Human trafficking is a growing problem and Californians overwhelmingly supported the passage of Prop 35, which created harsher sentencing for those involved in human trafficking.
81 percent of the voters supported Prop 35, which will increase fines and prison sentences as well as require convicted human traffickers to register as sex offenders and disclose internet activities and identities.
Four years ago was a time of hope and change amid an economic crisis that came far closer, than most wanted to imagine or believe, to bringing down the entire western financial markets. In the middle of that crisis was the election of the nation’s first African-American President.
Experts were quick to warn that this did not necessarily end the days of racial prejudice against blacks. Indeed, four years later, the on-the-ground circumstances facing many are even more bleak than they were before.
It never ceases to amaze me that when the chips are down and all else is failing, the fallback position of any failing campaign – particularly a Republican one – is to blame the messenger, i.e. the media.
Just Google: “Romney unfair media” and you will see a litany of complaints from the right on this subject. This came up briefly Saturday in a comment.
I have always struggled to distinguish in the classical sense the difference between a comedy and tragedy. I have finally arrived at the reason for the such difficulty – a tragedy should be recast as a comedy of errors.
That, in my view, is largely what has happened this week as we look back upon events. In many ways, the 2008 election turned not simply on the collapse of the economy, but the poor handling of it by one of the candidates. John McCain on September 15 said, “fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
Recently the war in Afghanistan reached a grisly milestone as the number of US deaths surpassed 2000. It was just under 11 years ago, months after the attack on this date, September 11, 2001, that the US launched what was euphemistically called Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
But now after 11 years, we are still fighting there. In fact, it was only in 2010 when the death toll surpassed 1000. Two years later the figure has doubled.
Labor Day has become a celebration of laborers and workers everywhere. And while we treat Labor Day as a day to honor workers, perhaps a day to celebrate workplace protections – and some take it as a day to extoll (or attack) organized labor and unions, perhaps we ought to treat Labor Day more like we do Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
You see, most of the protections that we take for granted today – the eight-hour work day, the 40-hour week, work place protections and collective bargaining – were achieved literally at gun point, stained in blood, in battles that were not all that different from the battles we celebrate in war.
It is not often that two local columnists speak out and put their necks on the lines. But we have to hand it to Rich Rifkin and Marcos Breton, who take on the power and uncomfortable truths.
I will give Rich Rifkin some props this week for speaking out on an issue that will probably get him more flak than praise. He calls on local Democratic leaders to repudiate Assemblymember Mariko Yamada.
There are times when the issues facing our community mirror the issues facing our nation. I feel at times like I live in two worlds – the world that I sleep in, and the world that I live the rest of my day in.
I see things that most people in the community that I sleep in will never know and sometimes I can never adequately report. I write this message today, because I think we are in trouble as a community, a state, and a nation.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that US carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are at their lowest level for the January-March period since 1992. However, the agency would attribute the decline to three factors, including: a mild winter that reduced household heating demand and therefore energy use; a decline in coal-fired electricity generation, due largely to historically low natural gas prices; and reduced gasoline demand.
The New York Times reports this week, however, that experts are unclear whether this marks the continuation of a trend or an anomaly.
Editorial Carried by Enterprise Notes How Hot This Summer Has Been – Governor Jerry Brown on Monday announced the launching of a new website to document the dangerous effects of global warming and call on those who still deny its existence to “wake up and honestly face the facts.” The website is Climate Change: Just The Facts.
“Global warming’s impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented. It is just one example of how, after decades of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return,” said Governor Brown. “Those who still deny global warming’s existence should wake up and honestly face the facts.”
Back in June, Assembly Bill 1831 by Assemblymember Roger Dickinson was killed in the in the Senate Governance and Finance Committee. The bill would have prohibited requesting criminal background information on the initial employment application for local employees, with the goal of reducing unnecessary barriers to employment for the one in four adult Californians who have an arrest or conviction record and are struggling to find work.
At the time the Vanguard was unable to get a comment from Senator Lois Wolk, who chairs the committee, as to her opposition to the bill.
Politics is often boiled down to its most base and absurd, when simplistic slogans replace rational thought and respectful discourse. Every time we have a horribly tragic mass shooting – which is far too often in my mind – we get the interplay between the gun control advocates and the defenders of gun rights, including the NRA.
