Join the movement, and look advocates in the eye on Friday, September 1st, as they gather in Sacramento to occupy the Senate for consumer rights and democratic representation.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. /California Newswire/ — Assembly Bill 1147 (AB-1147) is under scrutiny as concerns mount over its potential impact on the voice of consumers and the democratization of decision-making. Leading this charge is Dr. Henny Kupferstein, a vocal advocate and DDS consumer who has rallied opposition against the bill, and who is a candidate for Assembly #77 coastal San Diego 2024. AB-1147 is scheduled for a hearing, and its implications have ignited a wave of concern among consumers and advocates alike.
Henny Kupferstein and a coalition of concerned consumers have voiced their objections to AB-1147, citing a lack of safeguards for consumers’ interests. The bill, as it stands, appears to prioritize substantial financial gains for traditional vendors within the $15-billion program, without explicitly addressing consumer protection and advocacy.
“It’s disheartening to witness the exclusion of consumer perspectives from the analysis of AB-1147,” laments Kupferstein. “This exclusion sends a troubling message about the state of our democracy, making consumers feel voiceless and sidelined in matters that affect them directly.”
Kupferstein, in a bold move, has initiated contact with the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging them to reconsider AB-1147 in light of the widespread consumer opposition. This opposition is underscored by consumers’ collective demand for the bill’s rejection, claiming it would lead to unjustified expenses and an unbalanced distribution of resources.
Notably, consumers of Regional Centers have united in submitting a letter of opposition to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Their aim is not only to register their protest but also to ensure that their voices are heard and acknowledged. The demand for confirmation of receipt of their opposition letter highlights the gravity of their concerns.
Clarifications have been made by Kupferstein, who emphasizes that the sponsor, Disability Voices United (DVU), does not represent consumer interests in their opposition to AB-1147. Kupferstein further urges the Senate to discern individualized consumer voices from DVU template letters, affirming that these templates do not truly reflect the breadth of consumer sentiment against the bill.
In a surprising twist, Dr. Henny Kupferstein, a dedicated consumer-constituent, has announced her Campaign for Assembly #77 coastal San Diego 2024. This underlines the determination of consumers to secure their rights and influence legislative decisions that impact their lives.
For further inquiries, please contact:
Dr. Henny Kupferstein, votehenny@gmail.com or http://www.votehenny.com
As AB-1147 approaches its hearing date, the voices of concerned consumers like Henny Kupferstein ring clear: democracy must be upheld, consumer voices must be honored, and bills like AB-1147 must be critically assessed to ensure their alignment with the interests of those they affect.
See You in Sacramento
Join the movement, and look advocates in the eye on Friday, September 1st, as they gather in Sacramento to occupy the Senate for consumer rights and democratic representation.
MULTIMEDIA:
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DVU's A.1147 is an expensive Bill that engages in self-dealing (D-ADDIS)
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The Ducks have signed winger Zack Kassian to a professional tryout contract, the team confirmed this morning.
Kassian, 32, most recently skated for the Arizona Coyotes, but prior to his 2022-23 campaign in the desert, he spent seven seasons in the Pacific Division with the Edmonton Oilers. In Edmonton, his tenure was synchronized with that of reigning scoring champion, most valuable player and most outstanding player Connor McDavid, who had been drafted by Edmonton shortly before Kassian’s arrival.
That was no coincidence, as the 6-foot-3, 211-pound Kassian became a significant protector of McDavid, and his physical play has largely been what has kept him in the NHL. His 1,360 hits rank 47th among active players despite the fact Kassian has averaged a modest 12:37 of time on ice in his career.
Originally drafted in the first round, 13th overall, by the Buffalo Sabres in 2009, his time in Buffalo concluded when the Vancouver Canucks, who came within one victory of winning the Stanley Cup a season earlier, brought in Kassian to add muscle and grit to a team that included the sublimely gifted Sedin twins as well as two sandpaper players – Ryan Kesler and Kevin Bieksa – who would later join the Ducks.
After a tumultuous stint in Montreal, for which he never played a game, Kassian arrived, and thrived, in Edmonton. While he never developed into an offensive force as a power forward the way Todd Bertuzzi, an influential player in Kassian’s youth, did, Kassian displayed respectable touch and formidable aggression. He set career highs in games played (79) and penalty minutes (102) in 2018-19, as well as a personal-best scoring mark that he’d break the following season with 34 points in 59 games in 2019-20.
Kassian is the seventh player to sign a PTO this offseason, with more likely to come ahead of next month’s training camps. While such opportunities seldomly lead to an NHL signing, the level and recency of Kassian’s experience favor his chances. So, too, does the fact that the Ducks are in a rebuild and have placed an emphasis on physical play already this offseason with the additions of defensemen Ilya Lyubushkin, the Buffalo Sabres’ team leader in hits, and Radko Gudas, who ranks seventh among active skaters in hits.
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For the first time since 2016, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will not be ready on Oct. 1 for the following academic year. Instead, students have to wait until December to fill out and submit a redesigned application for financial aid — including federal student loans, grants and work-study — for the 2024–25 school year.
Nearly 72% of college families didn’t know that the 2023-24 FAFSA became available on Oct. 1, 2022, according to a 2023 study by private student loan lender Sallie Mae. If families aren’t ready to go when the new FAFSA is released this year, they could miss out on vital aid to help them cover college expenses.
“We’re dealing with a truncated financial aid season,” says MorraLee Keller, senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), a nonprofit organization supporting college affordability. Keller says all students should do what they can to be ready when the new simplified FAFSA is released.
Here are steps you can take now to make sure you’re ready to go when the new FAFSA is released in December.
Find your FSA ID
Your Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID is required to complete the FAFSA online, track the status of your application and make any changes and updates. It wasn’t required for the 2023-24 FAFSA, but it’s a must-have for the new one, according to NCAN.
If you’re an incoming first-year student, create your FSA ID by visiting studentaid.gov. If you’re a returning student but forgot your FSA ID, you can retrieve your username or password by selecting “forgot username” or “forgot password” from the login page.
Everyone who touches your FAFSA needs an FSA ID too. Parents and guardians who could access the form without an ID before will need to create one, says Keller — who advises all contributors to set up their FSA ID by this fall to avoid trouble accessing the application when it’s ready.
Track your school’s deadlines
States and schools can have financial aid deadlines much earlier than the FAFSA deadline. Missing an institution’s deadline could mean missing out on aid.
Incoming students can get their college list ready now and keep track of critical deadlines.
Many schools set priority deadlines in March before the relevant academic year, says Dana Kelly, vice president of professional development and institutional compliance for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Kelly says this gives colleges a sense of their first-year class and provides incoming students an idea of how much institutional aid they can expect before the May 1 deposit date.
Returning students should double-check their school’s deadlines and renew the FAFSA before then.
Because so much aid is given out on a first-come, first-served basis, you want to get in line for that aid by filling out the FAFSA as early as possible, says Rick Castellano, vice president of corporate communications at Sallie Mae.
Estimate the amount of aid you’re eligible for
Given that colleges and universities will experience a delay in the FAFSA filing process, students should estimate how much federal aid they’re eligible to receive ahead of time using the Federal Student Aid Estimator, says Bradley Barnes, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. An updated estimator is expected to be available by this fall.
The Education Department also released a 2024-25 Pell Grant lookup table. It can help you determine if you’re eligible for the need-based Pell Grant, which can give you up to $7,395 per year in aid that doesn’t need to be paid back. To use the table, you’ll need to know:
Your status — dependent or independent student.
Your family size.
Your and/or your parents’ adjusted gross income.
Your legal state of residence.
Contact your school’s financial aid office if you’re expecting less aid
The new FAFSA aims to make more aid available to more families. But this may not be the case for everyone. For example, families with multiple children in college could see significantly less aid. The federal government no longer factors the number of siblings attending college into the need-based calculation.
It’s crucial that families expecting less aid communicate with their financial aid offices, says Kelly. Schools are aware of the changes and understand that some returning students may be negatively impacted. According to Kelly, many schools are working to see what they can do at the institutional level to help.
But it all begins with the FAFSA. Every student can and should apply, whether seeking federal, state or college-level aid. Even if you plan to borrow, the FAFSA is your ticket to federal student loans — which often come with lower interest rates and more protections than private options.
Regardless of your income or what aid you believe you’ll be eligible for, completing the FAFSA is your best option for covering college costs.
More From NerdWallet
Trea Branch writes for NerdWallet. Email: tbranch@nerdwallet.com.
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A young white man wielding a weapon marked with a swastika. A trail of manifestos espousing far-right ideologies. Victims killed because of their race.
It’s a situation that should be impossible, or at least uncommon.
“We have three people who are dead because they are Black,” Democratic Florida state Sen. Tracie Davis said at a vigil in Jacksonville, Fla., this week after the gruesome attack at a Dollar General store. “Shopping. In our community. Gunned down. Because they were Black.”
But the shots fired by a 21-year-old — leaving families grieving and a community at loss over yet another act of gun violence — are no longer so unusual in America, say experts who study gun violence and racist extremism.
In fact, data show that racist shootings are becoming more common.
In a report released this year, the Anti-Defamation League tallied extremist mass killings and attempted ones, finding that 46 took place since the 1970s. Each was at the hands of extremists motivated by far-right, far-left or radical Islamist ideology, with a small number connected to lesser known extremist ideas. But since 2011, it’s been right-wing extremists behind the majority of attacks. Most of those were carried out by white supremacists.
“We not only have an epidemic of gun violence in this county but rising activity by white supremacists trying to spread their ideas, which can also be seen in more white supremacist attacks,” said Oren Segal, director of the ADL Center on Extremism. “Since 2011, excluding Jacksonville, there were 26 mass casualties tied to extremism. In the 40 years before that, it was 20.”
The ADL found two recent years — 2021 and 2020 — when no deadly mass shootings or violent attacks spurred by extremism took place. Still, the civil rights group found that right-wing extremist violence and activity grew overall each year.
In Jacksonville, officials said the gunman attacked an employee and shoppers in the parking lot and in the store. At a news conference this week, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the shooter drove to Edward Waters University, a historically Black college, where he was seen putting on a bulletproof vest before leaving for Dollar General.
Sheriff Waters said the extremist writings left behind along with a suicide note by the shooter made clear his intentions. “He hated Black people,” the sheriff said. The sheriff said that the man was not affiliated with a group and acted alone.
After the attack, some Democratic elected officials angrily criticized state policies pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential hopeful, including one that restricted the teaching of Black history in Florida.
A federal hate crime investigation into the attack is underway. If the shooting is found to be a hate crime, which experts said is likely, the violence would be an additional act in a decades-long trend in which anti-Black incidents have topped the list of hate crimes counted by the FBI each year.
In 2022, the FBI found that nearly two-thirds of hate crimes targeted a person’s race, ethnicity or ancestry. Of the 10,840 hate crimes the agency counted that year, nearly a third targeted Black people.
“These shootings are getting to the point where they are sadly not surprising but all too common,” said Omekongo Dibinga, a professor at American University and author of “Lies About Black People: How to Combat Racist Stereotypes and Why It Matters.”
“There is so much racist violence in this country that we don’t even really see it in the news anymore unless it is a mass shooting or in a place where we believe it’s not supposed to happen, like a mosque, a church, a middle school or a store,” he said.
Below are a few of the most prominent recent shootings of the last decade connected to racist or antisemitic ideology.
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When Knott’s Berry Farm debuted its “no-boo” necklace live to hundreds of fans of its annual Halloween event, the amulet proved ineffective for the presenters onstage.
