Washed It!

Repeated clashes over illegal immigration have marked the state’s political races for years, but a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll found that voters hold positive views about immigrants overall and favor accommodating illegal immigrants who have held down jobs in the state.

Asked whether immigrants represented a benefit or a burden to the state, 48% of voters likely to cast ballots in November said they were a benefit, and 36% said they strongly held that view. Only 32% said immigrants overall were a burden to California because of their impact on public services, and only 22% felt that way strongly.

Separately, 59% of likely voters said that an illegal immigrant who had lived and worked in the United States for at least two years should be allowed to remain here if discovered. More than 2 in 5 voters saidthey felt strongly that such an option should be available. Only 30% of likely voters thought the illegal immigrant should be deported, and only 19% backed that option strongly.

But views varied widely by political persuasion and age.

Liberals were most supportive of immigrants legal and illegal, with 75% saying immigrants were a benefit and 81% saying that working illegal immigrants should be able to keep their jobs. Voters under 45 agreed, with 59% saying immigrants were beneficial and 68% calling for illegal immigrants to keep their jobs rather than be deported.

Among conservative likely voters, 52% felt immigrants were a burden and 25% felt they were a benefit. Conservatives were the only group that leaned more toward deportation — by a narrow 2 percentage point margin.

Voters over 65 were more split, with 41% citing immigrants as a benefit and 36% as a burden. They also favored letting illegal immigrants keep their jobs, 55% to 33%.

By far the demographic group most supportive of immigrants was Latinos. Sixty-eight percent said immigrants were a benefit, a view shared by 43% of whites. And 76% felt illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country, a sentiment shared by 56% of whites.

The poll was conducted for The Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from Oct. 13 to 20 by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It included a random sample of 1,501 California voters, including 922 likely voters. Results for likely voters have a margin of sampling error of 3.2 points in either direction, with a larger margin for subgroups.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Californians hold positive views of immigrants; most oppose deportation

President Barack Obama rallied thousands of loyal supporters at the USC campus Friday, urging them to defy skeptics who have predicted losses for Democrats and turn out in force on election day to give his administration more time to turn around the nation’s flailing economy and deliver the change he promised in the 2008 election.

“We need all of you to fight on. We need all of you fired up,” the president told the roaring crowd of students and admirers — 37,500 of them, by USC officials’ estimates — who spilled out across the sun-soaked lawn of Alumni Park and the streets beyond. “We need all of you ready to go, because in just 11 days … you have the chance to set the direction of this state and of this country, not just for the next two years but for the next five years, the next 10 years, the next 20 years.”

“Just like you did in 2008,” the president said, “you can defy the conventional wisdom that says young people are apathetic, the conventional wisdom that says you can’t beat the cynicism in politics.”

In the combative tone that has defined his remarks in recent days, Obama offered a sharp rebuke of the Republican agenda, accusing the opposition party of embracing a strategy of “amnesia” after sitting on the sidelines saying “no to everything” while blaming him for the nation’s troubles.

“They figured that y’all would forget that they caused the mess in the first place,” he said. “…But Los Angeles, as I look out on this crowd, this tells me you haven’t forgotten.”

With a new Los Angeles-Times/USC poll showing a narrowing enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, the president’s trip to California served the dual purpose of motivating his troops and raising money for endangered Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and attorney general candidate Kamala Harris. Boxer, Harris and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, all spoke briefly at the event, asking Democrats to match the fervor of Republicans.

Actor Jamie Foxx also underscored the Democrats’ precarious position by alluding to Obama’s encounter with a woman earlier this year who said she was exhausted by defending him — and then prompting the crowd to chant: “We’re not exhausted.”

Boxer, who has been hit with millions of dollars’ worth of attack ads from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other outside groups, said the other side has “giant, wealthy, unlimited-spending special interests with them.” But, she said, “We have our own army.”

Unlike on his last visit to Los Angeles, the President sought to avoid the wrath of the city’s commuters by flying from LAX to USC on Marine One for the event organized by the Democratic National Party. He also attended a luncheon fundraiser for Boxer and sat for an interview with Spanish-language radio host Piolin in Glendale. Then he jetted off to Nevada for another Democratic rally and a dinner to benefit Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is in an uncomfortably close race of his own.

