing and food stamps.

“I do think this is a better measure, but I wouldn't say that 100 million people are on the edge of starvation or anything close to that,” Mr. Meyer said.

But Ms. Zedlewski said the seeming ordinariness of these families is part of the point. “There are a lot of low-income Americans struggling to make ends meet, and we don't pay enough attention to them,” she said.

One group likely to gain attention is older Americans. By the official count, only 22 percent of the elderly are either poor or near poor. By the alternate count, the figure rises to 34 percent.

That is still less than the share among children, 39 percent, but it erases about half the gap between the economic fortunes of the young and old recorded in the official count. The likeliest explanation is high medical costs.

Another surprising finding is that only a quarter of the near poor are insured, and 42 percent have private insurance. Indeed, the cost of paying the premiums is part of the previously uncounted expenses they bear.

Belinda Sheppard's finances have been so battered in the past year, she finds herself wondering what storm will come next. Her adult daughter lost her job and moved in. Her adult son does not have one and cannot move out.

That leaves three adults getting by on $46,000 from her daughter's unemployment check and the money Ms. Sheppard makes for a marketing firm, placing products in grocery stores. Take out $7,000 for taxes, transportation and medical care, and they have an income of about 130 percent of the poverty line — not poor, but close.

Ms. Sheppard pays $2,000 in rent and says her employer classifies her as part time to avoid offering her health insurance, even though she works 40 hours a week. Unable to buy it on her own, she crosses her fingers and tries to stay healthy.

“I try to work as many hours as I can, but my salary, it's not enough for everything,” she said. “I pay my bills with very small wiggle room. Or none.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/us/census-measures-those-not-quite-in-poverty-but-struggling.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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Virginia

Home safety and security tips from Prince George County Police Community Policing Unit

November 18, 2011

from Prince George County Police Community Policing Unit:

HOME SAFETY AND SECURITY TIPS

• Get to know your neighbors and look after one another.

• Make sure the numerical address for the home is posted.
• If possible, make sure home is visible from the street.
• Motion lights are relatively cheap and easy to install.
• Any trees near the house need to be trimmed up to 7 feet.
• Any shrubs need to be trimmed down to 2-3 feet.
• Make sure the exterior doors are of good quality. A fiberglass or metal door is best.
• Make sure that the lock is of good quality. The lock should extend at least 1” into the door jamb. The metal strike plate needs to be installed 3” long screws that extend through the jamb and into the 2”x4” studs.
• Hinges should be installed with the same 3” screws.
• Any windows in or near the door should be made of polycarbonate plastic that will not shatter as easily as glass.
• Sliding glass doors should have a bar in the lower track and sheet metal screws installed into the upper track to prevent them from being lifted out of the frame.
• All exterior structures should be secured with a good padlock.
• Attached garages should have the same quality door and lock hardware as the rest of the house. Make sure roll up doors are closed completely.

For the interior of your home

• Alarms can be tailored to fit your needs. They can include motion sensors, infrared sensors that detect changes in heat, pressure sensors can be installed under windows, sensors that detect glass breakage and panic alarms are all available.
• All valuables (jewelry, china, silver, etc) should be appraised with a copy of appraisal kept in a safe spot.
• Video documentation of valuables can be made to show specific patterns and details.
• The make, model and serial number of all firearms and electronic equipment should be recorded and kept in a safe place.
• Computer passwords should not be kept near any computer

HOLIDAY TIPS

• Make sure no presents are visible from the street.
• Any boxes for electronic equipment should be torn up prior to placing them at the curb, or take them straight to the recycling bin in the Courthouse Complex.
• If traveling, make sure a trusted friend or other family member keeps an eye on your house. Place the trash cans out by the curb as they are always done. This gives the impression that someone is at home. Disconnect the garage door opener from the door.

ALSO……….

• Our Community Policing Unit has crime prevention specialists who can inspect your home to ensure the appropriate safety measures are in place. To schedule an appointment, please call 733-2773.

• Report any suspicious activity to the police department.

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