Scores of die-hards jeered and booed the announcement at last week’s preview to the 50th-anniversary celebration of the horror-themed Knott’s Scary Farm in Buena Park.
“Wait, not nice,” event co-host LeeAnna Vamp said before placing around her neck a blue no-boo trinket, meant to shield guests from actors’ frights.
Vamp and her co-host, Knott’s show writer Jeff Tucker, removed the medallions after a minute of consistent booing from the crowd.
The no-boo necklace wasn’t an instant hit, but Knott’s is moving ahead with its plan to sell the merchandise for $14.99 at most park shops, offering attendees a chance to avoid a terror-filled evening.
“This is great for groups and families,” Vamp said. “This necklace is going to grant the wearer ‘scare immunity’ in our scare zone. So, if you have one of these on, it’s illuminated and most importantly visible to the monsters, [and] they will avoid scaring you directly.”
Inside the 10 mazes scattered throughout the park, frightful guests are on their own: The medallion will not be honored there.
“If you want to be scared, then you just don’t wear the necklace,” Vamp said. “The rules are easy.”
Knott’s began its Scary Farm in 1973 as a “three-day Halloween Haunt,” according to park officials. This year’s after-hours festival runs from Sept. 21 through Halloween and includes three new mazes, five scare zones and four shows.
Park employees wander around the venue in gruesome costumes terrorizing attendees, and each of the mazes and scare zones has a specific theme or genre, which include grotesque carnivals, ghost towns and deadly speak-easies.
Knott’s fan Samantha O’Brien was in attendance at last Thursday’s Scary Farm preview, but did not boo. The 35-year-old Huntington Beach resident found the necklace a welcome addition.
“I’m probably in the minority, but I do think this can be a good thing,” said O’Brien, who has attended the annual Halloween event since 2002.
She added that “the no-boo necklace will help give people a moment to catch their breath and enjoy watching others get scared on their way to the next maze/scare zone.”
O’Brien said she and her mother chaperoned her youngest brother and his friends, 14 to 15 years old at the time, in 2008 for their first Scary Farm visit. Though her brother and his buddies “enjoyed being scared,” they also sought relief and would have benefited from a no-boo necklace, she said.
“A few times I had them trying to hide under my arms or burying their face into me to not get so scared,” she said.
Though new to Knott’s, the no-boo necklace is a fixture at other properties belonging to the same owner, Ohio-based Cedar Fair Entertainment Co.
A Pennsylvania mother sued another Cedar Fair property, Dorney Park in Allentown, for negligence in 2017. Her 15-year-old daughter allegedly suffered injuries, anxiety and depression after a park employee scared the youngster and she collapsed to the ground.
The girl had told park employees that she didn’t want to be frightened but was unaware the venue sold no-boo necklaces, according to the lawsuit.
Former La Palma resident Jason Frerking, 41, wondered about the effectiveness of a no-boo necklace after visiting Cedar Fair’s Worlds of Fun Amusement Park in Kansas City, Mo., last year.
He said the wearing of the necklace did not “put a damper on the scares” of those not wearing the amulet, a concern of some patrons.
Frerking, who began attending Knott’s Scary Farm as a middle schooler at nearby Heritage Christian, said it may be difficult for Knott’s staff to avoid scaring some patrons.
“A lot of the monsters like to come up from behind, so it will be difficult for them to see the necklace, even if it’s glow in the dark,” Frerking said.
Frerking said he still makes an annual pilgrimage to Knott’s Scary Farm even though he moved to Webb City, Mo., two years earlier.
“I always felt at home at Knott’s Scary Farm,” he said. “The rich kids had Disneyland, but Knott’s was my family’s best option.”
Though the no-boo necklace is optional, Knott’s is continuing its mandatory chaperone policy, first put in place last year after a string of troublesome fights among teenagers. All guests 15 and younger must be accompanied by an adult who is at least 21. Any patron younger than 16 without a chaperone “is subject to ejection,” according to park officials.
Single-day passes cost $109.99, though there are discounts at knotts.com.
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Like millions of people on this fine planet, I count myself a lifelong Stephen King fan.
In fact, King is one of the reasons I do what I do. As a kid, I always liked reading, but it was discovering works of science fiction like “Dune” and King’s mind-bending novels that demonstrated how powerful and transporting books could be. As a teenager, I wolfed down tomes such as “Salem’s Lot,” “The Green Mile,” “Firestarter” and “Carrie.”
I wrote my own sci-fi stories, and privately mused about making a pilgrimage to Maine, where King lived — it might as well have been in Mid-World, on the other side of the country from my suburb in Sacramento — to see if he would take me in as an apprentice. Years later, as I was fumbling down the road to becoming a working writer, I found wisdom, and hope, in his nonfiction treatise “On Writing.”
Which is why it pained me to see King mischaracterize a group that I’ve grown quite close to in recent the years — the Luddites — and to argue that it’s folly to resist technologies such as generative AI.
Last week, the Atlantic published a story that revealed one of the major large language models (LLMs) — the systems that make generative AI possible — had been trained on tens of thousands of pirated books. Meta’s LLaMa had been fed some 170,000 copyrighted works of fiction and nonfiction; the Atlantic named Michael Pollan, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood and Sarah Silverman as among the authors whose works had been used, without their knowledge or permission, to train the AI.
“The future promised by AI is written with stolen words,” the Atlantic wrote.
Many writers were angry and exasperated. “Generative AI programs are plagiarism machines and whatever you produce with them will be composed of other people’s copyrighted work,” the author Cole Haddon wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The news landed in the wake of months of complaints and anxieties among authors and writers. Silverman, for one, had already filed a headline-grabbing lawsuit against OpenAI and Meta because their AI systems were able to emulate her 2010 book, and were “likely” trained on a copy without her consent; now she has proof that was indeed the case. Meanwhile, 10,000 writers have signed an open letter put forward by the Authors Guild, imploring AI companies to obtain permission before ingesting books, and to compensate authors when they do so.
Further backlash from writers against the AI services that are relying on their work to make them tens of millions of dollars a month was to be expected.
But there was one notable figure who didn’t share the outrage — though he did share the anxiety. Because also included in that corpus of AI training data were the books of Stephen King.
King responded to the news that his work had been ingested by the AI companies in a short piece that the Atlantic also published shortly after. The gist seems to be that new technologies can be scary, but humans learn to adapt, and even embrace them, and that it would be folly to resist the advancing tides of technology when it comes to generative AI.
Characteristic of King, it’s evocative and direct, clever and sharply written. He’s primarily concerned with the question of whether the output of a generative AI can be considered truly creative; whether ChatGPT might yield art surprising enough to rival a human’s. “Creativity can’t happen without sentience, and there are now arguments that some AIs are indeed sentient,” he writes, and if that’s true, “then creativity might be possible.”
Then there’s the section that caught my eye:
“I view this possibility with a certain dreadful fascination. Would I forbid the teaching (if that is the word) of my stories to computers? Not even if I could. I might as well be King Canute, forbidding the tide to come in. Or a Luddite trying to stop industrial progress by hammering a steam loom to pieces.”
Opposing generative AI, he says, is like opposing the tide coming in — resistance is futile, and makes you a Luddite.
Now, as it happens I’ve spent the last three years or so researching and writing a book about the Luddites, and why their struggle remains deeply relevant today. And the single biggest misconception about the Luddites is the one King hits on here — that they were trying to stop industrial progress.
They were not opposed to progress, and certainly not to technology; most were skilled technicians themselves, who spent their days working on machines at home or in small shops. It is true that the Luddites hammered certain machines to pieces, but it wasn’t technology itself they were protesting — it was the bosses that were using those machines to cut their pay and shepherd them into factories.
There was nothing preordained that held that industrial progress had to take this shape — we can, with some ease, imagine a future in which technology advanced accordingly, but the cloth workers benefited more equally from the new industrial machinery, hosting it in their small shops, or sharing in the gains it produced more equally, rather than those gains accruing to a handful of factory bosses, who maximized profits and immiserated their workers.
Which brings me to King’s essay. The point here is not to “well, actually” Stephen goddamned King, or to try to embarrass him, but to point out why it’s so important that we understand the distinction between the myth of the Luddites — ignoramuses who smashed machines because they didn’t understand them — and the true Luddites: skilled, proud cloth workers who understood all too well how machinery was being deployed against them, and fought back. And the sentiment that generative AI is somehow inevitable is hardly relegated to bestselling novelists; it may be the predominant attitude I run into in conversations about the technology.
The reason that, 200 years later, so many creative workers are angry and unnerved by AI is not that they fear it will become so good, so powerful that they may as well up and quit writing, drawing, or acting. It’s that, like the Luddites, they are painfully aware how bosses will use AI against them. To most working authors (and artists, screenwriters, illustrators, and so on) the fear over AI is not philosophical; it is economic, and it is existential.
In “On Writing,” one of the most resonant sections describes King’s road to becoming a published novelist: toiling in obscurity, teaching college classes, publishing short stories in horror magazines, and, eventually, hitting the jackpot after his wife rescues an early manuscript of “Carrie” from the trash can. A publisher gives him a $2,500 advance for the hardcover, and it gets picked up for an eye-watering $400,000 advance for the paperback (which King split with his original publisher 50/50).
The industry has already changed such that almost no one can make any money selling short stories at all, and such life-changing advances, rare then, are all but impossible now for untested genre authors. Generative AI stands to further erase revenue streams for working creatives who are struggling to break into the game, making the odds of a future Stephen King finding success all the more slim.
Corporate clients are turning to generative AI for in-house creative work, firms are deploying ChatGPT for copywriting, and movie studios have made it clear they want the right to use it to make scripts. Some of that stuff isn’t necessarily creative writing, but as the science fiction writer Ted Chiang has pointed out, it’s eliminating crucial opportunities for writers to practice their craft.
Meanwhile, self-published authors now have to contend with an onslaught of AI-generated content on Amazon, and certain sci-fi magazines have had to close submissions altogether — they were getting spammed with too many AI creations.
All of these make for pretty good reasons to oppose generative AI, or to oppose the way that it’s being used by corporations right now — it’s less about the technology, but the ends to which it is being put, and the livelihoods it’s threatening as a result.
Before they took up their hammers, those who would become Luddites lobbied for minimum wages, machinery taxes, and pauses on development — and were ignored. When they did finally rise up to smash the machines of their exploitation, they were thunderous and popular on a level equaled only by Robin Hood. It took the full might of the state and a domestic occupation to put the Luddites down — and to slander their name in history as backwards-looking dummies.
Things are different now, of course; unionization was illegal back then, and England was not yet a democracy. We have better options, and a real shot at having a say in the way that technologies like generative AI shape the way we live and work.
In King’s piece, he lists two poets whose work the generative AI isn’t yet up to imitating; one is William Blake. Among Blake’s most famous poems is ”And did those feet in ancient time,” which contains his most-quoted lines:
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
That poem was published in 1808, just three years before the Luddite rebellion took shape. Blake was lamenting the rise of the machine-filled factory, too, because he saw the way that it stood to blight communities and immiserate workers.
I was fortunate enough to be able to follow a path staked out by one of my first author heroes, to pay the bills with odd writing jobs on the way to becoming a full-time human text generator. King’s points engaging with the abilities of the technology are good ones. I’m just humbly asking that he return to the source material of one of his favorite poets, and reconsider why it was that the Luddites — of 200 years ago, and of now — were so moved to break those machines.
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Former President Donald Trump overstated his net worth by between $812 million and $2.2 billion each year between 2011 and 2021, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James claims in a filing made public Wednesday.