We often hear the slogan – guns don’t kill people, people do. That is a foolish, ill-considered, and counter-intuitive statement.
The most appalling factor in the death of young Maria Isabel Vasquez-Jimenez in May of 2008 was not the fact that she was 17, not the fact that she had worked nine hours in temperatures that reached 100 degrees inside the vineyard, and it was not the fact that her body temperature had reached 108.4 degrees when she was finally taken to the hospital where she died.
No, it was the indifference her supervisor had to her medical condition. Back in 2008, the Vanguard interviewed Merlyn Calderon of the United Farm Workers for the Vanguard Radio Show and she told us that at the point when her boyfriend noticed that she was in trouble around 3 pm and she collapsed, the supervisor, apparently more concerned with concealing the fact that they had employed a 17-year-old on the farm for 9 hours than her own safety, did not take her to the emergency room.
Why am I reading this? I asked myself earlier in the week. I am referring to the report from Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. He purported to the media that he had conclusive proof that President Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery.
I read the AP reports, I even read some of the more colorful articles by “birthers” or “birther-sympathizers.” I’m still astonished that, for instance, Jeffrey Kuhner, a columnist for the Washington Times, writes, “America may be facing a constitutional crisis. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., has made a startling declaration: President Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent. If true – and I stress if – then this scandal dwarfs Watergate. In fact, it would be the greatest political scandal in U.S. history.”
At the local level, we were treated to stunning news that might have gone unnoticed by some. The Davis City Manager suggested that, in a few short years, the City of Davis will spend one-quarter of its payroll on health care for retirees.
At the same, national attention focused on seminal rulings from the Supreme Court, as it perhaps surprisingly bucked its conservative trends, siding with the Obama administration on both immigration and the health care reform.
On Thursday, Assembly Bill 1831 by Assemblymember Roger Dickinson was killed in the in the Senate Governance and Finance Committee. The bill would have prohibited requesting criminal background information on the initial employment application for local employees, with the goal of reducing unnecessary barriers to employment for the one in four adult Californians who have an arrest or conviction record and are struggling to find work.
This would “delay the consideration of an applicant’s criminal history until after the agency has determined the applicant’s qualifications meet the requirements for the job position.”
Sponsor Argues State Can Reduce Recidivism by Removing Checkbox on Past Criminal Background from Job ApplicationsCourt mandated decreases to the prison population operationalized through AB 109 have led to a renewed focus on reducing California’s astronomically high recidivism rate. One way that public officials are seeking to reduce recidivism is through efforts to ensure that individuals who have served their time get a fair opportunity to get a job.
AB 1831, sponsored by Assemblymember Roger Dickinson who represents Sacramento in the Assembly, seeks to remove the check box from the employment application that denotes that the applicant has had an arrest or conviction record.
by Ramon Solis The United States Supreme Court has mostly struck down Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration bill, thus effectively concluding a hotly contested two-year legal battle. However, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the bill has been ruled valid. Known to some as the “papers please” provision, this law permits police offers to check an individual’s citizenship status given “reasonable suspicion.”
Three of the Supreme Court holdings concerned whether the state of Arizona exceeded its jurisdiction into federal law. In a 5-3 ruling, The Supreme Court struck down these three provisions of Senate Bill 1070, which its authors have titled the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. Those dissenting included Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
By E. Roberts Musser
I consider myself a fairly mellow person, and I don’t embarrass easily. However, as I was going through airport security recently, a TSA agent subjected me to a pat down that was somewhat humiliating. I’ve tried to take it with a sense of humor, as in the scheme of things it was not that big a deal. Let’s put it this way, I’ve heard of stories a lot worse.
I’m a female senior citizen, 62 years of age, and somewhat overweight. I’ve had three children, which as every woman knows, does interesting things to the body. I’ve also had major intestinal surgery, with a huge scar running up and down my torso. As a result, my stomach is no longer as flat as it used to be in my youth. But then, whose is at age 62, male or female? Where am I going with this? Let me explain.
Reports have come in this morning, that Rodney King, whose beating and the subsequent acquittal of police officers led to a three-day riot in parts of Los Angeles in 1992, has been found by his fiance at the bottom of a pool this morning.
Details are sketchy at the moment.
