Brown promises austere budget at forum focused on education - San Jose Mercury News

SACRAMENTO -- Gov.-elect Jerry Brown had some words of advice for those gearing up for the budget he will propose next month: "Please sit down if you're reading the stories on the budget on Jan. 10. If you're driving, fasten your seat belt because it's going to be a rough ride."

That much has been evident from the hard truths Brown continued to unleash Tuesday at UCLA during a forum focusing on where education fits in the state's overall revenue picture. It was his second budget forum in seven days, and Brown made it clear that few people will emerge unscathed as the Legislature seeks a way out of a potential $28.1 billion hole.

After being cheered at the start of the forum, Brown said, "I don't know if you'll be cheering after the budget comes out."

But Brown also telegraphed what some took to be hints that he is laying the groundwork to take a tax hike initiative to voters in the spring.

"I think the signals are clear that he'll push through an austerity budget with an all-cuts budget early in the year, and he'll say if you don't like it, here are the revenues we need," said Robert Cruickshank, editor of the liberal Calitics.com blog.

Brown said he wanted to complete the budget in 60 days, saying, "I don't think we have a lot of time to waste" -- a hint suggesting that he would like to allow the bad news of harsh cuts time enough to sink into voters' minds before a spring special election.

"Where

I see openings that will pave the way for positive initiative, then I'm going to lead the charge," Brown said. "But I'd want to do it very carefully and very thoughtfully because I want to make sure we succeed."

Brown even drifted into soliloquies that warmed the hearts of liberals, referring to California's deficit as a fraction of the state's overall wealth and talking about the harmful effects of the "redistribution" of income to the wealthy.

"Income redistribution that's occurred upward from the middle class and below is now at a level comparable to pre-Depression 1920s," he said. "So what we are facing is not only a budget deficit. We're facing a societal crisis, and we will only resolve it as we understand it and we work not only to exercise a discipline, which has been sadly lacking, but also a fairness that enables everybody to feel they have an honest stake in the whole society. That's the larger picture here."

He called the current era, with widening gaps between the wealthy and middle class, "a very difficult period. We've never had it before. It may be worse than the Depression in terms of political pressures, the tearing of the social fabric."

Those who are the most privileged, he said, "really have to take the lead" in resolving the fiscal crisis. He said that group includes government agencies, which can do "a lot more with less."

Education officials urged Brown to seek tax increases to lift a downcast education system that has taken $17 billion in general fund cuts over the past two years.

"Temporary taxes need to be extended," said Joel Shapiro, superintendent for South Pasadena schools. "Absolutely, we can't do without revenues. We need to educate the voters of California "... that the only way to keep the education system from deteriorating worse is to increase revenues, taxes or fees."

But Brown appeared slightly miffed at the tone Shapiro took toward voters.

"You say we've got to educate them -- in some ways, they've got to educate us," Brown said. "It's not really a we/them. It's society. There's a lot of hostility to government. They look at the city of Bell, they pick up the paper and see firefighters getting a $250,000 pension. There's a lot of skepticism about government in the political process. That's a reality and we have to take the world as we find it and we have to work through it."

James Johnson, a Long Beach councilman, asked Brown how he intends to figure out the contradiction voters have between their desire to fully fund schools and their hostility to taxes.

Brown answered, partly in jest: "That's why we're here -- we're hoping one of you people will come up with it. We didn't gather here just to hear ourselves speak."

One dilemma, he said, was that the state tries to make sense out of competing outlooks from regions that have little in common -- an argument, he said, for shifting many of the state's responsibilities to local governments.

"When we take so many local decisions and put them all at the state Capitol, then we have all these different perceptions working on the problem," he said. "That's why we get a lot of breakdown and gridlock. Because people see the world differently."

One indication of how he'd like to "offload costs" from state to local: There are 45,000 inmates who are incarcerated for 90 days or fewer in state prisons who he said could be housed in county institutions at a lower cost.

Contact Steven Harmon at 916-441-2101.

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Al Qaeda Promises US Death By A 'Thousand Cuts' - ABC News

Printer bombs planted on two cargo flights last month cost only a few thousand dollars and were intended to affect the American economy, according to a newly published Al Qaeda-affiliated magazine.

The attempt was called "Operation Hemorrhage," boasted the magazine, and the entire plot cost al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, only $4,200.

Yesterday, a special edition of Inspire magazine -- an English-language propaganda publication produced by AQAP -- gave a detailed description of how the attempted attack was conceived and produced.

"Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each, two HP printers, $300 each, plus shipping, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses add up to a total bill of $4,200," one article said.  "That is all that Operation Hemorrhage cost us. In terms of time, it took us three months to plan and execute the operation from beginning to end."

The magazine also revealed the attack was not meant to kill more than the plane's pilot and co-pilot, and was meant to force the U.S. government to spend billions of dollars on preventive security screening measures.

The strategy, the magazine said, was  "of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts. The aim is to bleed the enemy to death."

CLICK HERE to follow the ABC News Investigative Team's coverage on Twitter.

AQAP also took credit for the September crash of a UPS cargo flight in Dubai. However, U.S. and U.A.E. officials have concluded that the crash was not an act of terrorism.