The allegations were raised in an Aug. 4 filing seeking a partial summary judgment in the office’s 2022 lawsuit accusing members of the Trump family and Trump Organization executives of orchestrating an extensive, fraudulent scheme related to valuations of property and Trump’s personal financial statements.
James’ office is seeking $250 million and sanctions that would halt the company’s operations in the state and drastically impair the ability of Trump, Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. to do business in New York.
The case is scheduled for trial in October, but James’ office is asking a judge to first rule against the Trumps in one facet of the case, certain allegations related to fraud. If granted, other claims, including allegations related to falsification of records and issuing false financial statements, would still be considered at trial.
“No trial is required for the court to determine that defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values…repeatedly in business transactions to defraud banks and insurers,” Andrew Amer, an attorney for James’ office wrote in the filing.
A summary judgment motion argues that certain material facts are not in dispute, and as a result, the judge is already in a position to make a decision based on them — avoiding the need to raise them at trial.
A spokesperson for Donald Trump’s legal team did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Trump’s lawyers argued in separate filing Wednesday that the case should be dismissed. They said Trump received many of the loans at the heart of the allegations too long ago under the state’s statute of limitations.
James’ office argues in its filing that in order to rule in its favor, the judge must find that Trump’s statements of financial condition were “false or misleading” from 2011 through 2021 — the years for which the state is suing — and that the statements were used “in the conduct of business transactions.”
“The answer to both questions is a resounding ‘yes’ based on the mountain of undisputed evidence,” the attorney general’s office said in its filing.
This latest filing comes just as Trump’s legal problems are mounting. On Aug. 24, Trump surrendered to authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, where he and 18 others are accused of racketeering in a criminal case related to their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost. He is expected to enter a not guilty plea in that case, and denies wrongdoing.
How will Trump balance campaign duties with busy legal schedule?
09:04
Trump is also charged in three other criminal cases. In Manhattan, he entered a not guilty plea in April to 34 counts of falsification of business records. And he entered not guilty pleas this summer to charges in a pair of federal cases in which he’s accused of 40 felony counts related to “willful retention” of national security information after leaving the White House, and four felony counts related to his alleged effort to thwart the peaceful transfer of power after losing to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Trump maintains his innocence and has accused prosecutors from every office pursuing him of doing so out of political animus.
Graham Kates
Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at KatesG@cbsnews.com or grahamkates@protonmail.com
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Shannon Storms Beador is mad at Heather Dubrow, Emily Simpson and Gina Kirschenheiter.
Gina is mad at Shannon. Tamra Judge isn’t mad at anyone, but the others would be mad at her if they knew how she was stirring up trouble.
And Taylor Armstrong wants to get them all around the same table and then hand them each a very sharp knife?
“Let’s carve some pumpkins and try not to stab each other with the carving tools,” Taylor cheerfully says as she invites her castmates to a fall-themed party during Wednesday’s episode on “The Real Housewives of Orange County“.
Worry not. Only the pumpkins get shanked during the episode.
You’ll recall that in recent weeks Shannon has been variable degrees of irate at Heather, Emily and Gina for gossiping about Shannon’s relationship with her boyfriend John.
We have seen Shannon shout that their gossip will be the end of that relationship. We have seen Shannon yell at the producers and crew that if they don’t turn off the cameras and erase the footage her future with John is gone.
Unfortunately, we have also seen her talk about her relationship with John over and over again – this week with Tamra – and tell the world, or at least that portion of which have nothing better to do than watch “Real Housewives,” about her issues with John.
“I’m not going to talk about every argument,” Shannon says – and that’s a good start! “I’m not. I’m not. I love John. But I’ll be honest with you” – uh-oh – “I get really upset with John” – oh no! “when John and I don’t spend a lot of time together.”
John doesn’t spend enough time with her. He’s always leaving her house to go check on his dog or because he’s got to get up early the next day. He thinks Shannon’s house is too chaotic what with her three teenage daughters and all. They’ve never taken a vacation together just the two of them.
“There’s a part of me that says, ‘Is he really in it?’” Shannon continues, as Tamra nods sympathetically, taking it all in for future reference.
“Shannon and John’s not talking about marriage is a big red flag,” Tamra later tells the camera. “They’ve been together three years, and no talk of marriage at their age?”
Meanwhile, Gina has a beef of her own with Shannon. On the previous episode, Shannon said that had she not stepped in with an attorney to help when Gina got busted for DUI, well, Shannon speculates, Gina might have lost custody of her kids.
Tonight, confronted at the pumpkin-carving table, Shannon flat out denies she said any such thing, surely knowing that the producers were gonna drop the receipts – footage of Shannon saying exactly that just four days before – like a truth grenade in her lap.
“Never said it. God strike me dead,” Shannon declares, prompting Tamra to joke to the camera that she might not want to stand so close to Shannon for a bit.
“I didn’t talk about Travis,” she continues, referencing Gina’s boyfriend Travis.
“The penis comment?” Tamra softly says, helpfully nudging Shannon to remember.
“Of course, you’re going to say that,” Shannon sighs. “Don’t say that.”
No need to say it! The videotape reveals exactly what Shannon said, sending the housewives into a tizzy of talk about their boyfriends and husbands and the manhood each has.
It’s almost as tasteful as the scene moments earlier when the pumpkin-carving consultant asked them to cut a hole in the bottoms of their pumpkins, which sent them chattering about carving – well, maybe that part of the pumpkin’s anatomy is best left unspecified.
“I didn’t say they were ladies,” Taylor apologized to the pumpkin expert. “I just said they were women.”
Shannon and Gina agree to move on, though apparently that doesn’t apply to what they say in the privacy of their homes for future broadcast to millions.
“If you can say things that are that (bleepin’) hurtful, and then not even remember you said it, you need to check yourself into rehab,” Gina tells the camera later.
Here’s what else went down on Wednesday night:
— Heather and Terry Dubrow finalize the sale of their house for $55 million.
“Fifty-five million isn’t (bleep) you money; it’s (bleep) everybody you’ve known money,” Terry says.
“The fact that I had the perfect bottle of Dom Perignon chilling? Best moment ever,” Heather says. “It’s the 2012. You know I don’t like the ’10. The ’10 wasn’t good.”
At $280 a bottle at the liquor store, the 2012 Dom had better be good. She just sold her house for enough money to buy 196,429 bottles of it.
— Emily has decided to learn to ride a motorcycle so she invites Gina to meet her at the Harley-Davidson store to shop for helmets. When she finds one she likes she can barely get it on.
“It says it’s an extra large,” Emily mutters as Gina laughs so hard she announces she might pee her pants. “Do I have an extra-large head?”
— Tamra is worried about her love life with husband Eddie Judge.
“I have to ask you,” she tells him as they work out at the gym. “There’s no porn, there’s no lingerie, there’s no sex toys. Are we just getting stale?”
Eddie allows that maybe some new lingerie might spice things up. And then he goes someplace weird even for this couple.
“You want me to come in like Conan?” he says without specifying whether that’s The Warrior or O’Brien. “In a leather vest, with a sword, and just go, ‘C’mon, baby?’”
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Editor’s note: SCNG prohibits the use of bots and any other artificial methods of voting. Suspicious activity could lead to the disqualification of candidates.
Welcome to the Southern California News Group’s Boys Athlete of the Week poll.
Throughout the high school sports year, SCNG will provide a list of candidates — selected by our 11 newspapers in Orange County, Los Angeles County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County — who stood out over the previous week and allow you, the reader, to vote for the overall winner.
This week, we consider performances from Aug. 21-26.
The poll closes at 11 p.m. Thursday.
Vote as many times as you’d like until then without using bots or any other artificial methods of voting.
The weekly winner will be announced each Friday morning online.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE GIRLS ATHLETE OF THE WEEK POLL
Here are this week’s nominees (the poll is below the list of candidates):
Orange County boys athlete of the week: Ryan Luce, Trabuco Hills
Press-Telegram Boys Athlete of the Week: Tyree McCowen, Lakewood
Daily Breeze Boys Athlete of the Week: Damon Wrighster, Inglewood
Daily News boys athlete of the week: Aaron Butler, Calabasas
San Gabriel Valley Boys Athlete of the Week: Jacob Garcia, Baldwin Park
Inland boys athlete of the week: Michael Lawson, Perris
About the poll: The Southern California News Group includes the Orange County Register, L.A. Daily News, Press-Enterprise, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News, Pasadena-Star News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Daily Breeze, San Bernardino Sun, Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts.
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The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to look into whether the city can sue the state of Texas and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for sending a busload of migrants to Los Angeles on June 14, and to investigate whether Abbott’s actions violated any criminal laws.
“These motions are about investigating whether Gov. Greg Abbott committed kidnapping, human trafficking or any other crimes when he sent vulnerable families on a 23-hour bus ride with little or no food or water,” Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said shortly before the 13-0 vote.
The June 14 bus was the first sent to Los Angeles by Texas. Ten more buses have arrived in the 2½ months since, with the most recent bus arriving at Union Station during the council’s Wednesday meeting.
The proposal directs City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office to investigate and begin proceedings on potential civil legal action that could be taken against Texas, Abbott, or “any other entity relating to planning and actions of June 14, 2023.” It also asks Feldstein Soto’s office to investigate and report on whether “human trafficking, kidnapping or any other crime was committed” on or before the day the day the first bus was sent.
“The L.A. City Council members are complete hypocrites. In June, they unanimously voted to become a sanctuary city, welcoming migrants to the city,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said Wednesday afternoon, making an apparent reference to the council’s June 9 vote to toughen policies around the use of city resources for federal immigration enforcement. (That so-called “sanctuary city” ordinance would essentially codify existing policies, but it still has to be drafted by the city attorney’s office and return to the council for a final vote before becoming law.)
Mahaleris asserted that migrants had willingly chosen to go to Los Angeles on buses stocked with food and water, saying they “signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages upon boarding that they agreed on the destination.”
“Governor Abbott should be ashamed of himself for playing politics with the lives of vulnerable migrant families. … I am deeply offended by his inhumane actions and am eager to investigate this further,” Feldstein Soto said in a statement Wednesday evening.
The council also unanimously approved a separate resolution calling on L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, and U.S. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to similarly investigate and report on whether any crimes were committed.
Both the proposal and the resolution were originally introduced on June 16 by Soto-Martínez and fellow Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Monica Rodriguez and Nithya Raman. The text of both documents only directly addresses the first bus, though council members spoke of the other buses during their comments.
During the council meeting, Soto-Martínez also excoriated Abbott for sending a bus of migrants to the city earlier this month while Los Angeles was under an unprecedented tropical storm warning and officials were urging residents not to travel.
Mayor Karen Bass also slammed Abbott after that bus arrived, calling the move “evil.”
Councilmembers Kevin de León, Heather Hutt and Imelda Padilla also spoke in support of the proposals.
Padilla, the newest member of the council, directed her comments to the service organizations that have helped welcome the arriving migrants, saying she knew the arrival of large numbers of people at once could cause strain and asking them to reach out if they needed assistance.
The bus that arrived Wednesday morning carried “35 asylum seekers from Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Russia, and Venezuela,” including 21 adults and 14 children, according to the nonprofit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, known as CHIRLA.
More than 400 people have arrived on 11 buses since mid-June, Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said Wednesday.
“The city has continued to work with city departments, the county and a coalition of nonprofit organizations, in addition to our faith partners, to execute a plan set in place earlier this year. As we have before, when we became aware of the bus yesterday, we activated our plan,” Seidl said in a statement.
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The Southern Baptist Convention on Wednesday refused to readmit Saddleback Church, rejecting appeals by the Orange County megachurch after it was ousted for having female pastors.
During their annual meeting in New Orleans, Southern Baptist church representatives also voted to uphold the executive committee’s February decision to expel Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., over female pastors. They finalized the ouster of a third congregation, Freedom Church in Vero Beach, Fla., for “lack of intent to cooperate in resolving concerns regarding a sexual abuse allegation.”
About 89% of the representatives voted in support of expelling Saddleback, with 92% and 96% voting to finalize the ouster of Fern Creek Baptist and Freedom Church, respectively.
Saddleback Church, based in Lake Forest, is one of the largest congregations in the U.S. and had been the second-largest in the Southern Baptist Convention.
After founding pastor Rick Warren retired from the evangelical church last year, he appointed Andy Wood as head pastor. Wood’s wife, Stacie Wood, began serving as a teaching pastor after three women were ordained in 2021: Liz Puffer, Cynthia Petty and Katie Edwards. At Fern Creek, Linda Popham has been a full-time pastor since 1993.
Warren asked the Southern Baptist delegates during the meeting to “agree to disagree” on the subject of having female pastors.
Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback Church, makes an appeal to the Southern Baptist Convention during its annual meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday.
(Peter Smith / Associated Press)
“What we share in common is a mutual commitment to the infallibility of God’s word and the great commission of Jesus Christ,” Warren said. “No one is asking any Southern Baptist church to change their theology. I’m not asking you to agree with my church, I’m asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines.”
Saddleback is “eager to turn the corner and focus our attention on the exciting ministry in our near future,” Warren said in a statement. “We wish the best for the SBC and pray for God’s grace upon its future.”
In a news conference after the vote, Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber said women have “broad participation” in voting bodies across member churches and serve as messengers, or representatives at Southern Baptist Conventions.
“It’s just that when we read the Scriptures, we come to the conclusion that the office of pastor, which also means elder or overseer, that that office is limited to men,” he said.
The Southern Baptist Convention banned female pastors in its Faith and Message doctrine, its statement of core beliefs, in 2000.
On Wednesday, Southern Baptist Convention representatives also approved a constitutional amendment through a two-thirds vote to clarify the organization’s stance on women serving as pastors.
The motion, which was brought forth by Virginia pastor Mike Law last year, would add a point stipulating that churches can employ or appoint “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by the Scripture.” It requires another two-thirds vote at next year’s annual meeting to add it to the constitution.
“Southern Baptists know what a pastor is,” said Juan Sanchez, senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, who was in favor of the motion. “The Baptist Faith and Message is clear. However, not all messengers agree. This motion would state in positive language what we believe.”
After the vote reaffirming the decision to oust Saddleback, Warren said in a YouTube video that he wasn’t surprised and that he made his appeal “knowing we weren’t going to win.” He compared the movement to that of William Wilberforce, a British politician who lobbied to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain and triumphed after 17 years.
“I wanted to push the conversation,” Warren said. “I wanted to speak up for millions of Southern Baptist women, who I believe their spiritual gifts and their leadership gifts and talents are being wasted. And we can’t complete the Great Commission if 50% of our population sits on the shelf.”
Warren highlighted that the vote wasn’t unanimous.
“The next generation of Southern Baptists, they’re not here,” he added. “I can guarantee that change will happen at some point.”
Other Southern Baptists have also spoken out against the vote.
Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, aired his grievances with the vote on Twitter.
“Today’s vote is about a social identity order, that the old south wants to maintain on the gender issue in SBC life,” he wrote. “It’s not about scripture order, and identity.”
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The Biden administration proposed changes Wednesday that would enhance overtime protections for millions of U.S. white-collar workers who receive salaries but typically work in relatively low-paying jobs.
More than an estimated 3 million Americans could stand to benefit from the plan when they work more than 40 hours a week. Will you? Here is a rundown of the new rules.
What are the changes the Biden administration is proposing?
The proposed changes by the U.S. Department of Labor would make workers who receive salaries of up to $1,059 per week, or $55,068 annually, eligible for overtime pay. Typically, overtime is broadly defined as a rate of at least one and half times regular pay and is granted after a worker has exceeded 40 hours in a week. Salaried workers are usually exempt from overtime pay rules that apply to hourly workers.
What are the exisiting regulations regarding salaried workers?
Currently, only salaried workers who are paid up to $684 per week, or $35,568 annually, qualify for overtime pay. Those rules have been in effect since Jan. 1, 2020. Generally, employees of enterprises that gross $500,000 or more are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which covers overtime pay. That means all but the smallest of businesses must adhere to the rules.
Why is the administration updating the rules now ?
The Labor Department notes that since the last increase went into effect there have been consistent increases in wages, meaning fewer salaried workers qualify for overtime even if they are doing the same job. The proposal also calls for automatically updating the earnings threshold every three years — something the Obama administration had proposed in 2015.
How many workers will the change affect?
The administration estimates that 3.4 million workers will benefit from the change. Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, said he expected the fast-food and retail industries where supervisory wages are low to be affected the most.
Is there any sense of how much they will benefit?
The department estimates that in the first year, the rule will put $1.2 billion in employees’ pockets, both in the form of more overtime pay and also salary increases by employers to ensure their white-collar workers will be exempt from the new rules.
Will I benefit if I live in California?
The proposed raising of the salary threshold will not affect California workers, who already benefit from a more generous standard. Salaried workers in California are eligible for overtime if they are paid up to $64,480, or twice the state minimum wage of $15.50 per hour.
What do businesses think of the proposal?
The National Retail Federation, which represents an industry expected to be heavily affected, issued a statement of concern. David French, senior vice president of government relations, said the proposed increase “is significantly higher than the rate of inflation. Further, the attempt to tie the hands of future administrations through automatic increases exceeds the Department’s authority.”
What happens next?
A rule-making process starts and interested parties have 60 days to comment on the proposal once it is published in the Federal Register. The last time changes were proposed in 2019, they went into effect Jan. 1. the following year.
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A Texas UPS driver fell ill while working during a scorching heat wave and later died.
According to a statement from UPS, Christopher Begley, 57, died this week shortly after becoming sick earlier this month while on his route in North Texas, where the high temperature at the time topped 100 degrees. The exact cause of death has yet to be determined, and authorities are investigating,
“We train our people to recognize the symptoms of heat stress, and we respond immediately to any request for help,” the delivery giant told CBS MoneyWatch. “We are cooperating with the authorities as they continue to investigate the cause of death.”
The death comes roughly a month after UPS struck an agreement with the Teamsters Union that would require the company to install air conditioning in its delivery vans, among other improvements to drivers’ working conditions.
Begley, who worked at UPS for 27 years, first told managers that he was feeling sick on August 23 and was removed from service that same day, according to UPS. Begley later requested and received several days off from work, the company added.
UPS “immediately responded” to the driver’s call and “made sure he had water and was resting in a cool environment,” the company said. Begley denied medical assistance “multiple times” after falling ill, telling the company he had recovered, according to UPS.
UPS managers found out several days later that Begley was in the hospital, where he died shortly afterward, the package carrier said in its statement.
Heat-related illness on the rise as extreme temps take their toll
02:30
Installing AC units in UPS’ delivery trucks was a major issue for union members as they threatened to strike this summer before ratifying a new contract on August 22.
Last year, photos taken by UPS drivers showed thermometers in the company’s trucks were reading temperatures of up to roughly 120 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a post from a Teamsters group on X (formerly known as Twitter). Last summer, a video of a UPS driver collapsing from apparent heat exhaustion also sparked public outrage.
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Taco Bell is exploring a new way to serve Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
The fast food chain will begin testing a Mountain Dew Baja Blast Gelato on Thursday, Aug. 31, at one location in Irvine. The drive-thru is at 4101 Campus Drive, near UC Irvine.
The dessert will cost $2.99 for a 3.6-ounce serving, according to a news release.
This is the first time gelato has been on a Taco Bell menu, it said.
The test will last two weeks or as long as supplies last.
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Electric bill shocking? Natural gas bill igniting a slow burn? Folks love to blame all that on the California Public Utilities Commission, which critics say has rarely met a rate increase it didn’t like.
The state auditor isn’t quite that harsh, but the watchdog agency’s probe of the CPUC and its in-house Solomon-the-Wise/Protector-of-the-People, the Public Advocate’s office, finds weaknesses in their oversight of California’s utility monopolies.
“Our assessment focused on electricity and natural gas rate increases, and we determined that the CPUC and Cal Advocates need to strengthen their monitoring of utilities’ costs, and the CPUC needs to provide greater transparency when authorizing rate changes,” said California State Auditor Grant Parks in a report to the governor and legislature released Tuesday, Aug. 29.
“(B)oth agencies can better protect customers by implementing certain improvements to their oversight.”
All charts by the California State Auditor
The auditor looked at rates for California’s Big Four utilities: Southern California Edison, the Southern California Gas Company, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).
The rates for all four have been rising, and regional electricity rates are among the highest in the nation. You already knew that, but here’s the skinny in black and white. Over the course of 2022:
Electricity rates for each of the three utilities jumped between 16% and 23%.
Natural gas rates skyrocketed between 27% and 162%.
Wildfire mitigation contributed to rising electricity rates, as did more people opting for rooftop solar. (Fixed costs to deliver electricity don’t change when folks buy less electricity, so higher rates are needed to recover those costs.)
The war in Ukraine pushed gas prices higher, as did an unusually cold winter and natural gas pipeline disruptions.
Utility operating expenses jumped 5% (SDG&E) to 37% (Edison) for the four utilities between their two most recently approved general rate cases. (The PUC grants rate hikes in so-called “general rate cases” every three or so years).
Last year brought on unexpected rate increases because actual costs were higher than the utilities anticipated. They needed to make up the difference.
The auditor said the PUC and Advocate must be more thorough and transparent. They “lack processes to ensure that utilities’ projected costs are not overstated.”
With gas rate hikes pending, and the war over changes to rooftop solar bill credits still raging, and a proposal to cover fixed electric grid costs based on income causing controversy, there’s no time like the present.
Weaknesses
Every few years, the utilities crunch numbers and ask the PUC for permission to hike rates to cover expected costs and provide a sufficient “rate of return” — i.e., profit.
Sometimes, though, profit turns out to be substantially more than what was projected. And no one really does anything about it.
For nine of the last 10 years, SDG&E earned more than the CPUC-authorized rate of return. “Reviewing how much the utility earned compared to the authorized rate of return and identifying where the utility was able to gain efficiencies should be a critical first step in ensuring that the utility’s projected costs were appropriate,” the auditor said.
“However, the CPUC and Cal Advocates lack a process to identify areas in which the utilities achieved cost savings.”
When the actual rate of return significantly exceeds the authorized rate of return, the CPUC should require the utilities to explain what happened and provide supporting documents. That information should be published and objectively analyzed, the auditor said.
Sometimes, utilities ask the PUC for rate increases to recoup unexpected costs, such as to prevent or clean up after wildfires. After those hikes are granted, though, little is done to ensure that the extra work was actually done.
“(I)f neither the CPUC nor Cal Advocates strengthens its efforts to verify whether the utility has completed the work in question… they risk allowing the utility to inappropriately recover costs from its customers that it did not, in fact, incur,” the audit said. “Such verification could involve, for example, site visits, photographic evidence of work completed, or satellite imagery.”
And sometimes, the CPUC speaks in a language folks just don’t understand.