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Holder promises to enforce US drug laws if Prop. 19 passes - Los Angeles Times

Sheriff Lee Baca, right, listens to former DEA chief Robert Bonner discuss opposition to Proposition 19. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times / October 14, 2010)

Stepping up the Obama administration's opposition to Proposition 19, the nation's top law enforcement official promised to "vigorously enforce" federal drug laws against Californians who grow or sell marijuana for recreational use even if voters pass the legalization measure.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder's response to the initiative comes as the administration has been under pressure to campaign against it more forcefully. Last week, Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, chided the Obama administration for not doing enough to defeat it. And last month, nine former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration publicly urged Holder to speak out.

In a letter sent Wednesday to the former DEA administrators, Holder wrote, "Let me state clearly that the Department of Justice strongly opposes Proposition 19. If passed, this legislation will greatly complicate federal drug enforcement efforts to the detriment of our citizens."

Holder's letter underscores that a period of turmoil, pitting the federal government against pot legalization backers, will ensue if voters approve Proposition 19. After California legalized medical marijuana in 1996 the DEA launched numerous raids against dispensaries and growers.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who is a co-chairman of the main opposition committee, released the letter at a news conference at his headquarters Friday, flanked by two former DEA heads, the district attorney and the Los Angeles city attorney.

"He is saying it is an unenforceable law and the federal government will not allow California to become a rogue state on this issue," Baca said. "You can't make a law in contradiction to federal law as a state. Therefore Proposition 19 is null and void and dead on arrival."

Proponents of the measure on the Nov. 2 ballot assailed the attorney general's one-page letter, denouncing his intention to disregard the will of California voters and his defense of a failed war on drugs. "We're not necessarily surprised that the establishment is coming down on the side of the status quo," said Dale Sky Jones, a spokeswoman for the Proposition 19 campaign.

The initiative would allow Californians age 21 and older to grow up to 25 square feet of marijuana and possess up to an ounce. It also allows cities and counties to authorize cultivation and sales, and to tax them. Several cities, including Oakland, appear to be poised to do so if the law passes. Polls have consistently shown that about half of the state's electorate favors legalizing marijuana.

"It takes the smoke right out of their hookah," said Robert Salazar, a spokesman for the No on 19 campaign. He noted that Californians could not count on seeing any of the promised tax revenues if the federal government arrests anyone who engages in commercial pot sales.

In an Aug. 24 letter and a Sept. 13 news conference in Washington, the former DEA chiefs asked Holder to make it clear that the initiative would be preempted by federal law and would put the United States in violation of international drug treaties, warning about "the unfortunate message that this silence conveys." Holder, responding two months later, did not mention either issue.

Instead, he noted that prosecutions under the federal Controlled Substances Act remain a "core priority" and wrote, "We will vigorously enforce the CSA against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture, or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law." He did not say how he intends to do that, but said the department "is considering all available legal and policy options."

Baca, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and the other law enforcement officials insisted the initiative is unconstitutional because it conflicts with federal law. Baca also said he would not uphold the measure, if it passes, and would arrest anyone with a 25-square-foot plot.

Alex Kreit, an associate professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and an initiative supporter, said Baca would be arresting people for acts that are no longer illegal under state law. "If he does that, he's inviting lawsuits left and right for unlawful arrest," he said.

Cooley predicted that the federal government would sue and a court would issue an injunction. "He didn't quite come out and say, 'We're going to sue you, California,' but it was close enough," said Cooley, who is also the Republican candidate for attorney general.

The initiative's proponents, reading a different implication between the lines, said Holder's decision not to mention a lawsuit suggests the department has concluded it has no grounds to challenge the law. Department lawyers have been meeting to discuss the issue. "It's almost as if they acquiesced that they're not going to challenge Prop. 19," said Jeff Jones, a co-sponsor of Proposition 19 whose Oakland cannabis club closed after the federal government sued.

Robert Raich, a lawyer who has handled two medical marijuana cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and supports Proposition 19, said the initiative does not violate federal law because it changes only state law, not federal law. "Simply because California and the federal government choose to punish an act differently does not mean they have a conflict," he said. He said it is no different than the state's medical marijuana laws, which have been upheld in court.

But he said DEA agents could still enforce federal drug laws. "If the federal government wanted to waste its limited resources trying to prosecute some marijuana facility in Oakland, then nothing would stop them from doing that," he said.

The measure's proponents noted that Proposition 215, the medical marijuana law, drew a similar federal reaction. "This is 1996 all over again," said Stephen Gutwillig, the state director of the Drug Policy Alliance. But he noted that, besides California, 13 states and the District of Columbia now allow medical marijuana. "All that happened without a single change in federal law."

Gutwillig criticized the Obama administration for continuing a costly war on drugs that has failed. But Peter Bensinger, who headed the DEA between 1976 and 1981 and was at the news conference, described it as a success because drug use is substantially lower now than at its peak in 1978.

President Obama has said he opposes legalizing marijuana, but last year his administration ended prosecutions of medical marijuana collectives and patients that abide by state laws, in effect choosing to ignore activities that violate the Controlled Substances Act.

Until Holder released his letter Friday, the Obama administration's fight against the initiative was largely being carried out by the drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske. The White House press office, calling it a "sensitive issue," referred questions on the president's role to the Justice Department, which did not respond to a request for information or for an interview with Holder.

john.hoeffel@latimes.com

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