“The CPUC also lacks an effective process for ensuring that utility customers are fully informed of the reasons their utility is raising their rates,” the auditor said.
“The CPUC neither clearly and comprehensively communicates the reasons for the cost increases it authorizes at the start of each cycle, nor has it established a mechanism to clearly communicate the reasons for rate increases that utilities seek midcycle. By not providing customers with that information, the CPUC neglects opportunities to improve the public’s understanding of why rates are increasing.”
And finally, Cal Advocates needs to monitor the utilities’ balancing accounts — the mechanism by which utilities track authorized and actual costs and revenues — to ensure that rate adjustments are warranted.
The CPUC and the Public Advocate’s office said they’ll do some of what the auditor suggests, though they object to this and that bit. (You can read their full responses at http://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2022-115/index.html).
“We understand the impact of rate increases on the lives of Californians,” said CPUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper by email. “Our focus is making sure utilities provide safe, affordable services while looking out for families and individuals who depend on them.
“Transparency throughout this process is vital to us – we’re committed to keeping utility customers informed about our decisions. We value the California State Auditor’s work and the opportunity to build on our efforts.”
Edison, for its part, is still reviewing and digesting the report.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are bracing for the next round of rate hikes, which go to the CPUC for approval every three or four years. Until then, we’re shutting off the lights, because this electric bill is killing us.
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Two friends walked into a diner to speak about the magic of a dead man.
“Amazing what he left behind,” said Garry Parmett, an autograph collector, halfway through an omelet. “He had the golden era of Hollywood in those shoe boxes.”
“Everyone who was anybody,” added David Kaye, a bookseller. “He had the whole cast of ‘The Godfather.’”
“Jesus,” said Parmett. “He knew where to go.”
“Dedication,” said Kaye, who finished his eggs and nodded for the bill.
“You couldn’t do that today,” Parmett said.
“No way,” said Kaye. “Impossible.”
The man in question was John Verzi, who for six decades collected around 25,000 autographs and took more than 12,000 pictures of everyone from Audrey Hepburn to Brigitte Bardot to Jimi Hendrix and Alice Cooper. Then he disappeared. He ended up in a trailer park in Vegas, watching soap operas in the afternoon, playing casino slots at night, losing and winning in stretches, driving home in the ghost hours in a three-cylinder car his neighbor fixed from time to time.
Brigitte Bardot attends an event promoting her new film “Viva Maria.” The date handwritten on the slide is December 18, 1965. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)Jimi Hendrix is photographed in the back seat of a car. The date handwritten on the slide is October 8, 1971. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)
When he died in 2018, Verzi was 83, alone and, according to friends, nearly broke.His nephew took his ashes to Malibu and scattered them along the ocean in a cove beyond Cher’s house.
It was a fitting send-off. Verzi had yearned to be close to the stars since he was a boy watching horror flicks with his older brother. He sought entrance into their realm, not as an interloper or opportunist, but as a man with an ingratiating air who could recite the credit lines of every working actor. He was at home along the celebrity rope line at movie premieres,knew his way around the old Ambassador Hotel, kept a careful eye on the stage door at Merv Griffin studios and took his best photographs of people like Charles Bronson and Tab Hunterat the unemployment office at 6725 Santa Monica Boulevard.
Charles Bronson, in shirtsleeves, stops for a photograph in a parking lot, possibly at the Hollywood unemployment office at 6725 Santa Monica Blvd. The date handwritten on the slide is Sept. 18, 1961.
(Jon Verzi)
He didn’t do it for money or recognition. He rarely sold a photo or a signature in what Bonhams auction house called “arguably the greatest autograph collection ever seen.”Verzi kept what he gathered in the dim sanctuary of the trailer he bequeathed in a handwritten will to Cherry Tolbert, his best friend at the Venice Post Office, where he had worked for 20 years, sorting letters, correcting ZIP Codes and rising to finance clerk.
How one woman’s obsession with a movie star led the Los Angeles Public Library to win an auction for 12,500 celebrity photographs—most of them never published.
Tolbert stood in that narrow home days after Verzi’s death, staring into rows ofmeticulously curated archives, the legacy of an eccentric who kept a prayer book and listened to Ben E. King and The Shirelles. She contacted Kaye, a memorabilia dealer, who sold the autographs for about $80,000 in a blind auction won by collectors David Wentink and Tom Kramer. The Los Angeles Public Library acquired the 12,500 photographs for $144,000 through a public auction last year at Bonhams.
“I’ve become obsessed with [Verzi],” said Wendy Horowitz, an archivist cataloging the pictures for the library’s photo collection. “This was his escape, and you can see on the faces of the people that a lot of them loved him. He got everyone. Movie stars. TV actors. Rock musicians. French actors. Joe Louis. Robert F. Kennedy. It’s amazing. But the historical value of this collection is the people he got who weren’t A-listers. Child actors. Obscure character actors. I mean he went to the premiere of the soft-porn ‘Flesh Gordon.’”
It was a life of getting to places fast, of tips, winks and confidences. Verzi drove a VW Beetle and traveled with cameras and colored index cards for autographs. He’d get a nod that Frank Sinatra might be in Beverly Hills having a drink or Lucille Ball was playing backgammon at Pips or Jim Morrison of the Doors had arrived at a West Hollywood theater to see “The Beard,” a play that was raided by police for a sex scene. Verzi kept tabs and followed whispers.
Lucille Ball arrives at Romanoff’s restaurant in Beverly Hills for a dinner given by Harold Mirisch honoring director Billy Wilder. The date on the slide is Sept. 10, 1961.
(Jon Verzi)
Bruce Lee attend an entertainment industry event. The date handwritten on the slide is November 26, 1966. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)Elvis Presley sits in the backseat of his car as he leaves a movie studio lot. The date handwritten on the slide is June 7, 1962. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)
“My favorite film was ‘The Women’ from 1939,” said John Paschal, a photographer who as a teenager befriended Verzi. “John knew I loved that movie. He asked me one day to drive with him to the old folks actors home in Woodland Hills. We walked in and he had a big smile on his face.
“He said, ‘See that little old lady over there? That’s Norma Shearer. She’s in your film.’ Norma was once the queen of Hollywood. She was married to [producer] Irving Thalberg and there she was sitting in a wheelchair with dementia.”
“John knew everything about everybody in the movies,” Paschal said. “He respected that world. He lived and breathed it. ”
Verzi was a contradiction and a riddle. He was dignified but had a trigger temper. He was vain and fiercely territorial and would get depressed on days he didn’t get a picture. “He had to conquer,” Paschal said.
He was a savant who didn’t fit into the real world as easily as the make-believe one. In the 1960s, that was a refuge for a gay man who wore a magenta cape coat and appeared at the homes of aging film stars who reminisced about the times before the talkies when they glittered in black-and-white and seldom contemplated the impermanence of fame.
“John knew everything about everybody in the movies. He respected that world. He lived and breathed it. ”
— John Paschal
“He was very kind and gentle and easy to talk to, but odd, yet as a child it was a fun odd,” said Verzi’s step-nieceMeagan DeHart, who recalled girlhood visits to her uncle’s West Hollywood apartment and the time she spent with him in Las Vegas years later. “He always slept on the floor. He’d drive us to the homes of famous people. I invited him to our home for Thanksgiving in 2008. He was exactly the same as when I was a child — his sweet, awkward self. A little bit on the spectrum.”
Tall and moving like a slight breeze through a window crack, Verzi had deep set eyes and thick brows. In his younger days, before the comb-overs and the hand that lifted his mouth when he smiled, he looked a bit like Christian Bale, his face as smooth as his palms. He had a cosmetology license for electrolysis and as he aged, like the stars he had photographed, he felt the urge to recall that he had once been handsome. He needed glasses but preferred a magnifying glass. A friend said he covered the mirrors in his home so he wouldn’t have to look at what the years had thieved.
Actor Tony Curtis and his wife, actress Janet Leigh, are photographed in their car as they arrive at an evening event hosted by Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher at PJ’s restaurant, 8151 Santa Monica Blvd. The slide is dated June 29, 1961.
(Jon Verzi)
But then there’d be a flash of confidence.
“Don’t I look good today?” he would say.
He was overbearing to some. Actress Sylvia Sidney was reported to say when she saw Verzi: “Get that man out of here.”
Verzi was born Jack Robin Verzi in Santa Clara County in 1934. His father, John Robert Verzi, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was the wealthy owner of hardware stores in the San Francisco area. His mother, Elizabeth, to whom he was very close, collected owl figurines and liked to drink, according to relatives. In the 1950s, Verzi studied elementary school education at Brigham Young University and moved to Hawaii to teach. He quit soon after and worked at a Honolulu hotel before moving to San Francisco and later Los Angeles in 1960.
“It wasn’t the pandemonium it is today with all the bodyguards and security. You could go out and see major stars without all these screaming crowds.”
— Garry Parmett
He grew estranged from a father who was dismayed that his gay, Catholic-raised son had quit teaching and abandoned a chance at a corporate job at Chevron. “My dad pretty much wrote him off at that point,” said Verzi’s stepbrother, Melvin, who refers to himself as a gun collector and a onetime professional gambler. “Jack — I always called him Jack — had an extremely high IQ. For a long time, he wanted to change his name from Jack Robin to John Robert Verzi Jr. My dad absolutely forbid it.”
Verzi’s relationship with his father — who divorced his mother, remarried and diedin 2002 — was bruising and indelible. “He’d shut down any talk of family,” said a friend. But Verzi signed his will, as if in defiance of his father, as John Robert Verzi Jr. Despite the bitterness between them, father and son shared a love of photography: “When my father died, he had 21 cameras and thousands of slides,” said Melvin. “My whole life is documented in slides.”
A glimpse of Marilyn Monroe captured by the photographer as she leaves a dinner party honoring Billy Wilder at the Beverly Hills restaurant Romanoff’s. The slide is dated Sept. 10, 1961.
(Jon Verzi)
Verzi arrived in Los Angeles when a matinee ticket to “Spartacus” cost $1.80. He copped a press pass through a friend and ventured across a city of fan magazines and scandals unfolding in a neverland of ballrooms, canyons and hushed bars where Clark Gable might wander out of a restaurant and sign autographs for a few collectors waiting by his car. Verzi photographed Sophia Loren in a fur coat and diamonds at a movie premiere; caught Marilyn Monroe — smiling as if he recognized him — leaving a dinner party honoring director Billy Wilder; and, in a candid moment in 1961, got Janet Leigh, one year after she starred in “Psycho”, powdering her nose in a car while Tony Curtis sat nonplussed in the driver’s seat.
Verzi seemed to know everybody. Through the post office, he had access to addresses, including the home of Stan Laurel, half of the 1930s Laurel and Hardy comedy team, where Verzi was invited into the living room. He was as prolific as he was bold. Over 11 months in 1960 and 1961, Verzi, who often traveled to New York and Europe and showed up at Hollywood awards shows in a tuxedo, photographed nearly 300 celebrities including Cyd Charisse, Paul Newman, Ronald Reagan, Warren Beatty and Judy Garland.
Los Angeles, California-Judy Garland, in a silk brocade evening coat, following her sold out performance at the Hollywood Bowl. The date handwritten on the slide is September 17, 1961. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)Warren Beatty next to a car in a parking lot. The date handwritten on the slide is October 28, 1961. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)
“It wasn’t the pandemonium it is today with all the bodyguards and security,” said Parmett, owner of Celebrity Circle, a memorabilia business. “You could go out and see major stars without all these screaming crowds. What do you have now? Reality TV people with no talent showing off outlandish lifestyles, these so-called influencers. It’s very, very sad. There’s no class anymore.”
Parmett was getting into the autograph scene when he met Verzi, who was “not a particularly friendly guy,” he said, adding, “He didn’t like anyone on what he thought was his territory.” But Parmett admired Verzi for “pounding the sidewalk for decades.” If you wanted to get a signature or a photo, Parmett said, you had to be as patient and diligent as a magpie or a fisherman.
By the late 1960s, when independent filmmakers were challenging the old studio system, Verzi, who wore bell bottoms, Hawaiian shirts and loved to rollerskate, lived in West Hollywood and took a job at the post office. His camera caught the faces of change: Sharon Tate, Dennis Hopper, Mick Jagger, and into the 1970s with George C. Scott and Diana Ross and the 1980s with Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. He understood the Hollywood gaze that over time widened and grew mercenary. His collection became a private conceit, scrupulously named and dated in the penmanship of a monk, stored in boxes and metal bins like a man in a film hiding riches in the shadows.
Actor Asher Dann, photographed while exiting the state unemployment office at 6725 Santa Monica Blvd. His unemployment benefit card is visible in his hands, along with some cash. The slide is dated Dec. 4, 1962.
(Jon Verzi)
“He loved photographing beautiful men,” said Horowitz, pointing to a slide in her office in the Central Library downtown. “Here’s a matador. He shot valets. Bodybuilders. He loved Matt Dillon. He has a lot of shirtless pictures of John Schneider (Dukes of Hazzard).”
The collection includes no lover or partner. “I think he was pretty much in the closet until he died,” a relative said.
Paschal was in his late teens when he movedfrom the Valley to Hollywood, a “starstruck” kid with a camera. “John took me under his wing. I’d be at Spago or someplace and I’d call John and say, ‘Natalie Wood’s here with Laurence Olivier.’” He added: “John was much older than me. He knew I was gay. He’d speak more freely around me. ‘Oh, he’s good looking.’ But John was always respectful. He was a nice man. I’m in my 60s now, and trust me, being young and gay in the 70s I met a lot of pervies. He was not.”
“It’s a little sad, maybe,” said Paschal, who runs a studio that specializes in Hollywood and entertainment photography. “The way his life turned out.”
“He loved photographing beautiful men. Here’s a matador. He shot valets. Bodybuilders. He loved Matt Dillon. He has a lot of shirtless pictures of John Schneider (Dukes of Hazzard).”
— Wendy Horowitz
Verzi received a large sum of money and quit the post office in 1989. The amount, according to relatives and friends, was between $300,000 and $400,000. The source is unclear. Melvin said Verzi inherited nontaxable securities from a rich man he had befriended.
“That’s when he bought his place in Vegas,” said Paschal.
Verzi moved into a trailer at the Riviera Mobile Home Park (Space 97) east of downtown Las Vegas. He gambled at night at Club Fortune Casino and other venues beyond the glare of the Strip.He’d eat complimentary dinners and wander to the slots. “He was exacting. He knew those machines,” said his stepbrother. “His winnings for a time far outnumbered his losses.” He’d sometimes order breakfast at Blueberry Hill Family Restaurant, but he spent his days in front of a Philco TV watching soap operas amid newspapers, a Rudolph Valentino movie poster, a painting of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and laminated pictures of his casino jackpots.
Sharon Tate attends an evening event. The slide is dated March 30, 1967.
(Jon Verzi)
Los Angeles, California-Rudy Ray Moore is photographed in front of an adult movie theater in Hollywood. The handwritten date on the slide is September 28, 1975. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)Ann Dvorak, in the backyard of her Hawaiian home. The date handwritten on the slide is October 8, 1971. (Photograph by Jon Verzi) (ONE TIME USE)(Photograph by Jon Verzi/Photograph by Jon Verzi)
“He kept his trailer dark with thick curtains so the sunlight wouldn’t bother him,” said Victoria Millett Ramirez, a friend who worked with Verzi at the post office and who, with Tolbert, would send Verzi money when his luck turned bad. “He’d say you can call me but not at such and such a time because he was watching his shows. He loved ‘The Young and the Restless’ and Judge Judy.”
John Schachtschneider lived in a nearby trailer. A union man retired from the heating and air conditioning trade, Schachtschneider would fill the tires, change the oil and repair Verzi’s Geo Metro, which replaced his VW Beetle:“He’d come home from gambling around 1 a.m. He didn’t smoke or drink. He told me he lost $750,000 gambling. Gamblers are used to ups and downs. He kept to himself. Friends?” He laughed. “Me. He left me his car when he died. I cleaned it up and got 900 bucks for it.”
Verzi never showed Schachtschneider his autographs or photographs. “I had no idea,” he said. “He liked looking stuff up on the internet. He looked up stuff about me. He found my dad’s name and other stuff I didn’t even know about me.”
In 2006, Verzi contacted a distant cousin, Shawn Doyle, a genealogist and a former nuclear plant security guardfrom Oswego County, N.Y. Verzi had years earlier made trips to Europe to trace his ancestry and was intent on exploring his maternal grandmother’s side of the family, which hailed from Glencolumbkille, a village in County Donegal on the west coast of Ireland. Doyle said Verzi was an exacting researcher who wrote emails — many in the early morning hours — the way people once wrote letters.
Aretha Franklin attends an industry luncheon. The slide is dated March 5, 1973.
(Jon Verzi)
“John had gone to Ireland many years before. He took pictures of thatched cottages and these aged people,” said Doyle. “He got stories from them. He took Kodachrome color slides.They would talk about this relative from California who drove a nice rental car and wore good clothes.”
The email exchanges between Doyle and Verzi — who wrote in caps — reminisced about ancestors going back to the 1800s. Other times, Verzi would share a personal note: “I fell asleep listening to 1920s jazz music. Now, I’m starving! I will get cleaned up, go out into the windy night, dine & gamble. Till tomorrow … John.”
By then, much of Verzi’s life was the solitary unraveling of the past — even his boyhood when he and his brother, Jerry, watched horror films and collected biographies of stars. Jerry, who joined the Air Force and died in 1996, resented his brother for being gay. Verzi escaped such intolerance and travails by listening to Brenda Lee or Bobby Darin. The real world, though, often intruded. On Dec. 30, 2013, Verzi, who collected a post office pension and social security, posted on Facebook: “Pay off my debts!”
Brad Pitt attends an evening event. February, 1988.
(Jon Verzi)
For a man who took thousands of pictures, Verzi posted only three on his Facebook page. A white wooden fence running along rose pink blooms. A black-and-white portrait from his youth. And another portrait tinted in amber, his hair combed forward, his eyes fixed on the lens. Posted three years before his death, the photograph is of a man decades younger, an image one hopes will survive, like the line from a Paul Simon song: “A time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph. Preserve your memories; They’re all that’s left you.”
“I think he had a tough life,” said Tolbert’s daughter, Tina. “But he never sold any of his photographs or autographs. They were precious to him. That’s heartbreaking to me. He’d go to the casinos and the cheap cafes. He was struggling at the end. He’d go without air conditioning to save money. My mom would cut his hair. Her heart went out to him over what happened with his family.”
Verzi’s autograph collection alone, according to collector David Wentink, might have gone for hundreds of thousands of dollars if Verzi had broken it up and sold it in pieces. A rare autograph of Al Lettieri, a character actor who appeared in “The Godfather,” was worth about $7,500, Wentink said. Collectors like Verzi, he added, “could change their lives in days or weeks but they just can’t let go. The pain of giving up something is more powerful than the rewards they might receive.”
Verzi’s nephew, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, said his uncle “was happy going to the casinos and gambling all night. He had friends all over the country. He never seemed down. He was a simple man. He’d say, ‘Never take me to the Strip.’ He hated it there. He loved the little life on the opposite side of town.”
Verzi was pronounced dead in his trailer at 11:25 p.m. on May 18, 2018. The cause was complications from hypertensive heart disease. Cherry Tolbert had not heard from him in days. The police were called and Tolbert, who had the will, arrived a day or two later, followed by Verzi’s nephew. “I took some of his record collection and a Shirley Temple and a John Wayne autograph,” the nephew said. “I didn’t take the slides. I thought, ‘Nobody looks at slides anymore.’”
In the following weeks,Tolbert and Ramirez went through the trailer, collecting shoe boxes of autographs and metal bins of slides, including those of about 200 French actors and pop singers, which Verzi kept in a cabinet by the refrigerator. Tolbert was left everything, including rosaries, a prayer book and a picture of a child who appeared as if a ghost in an old frame. Verzi asked in the will that she make a “generous gift” to the Shriners Hospitals for Children “in my name and that of my mother.”
Tolbert didn’t know the value of the pictures and autographs. She contacted David Kaye, who owns a bookstore in Woodland Hills and has been dealing in memorabilia for nearly half a century. Her inquiry led Kaye to immerse himself in a stranger’s painstaking obsession.
“You’re always skeptical when you get a call like that. ‘Oh, my relative died and I’ve got a great collection,’ said Kaye. “But I don’t dismiss anyone. Cherry sounded like a nice lady. She wasn’t overselling.”
Column One
A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times.
Tolbert emailed photos of the autographs to Kaye. “I see Grace Kelly. Very rare. Humphrey Bogart. Very, very rare. I see Bobby Kennedy. This is intriguing. I got into my SUV and drove to the trailer.” Kaye spent months going through the collection. The autographs were sold in bulk to Wentink and Kramer; many are now for sale on eBay for $15 to $25, including some by a dealer who goes by “brucelovestheocean.”
The photographs will become part of the library’s permanent collection. Before Tolbert died in January, Tina said her mother donated money to Shriners in the name of Verzi and his mother. The amount was not known.
“He probably dedicated every spare moment of his life to this,” said Kaye. “He was my most unique find.”
One of Verzi’s pictures shows him sitting next to Jane Wyman, a 1950s movie star and former wife of Ronald Reagan. She is wearing a blue embroidered dress with a pearl necklace and red lipstick. She and Verzi, dressed in a pinstripe collar shirt, are holding open a book with a black-and-white portrait of a much younger Wyman, eyebrows arched, hand to her face, bracelet on wrist; her past a splendid, vanishing vapor against the present.
Verzi looks toward the camera. He is there but he knows his place, as if a bird content to peer from a branch into the garden.
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Two Orange County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a hatchet-wielding man they suspected was breaking into a home in Midway City on Wednesday morning, authorities said.
Sheriff’s officials said deputies were called to the 14000 block of Van Buren Street in a residential area near Westminster Memorial Park and Mortuary a little before 5 a.m.
There, two deputies shot to death a man inside a home.
The Sheriff’s Department did not disclose any other details, including the age of the deceased, his actions or that of deputies leading up to the incident or the number of shots fired.
The department said the initial call was to investigate a report of someone “breaking into a house and vandalizing property.”
#OCSDPIO Deputy-involved shooting in Midway City near 1400 block of Van Buren. Deputies dispatched just before 5am to a subject breaking into a house and vandalizing property. A deputy-involved shooting occurred and subject is deceased at scene. More info to follow, PIO en route.
“From what I know, the suspect was armed with a hatchet,” said Sgt. Mike Woodroof, Orange County sheriff’s public information officer. “Whatever behavior preceded the shooting is being reviewed by the district attorney investigators.”
The man was declared dead at the scene by Orange County firefighters.
Parts of the block where the shooting took place were temporarily closed due to the investigation.
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A protest erupted Tuesday at a Google Cloud’s conference in San Francisco, as employees critical of the company’s contract with Israel’s military sought to ratchet up pressure at the company’s annual showcase of its latest products and technology.
Protesters lined up as attendees of the annual Google Cloud Next conference flowed out of the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco for a scheduled 5 p.m. happy hour, having wrapped up speaker sessions and workshops for the day.
Some 30 protesters, including former Google employees and local community activists, chained themselves together on Howard Street, which runs through the convention center, between two large glass buildings, and overhead on a nearby pedestrian footbridge. Protesters unfurled a large banner reading “Google Project Nimbus fuels Israeli apartheid.”
More than a dozen current Google workers positioned themselves nearby, passing out fliers explaining their objections to Project Nimbus, a $1.2-billion contract that Google and Amazon Web Services entered into with the Israeli government and military.
A group of workers has opposed Project Nimbus since it launched in 2021, concerned that Google’s technology could help the Israeli Defense Forces surveil and harm Palestinians.
In April, Google parent Alphabet reported that its 15-year-old cloud business had reached profitability in the first quarter, followed by a second quarter of profit from April through June.
Workers said Project Nimbus is the kind of lucrative contract that neglects ethical guardrails that outspoken members of Google’s workforce have demanded in recent years.
“I am very worried that Google has no scruples if they’re going to work with the Israeli government,” said Joshua Marxen, a Google Cloud software engineer who helped to organize the protest. “Google has given us no reason to trust them.”
The Tuesday protest represents continuing tension between Google’s workforce and its senior management over how the company’s technology is used.
In recent years Google workers have objected to military contracts, challenging Google’s work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and its role in a defense program building artificial intelligence tools used to refine drone strikes. Workers have alleged that the company has cracked down on information-sharing, siloed controversial projects and enforced a workplace culture that increasingly punishes them for speaking out.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Tuesday protest and workers’ concerns over Project Nimbus.
The Israeli Finance Ministry announced its contract with Google and Amazon in April 2021 as a “project is intended to provide the government, the defense establishment and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution.”
Google has largely refused to release details of the contract, the specific capabilities Israel will receive, or how they will be used. In July 2022, the Intercept reported that training documents for Israeli government personnel indicate Google is providing software that the company claims can recognize people, gauge emotional states from facial expressions and track objects in video footage.
Google Cloud spokesperson Atle Erlingsson told Wired in September 2022 that the company proudly supports Israel’s government and said critics had misrepresented Project Nimbus. “Our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads,” he told Wired. Erlingsson, however, acknowledged that the contract will provide Israel’s military access to Google technology.
Former Google worker Ariel Koren, who has long been publicly critical of Project Nimbus, said “it adds insult to injury for Palestinian activists and Palestinians generally” that Google Cloud’s profitability milestone coincides with the 75th anniversary of the Nakba — which refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians following creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
In March 2022, the Times reported allegations by Koren — at the time a product marketing manager at Google for Education — that Google had retaliated against her for criticizing the contract, issuing a directive that she move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose her job. Google told The Times that it investigated the incident and found no evidence of retaliation.
When Koren resigned from Google in August 2022 she published a memo explaining reasons for her departure, writing that “Google systematically silences Palestinian, Jewish, Arab and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights.”
Koren said Google’s apathy make her and others believe more vigorous protest actions are justified. “This is a concrete disruption that is sending a clear message to Google: we won’t allow for business as usual, so long as you continue to profit off of a nefarious contract that expands Israeli apartheid.”
Mohammad Khatami, a YouTube software engineer based in New York, participated in a small protest of Project Nimbus at a July Amazon Web Services conference in Manhattan.
Khatami said major layoffs at Google announced in January pushed him to get more involved in the Alphabet Workers Union, which provides resources to Khatami and other union members in an anti-military working group — though the union has not taken a formal stance on Project Nimbus.
“Greed and corporate interests were being put ahead of workers and I think the layoffs just illustrated that for me very clearly,” Khatami said.
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As pandemic-era funding sunsets, food insecurity is on the rise
As pandemic-era funding sunsets, food insecurity is on the rise
02:46
During the pandemic, some low-income families in the U.S. received extra federal aid for buying groceries, a government effort that has since been scaled back. The result is soaring food insecurity among poor households with children, with more than 4 in 10 families who had received the benefit now skipping meals, according to new research.
That’s double the rate of people who missed meals compared with a year ago, according to the study from Propel, which makes an app for food-stamp recipients to check their balances. Propel surveyed more than 2,800 of its users from August 1-14 about their levels of food insecurity, which is defined as not having enough food to lead an active and healthy life.
The government program, called the pandemic EBT or P-EBT, was authorized by Congress in 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak shuttered schools across the nation. The plan helped families with children by providing them with money to buy groceries to replace the school meals kids were missing in school, but since last summer funding for P-EBT has dropped by 70%, Propel noted.
To be sure, the nation has largely regained its footing economically since the early days of the pandemic, and public schools have long since reopened. But the loss of nutritional aid for low-income households appears to be increasing hunger around the U.S. even as many families continue to grapple with inflation and elevated grocery prices.
Oakland organization tackles food insecurity in food desert areas
04:01
The share of households with P-EBT benefits that skipped meals in August rose to 42% — more than double the 20% rate a year earlier, the survey found. About 55% of households receiving P-EBT benefits said they ate less in August, up from 27% a year earlier.
P-EBT benefits are facing further cutbacks because of the government officially declaring an end of the public health emergency in May. The program must distribute all its funds by September 30, and Congress this summer had trimmed the benefit to $120 per child, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At its peak, the program had provided about $250 to $400 per child.
Households with kids are also experiencing other financial hardships. About 1 in 5 households with children were behind on their rent last month, compared to just 10% of childless households. And almost one-third of families with children were behind on their utility payments, compared with 16% of childless households, it added.
Over a seven-day period ending August 7, roughly 12% of U.S. adults — or nearly 23 million people — lived in a household where there was sometimes or often not enough to eat, according to Census data. In states such as Mississippi, that figure approached 20%.
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COSTA MESA — Surprises? You wanted surprise cuts from Chargers general manager Tom Telesco?
Didn’t happen.
Since the Chargers decided to run it back with a roster that finished with a 10-7 regular-season record last season and advanced to the playoffs for only the third time in Telesco’s first 10 years as GM, it stood to reason that Tuesday’s cuts to an NFL-mandated 53 players would be predictable.
After all, offseason moves were minimal, with the noteworthy exception of the addition of free agent linebacker Eric Kendricks following the departure of free agent linebacker Drue Tranquill. So, the roster assembled for the upcoming season was bound to look very much like last season’s roster.
Naturally, things are likely to change.
Injuries and inadequate play could necessitate alterations sooner rather than later.
Nothing is set in stone.
The season begins Sept. 10.
“I feel like it’s time to play regular-season football,” Telesco said when asked during a video conference call with beat reporters about his confidence level in this roster going into the season and whether this team was a deeper team than last season. “That’s the mindset right now.”
Any other opinions at this moment were “just words,” he said.
OK.
“We look at this on a daily basis, the whole roster and how it’s going to fit together,” he later said when asked about depth at one position versus depth at another. “Tony Dungy used to say this a lot: It’s not necessarily the best 53 players, it’s the 53 players that best fit what you’re going to do with your football team.”
Telesco referred to the Hall of Fame player and former coach.
“There is a difference there as far as how you put your football team together,” Telesco added. “We put a lot of work into all these positions and you try to be right. You try to put the perfect roster together. The perfect roster is difficult to find, but we all strive for it. But this is how it shook out this year.”
Among the players cut from the training camp roster were offensive lineman Zack Bailey, wide receiver Keelan Doss, quarterback Max Duggan, wide receiver John Hightower, edge rusher Carlo Kemp, defensive lineman David Moa, defensive lineman CJ Okoye and defensive back Mark Webb Jr.
Okoye will be an additional member of the practice squad when it’s announced Wednesday. Okoye, a Nigeria native who played his first organized football game in the Chargers’ exhibition game against the Rams on Aug. 12, joined the team as part of the NFL’s international outreach program.
“He has a really long way to go, but his work ethic has been outstanding,” Telesco said of the 21-year-old Okoye. “It’s something he wants to do. He’s really into this. It’s a passion for him. Our guys love him, as far as our players in the locker room. They feel like he belongs, which is big.”
Bailey lost a training camp battle as the Chargers elected to keep Brenden Jaimes, who served as Duggan’s designated center during two exhibition appearances in addition to toggling between tackle and guard in backup roles. Duggan, a seventh-round draft pick, is likely to make the practice squad.
All of the Chargers’ draft picks, led by wide receiver Quentin Johnston, made the initial roster with the exception of Duggan. Johnston, a first-round pick, and Duggan, a seventh-round selection, were teammates at TCU. Wide receiver Derius Davis, a fourth-round pick, also is from TCU.
“I think they’re all going to have a role on game day,” Telesco said of the 2023 draft picks. “They all showed they belong.”
Safety AJ Finley and running back Elijah Dotson were considered mild upsets to make the team. The Chargers liked Finley, an undrafted rookie from Mississippi, because of his speed and smarts in the defensive backfield. They liked Dotson, an undrafted rookie from Northern Colorado, for many of the same reasons.
The other cuts were more or less expected.
Easton Stick was a clear winner over Duggan for the backup quarterback spot behind Justin Herbert. Dustin Hopkins became expendable after Cameron Dicker won the kicking competition. So, on Monday, Telesco traded Hopkins to the Cleveland Browns for a seventh-round pick in 2025.
“In the end, everything worked out for everybody,” Telesco said.
In addition, wide receiver Jaylen Guyton and defensive lineman Otito Ogbonnia will start the season on the PUP list, ensuring they will be sidelined for the first four games. Defensive lineman Austin Johnson started training camp on the PUP list, but he was recently cleared to play.
Offensive lineman Andrew Trainer will start the season on injured reserve.
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Jeff Horseman grew up in Vermont and honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know.
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Every once in a while, the voices of ghosts emerge to reveal dark chapters in U.S. political history.
The State Department with the CIA last week declassified two 50-year-old documents that had been withheld from public view that shed new light on the military coup in Chile that overthrew the country’s elected president.
One is then-President Nixon’s intelligence briefing notes from the day of the coup, Sept. 11, 1973, marked top secret “For the President Only.” The National Security Archive, a non-governmental research organization, described the papers as some of “the most historically iconic of missing records” on the coup.
“[T]hey contained information that went to President Nixon as a military takeover that he and his top advisor Henry Kissinger had encouraged for three years came to fruition,” the National Security Archive, which studies and stores vast troves of formerly secret official documents, said in a statement.
The coup led to the death of the Chilean president, leftist leader Salvador Allende, and installed years of brutal right-wing military rule headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet in what had been until then a promising young democracy.
While the newly declassified documents don’t substantially change the story, they reveal the considerable amount of detail that Nixon knew about the steps leading to the coup. In addition to the briefing papers from the day of the coup, a second document recounts Nixon’s briefing from two days before the military takeover.
Thousands of Chilean civilians were killed, imprisoned or tortured, with some rounded up by the army and held in a stadium where they met their death.
Within a few years, neighboring Argentina also fell to a brutal military dictatorship, while other countries including Bolivia and Paraguay followed suit. It was a difficult and torturous era in Latin America that slowly shifted to more progressive democracies, although the political dynamics have continued to change, with the return of the right and authoritarians in some countries.
The full extent of the role of the CIA and other U.S. players in the Chile coup has long been debated. While the Nixon administration was not thought to have had a direct hand in executing the coup, it appeared to fit the pattern of numerous so-called regime changes the U.S. clandestinely engineered over the decades in Latin America, Iran and beyond.
As Chile prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the coup that forever changed its course — and that still stands as one of the seminal events in the continent’s history — officials there are eager to learn as much as possible about the back story of those events.
Thousands of documents related to the Chile coup have been declassified over the years. The State Department said Friday it was releasing the new batch now “to allow for a deeper understanding of our shared history” and in the spirit of cementing good relations between Washington and Santiago, where a moderate leftist president took office last year. The Biden administration has sought to nurture friendly relationships with moderate leftists in Latin America as a counterbalance to more radical leaders in the region.
Chilean officials said the release of the documents came in response to their petition ahead of the 50th anniversary.
For the record:
1:12 p.m. Aug. 29, 2023An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Gloria de la Fuente as the foreign minister of Chile. She is the undersecretary of the Chilean Foreign Ministry.
Declassification of the files “promotes the search for truth and reinforces our nations’ commitment to democratic values,” said Gloria de la Fuente, undersecretary of the Chilean Foreign Ministry, in thanking the Biden administration.
“Democracy is memory and also future,” she said.
The coup in Chile saw smoke rise from the besieged presidential palace, La Moneda, as military aircraft bombarded it, an indelible image for many in Latin America.
Nixon and Kissinger, secretary of State during Nixon’s final year in office, were no fans of the Allende government and its leftist leanings, and had sought to block it from assuming office in the first place. The U.S. government of that era favored Pinochet, who for most of his 17 years of rule had good economic and military ties with Washington as he repressed many of his own people, but also built up the Chilean economy.
In Pinochet’s later years, several countries attempted to prosecute him for crimes against humanity, but he died in 2006 before those efforts progressed.
Peter Kornbluh, a researcher for the National Security Archive who has specialized in Chile for years, welcomed the new declassification but questioned why it had taken so long since the information posed no threat to national security. Keeping the documents secret all this time was a “travesty,” he said.
“Key collections of U.S. records that remain secret would be invaluable to an informed debate over the coup and CIA ties to the Chilean secret police,” Kornbluh said, also noting the need to learn more about Pinochet’s role in ordering the 1976 assassination of an Allende-era diplomat, Orlando Letelier, in Washington.
Letelier, a vocal critic of Pinochet, was killed in a car bombing that the U.S. intelligence community said was ordered by Pinochet.
In the newly declassified documents, Nixon is told in an intelligence briefing three days before the coup that it is brewing.
“Navy men plotting to overthrow the government now claim army and air force support,” Nixon was told, according to the declassified briefing document.
Nixon was then erroneously told that the coup does not have broad military support.
“Should hotheads in the navy act in the belief they will automatically receive support from the other services, they could find themselves isolated,” the CIA briefer told Nixon.
Then, on the day of the coup, the CIA told Nixon that Chilean military officers were “determined to restore political and economic order” in the country, an appealing patina placed on the revolt.
Chile’s ambassador to the United States, Juan Gabriel Valdés, said the newly declassified documents further demonstrate U.S. meddling in Chile’s domestic affairs for years.
The documents “show a very painful history for both our countries,” Valdés said in a telephone interview from the Chilean Embassy in Washington. U.S. efforts to block the left in Chile began in the 1960s and 70s and then took on “global dimensions” under Nixon and Kissinger, he said, “causing a steady weakening of our institutions and democracy.”
Valdés said the positive side was an eventual series of U.S. investigations into excesses by the CIA and other intelligence organizations, and the emergence of human rights activism that pushed abuses into the spotlight and to the center of some U.S. policies.
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Redland residents in San Bernardino County awoke last weekend to find antisemitic fliers littering the driveways of their homes.
The leaflets, which were placed inside baggies that were weighed down by rocks, included a message targeting abortion and Jewish people.
Marti Christiansen told KNBC-TV Channel 4 this isn’t the first time her neighborhood has been targeted with such antisemitic messages.
“It was very hateful,” she told the news outlet, describing the flier she found in her driveway. “I don’t know anybody at all that shares that viewpoint.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called out the incident, saying it was “extremely alarmed by this disturbing show of antisemitism.”
“Hate has no place in our society, much less in our neighborhoods and homes, where people should feel safe, respected and free from discrimination,” Hussam Ayloush, CAIR-LA’s executive director, said in a statement.
Antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ fliers also were found outside Edison High School in Huntington Beach this week after a student-produced video promoting Pride month sparked backlash at a school board meeting.
Residents near Hamilton Avenue and Bushard Court found fliers that featured a pentagram, a star of David and the words “The LGBTQ+ movement in Jewish!” in plastic bags weighed down by rocks.
Investigators were working to determine the source of the leaflets. Their distribution was limited to a small, “isolated” area, Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland said in a statement Wednesday.
Times Community News writer Eric Licas contributed to this report.
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A month ago, Erica Moreali flipped through the channels on her TV and all she saw were repeats.
The El Segundo-based HR consultant became hooked on “Suits,” a legal drama starring Meghan Markle that first ran on USA Network 12 years ago but became available on Netflix in June. She had heard about the show years ago but hadn’t watched it before.
“It’s just a night where nothing was on TV and I went to Netflix … and ‘Suits’ was there — it literally was right in my face,” the 46-year-old said.
Moreali binged several episodes that night. About a week ago, she finished the whole series, devouring all eight seasons that were available on Netflix, plus the final ninth season streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video, for a total of roughly 90 hours.
“Suits,” which was produced by NBCUniversal’s Universal Cable Productions (now known as Universal Content Productions), has become an unlikely sensation for Netflix. Its first two seasons landed on Netflix’s top 10 most watched series in the U.S. for at least nine weeks, according to the Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming service.
This summer, “Suits,” which is on both Netflix and Peacock (owned by NBCUniversal parent Comcast), has been the most streamed title for six consecutive weeks on U.S. television sets, with more than 20 billion viewing minutes, according to Nielsen. “Suits” set a viewership record for a series acquired by a streaming service, Nielsen said in a recent report.
“Suits,” which follows a young man (played by Patrick J. Adams) who scores a job at a prestigious New York legal firm despite never attending law school, wasn’t the obvious candidate to become a latter-day streaming hit.
When the legal drama ran on USA Network, it didn’t create the generation-defining buzz of “Friends” or the water cooler dominance of “Game of Thrones.” Though a robust performer for USA, it was hardly a ratings juggernaut. In 2019, the final season averaged an audience of about 2.1 million per episode, including delayed viewing, according to Nielsen.
But amid the typical doldrums of the summer TV season, worsened by the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes that have shut down the bulk of production on scripted shows and films, Moreali and other consumers are turning to old hits from basic cable and broadcast television to satisfy their entertainment needs.
The strikes by film and TV writers and actors, who are fighting for higher pay from streaming shows, have shut down or delayed work on future seasons of popular series including “Stranger Things” on Netflix and “Severance” on Apple TV+.” New episodes of hit series like ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and anticipated films like Warner Bros.’ “Dune: Part Two” and Sony’s “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse”have been pushed back due to the work stoppages.
People spend about 13 hours consuming media a day across different formats, and “the attention has to go somewhere,” said Scott Purdy, U.S. national media industry leader for audit, tax and advisory services firm KPMG.
When newer programs aren’t available, consumers may revisit or watch older TV shows or movies for the first time.
“If you had dropped a new ‘Stranger Things’ season or if you dropped another ‘House of the Dragon,’ that would be the most watched on those platforms, so I think this is the archives, the libraries, filling a gap of the new content,” Purdy said.
Other older shows have seen a recent surge in popularity as viewers seek the programming version of comfort food.
They include the series “Ugly Betty,” which starred America Ferrera and originally aired on ABC and is available on Hulu and Netflix; and “What Men Want,” a 2019 romantic comedy film starring Taraji P. Henson that is available in Netflix in certain countries, although not currently in the U.S.
Adam Shankman, director of “What Men Want,” said he was surprised when he learned how well the movie was doing on Netflix, where it placed in the top 10 English language films in 60 countries, including Brazil, France and Iceland.
“I’m just happy that people are laying eyeballs on it, because it’s a silly, fun movie that was designed purely to make people laugh,” Shankman said.
The phenomenon of older, licensed titles being rediscovered by new fans on Netflix is not new. Some have deemed it the “Netflix effect.” Shows that were once on regular, linear television could find new viewers among younger generations who never subscribed to a traditional pay-TV bundle. This was a key element of Netflix’s rise to prominence, in which many viewers discovered shows like “Breaking Bad,” which originated on AMC Network.
But why “Suits,” of all shows?
Sometimes titles can gain popularity if there are events that spur interest in certain celebrities, such as Ferrera, who starred in the summer blockbuster “Barbie.”
Aaron Korsh, creator of “Suits,” credits the popularity boost to interest in Markle (now the duchess of Sussex), Netflix’s skill at pushing a show and a “Suits” scene that went viral on social media. The scene, in which a hot-shot lawyer takes a chance on a down-on-his-luck young man, has made the rounds on TikTok.
“[The show] has an inherent optimism to it, and I think that’s a real part of what people respond to,” Korsh said.
“Suits” has been available on Peacock since July 2020, but demand for the show significantly picked up after it came to Netflix on June 17, according to Parrot Analytics, a data firm that tracks interest in content by search traffic, social media mentions and other metrics. Netflix has more than 238 million users compared to Peacock’s 24 million paid subscribers in the second quarter, meaning more people suddenly had an opportunity to see it.
Netflix put the show right in front of many viewers on their welcome screens, boosting its momentum.
Some members of the Writers Guild of America have cited the “Suits” phenomenon as an example of why the union is striking for higher pay based on a show’s success. Writers earn residuals when a show is licensed to a streaming service like Netflix but do not get more in the event that viewership skyrockets.
“It would be better if we got paid more money when our viewership numbers went up,” Korsh said. “I don’t know if that means we’re going to achieve it retroactively, but I do think it is reasonable and achievable to expect residuals to go up, commensurate with increased views.”
Netflix declined to comment for this article.
Parrot Analytics analyst Wade Payson-Denney said he thinks “Suits” would have been popular on Netflix even without the strikes. Other series that started on linear television gained even bigger followings since they came to Netflix include “You,” “Lucifer” and “Manifest.”
“Netflix has so much more scale and ubiquity in the market than any of its competitors at this point,” Payson-Denney said. “I believe it had more to do with Netflix’s scale and reach than the strikes themselves.”
Part of the appeal of long-running series like “Suits” is that they allow viewers to become invested in the characters and story over time but don’t require fans to obsessively watch every move on the screen. The enduring CBS procedural “Criminal Minds” and the sitcom “Young Sheldon” are among the shows people watch after viewing “Suits,” the analyst added.
“It’s that sort of comfort viewing, but put it in the background kind of TV,” Payson-Denney said.
Streamers have ponied up hundreds of millions of dollars for older series from the 1990s and 2000s, such as “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” that have found younger audiences online. For example, NBCUniversal paid $500 million to get the streaming rights to “The Office” for five years, outbidding Netflix.
As the dual Hollywood strikes continue, some industry observers said streaming services with large libraries of content — such as Netflix — will have a competitive advantage compared to those that do not, as production slows down and consumers run out of new movies and TV shows to watch.
But streamers still need to produce quality content to keep drawing new customers and satisfy existing ones. Relying on oldies is not a long-term solution, analysts caution.
“If this goes on too long, in a year from now, they don’t have the materials to bring in the viewers and add to their subscriptions,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s film school. “Once people realized I’ve watched everything there is to watch, then you certainly don’t renew your subscription.”
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