While some Democratic candidates have kept Obama at arm’s length — distancing themselves from the administration’s controversial healthcare legislation and the $814-million stimulus package — Boxer has welcomed his help in California. In this state, 56% of likely voters said in a recent Times/USC poll that they wanted a senator who supports the president.

Boxer has been an unfailing defender of Obama’s policies, even in the face of relentless criticism of Obama’s policies from her challenger, Republican Carly Fiorina. The White House has rewarded Boxer’s loyalty with multiple trips to California on behalf of the three-term senator, who is clinging to a slim lead over Fiorina.

The president’s visit will be followed next week by a fundraising event for Boxer featuring First Lady Michelle Obama. The efforts will provide a much-needed boost to Boxer’s coffers in the final stretch.

New fundraising reports covering the period from Oct. 1 to Oct. 13 showed Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, raising slightly more than Boxer, though Boxer still had twice as much cash on hand as her opponent. But Fiorina announced a new $1-million loan to her campaign Friday for the final push, in addition to the $5.5 million she gave herself for the primary.

At Friday’s rally, the candidates took care to avoid mentioning the names of their rivals but drew distinctions between themselves and their opponents.

Brown signaled that he would reject what he has criticized as the divisive tactics of his opponent: “We don’t scapegoat anybody, not public workers, not immigrants, not anybody because we’re all Californians together.”

And Obama argued that if Republicans were to regain control, they would cut “middle-class families loose to fend for themselves.”

“Their basic philosophy is — you’re on your own,” he said.

Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund called Obama’s visit “another rescue mission for Boxer” and said the fact that Boxer did not mention Friday’s new unemployment figures or her specific plans to address them in her short speech proved “just how out of touch she is with the reality that 1 in 8 Californians is without a job.”

Brown’s Republican rival, Meg Whitman, meanwhile, campaigned in San Jose on Friday with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He had held the all-time record for self-funding a campaign until Whitman, who has put $141.5 million into her gubernatorial bid, surpassed him.

The former EBay chief executive said the Obama administration’s efforts to revive the economy had been a failure.

“The progress has been terrible,” Whitman said. “Look at the unemployment rates we face in California and we face in the country.”

maeve.reston@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Times staff writer Michael J. Mishak in San Jose contributed to this report.
In USC speech, Obama urges 37,500 Democratic voters to ‘fight on’

One night a few years back, a California communications executive named Deborah Bowker was worried about her husband, who was sick and hospitalized. An old friend told her she shouldn’t be alone, that she should come over and stay the night.

The guest bedroom at the friend’s house was used most often by grandchildren, and contained two tiny beds. That night, Bowker was crying herself to sleep in one of them when the door cracked open. Without a word, Carly Fiorina padded across the room and crawled into the other bed.

Bowker and Fiorina have been close friends since they went to MIT together, and little changed for 20 years — until Fiorina decided to run for the U.S. Senate, with Bowker as her chief of staff.

That fretful night doesn’t seem like a big deal now. Bowker’s husband recovered, and Fiorina might not even remember it, Bowker said with a laugh. Bowker said she hadn’t told the story before and wasn’t sure why she was telling it now — except that she hardly recognizes Fiorina in the image that’s been created through the veneer of politics.

Those closest to Fiorina, 56, describe her as loyal and fun-loving, witty and bright. But they are well aware of the other image — of a pompous diva, aligned with the most strident factions of her Republican Party, pampered by a golden parachute after being fired from her high-profile job.

Fiorina the candidate hasn’t always helped matters. Her tone on the stump can be caustic. At one point in her dogged campaign against the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Barbara Boxer, an open microphone caught her belittling Boxer’s hair as “so yesterday.”

In a sneering attempt to connect with a “tea party” crowd near Fresno recently, she referred to San Francisco — the center of the metropolitan area where she spent nearly half of her life, the city just up the road from her 5,400-square-foot Los Altos Hills estate — as “that faraway world.”

And her critics tend to roll their eyes when Fiorina — who was raised on opera and French lessons, was the daughter of a powerful judge and has a sterling academic pedigree — pitches herself as a kind of Horatio Alger. Her journey, she said at one recent campaign event, was “only possible in the United States of America.”

Getting to know the person friends call “the real Carly,” meanwhile, can be a confounding task. Stung by several episodes in her life, including the unraveling of her first marriage and the brouhaha surrounding her firing from Hewlett-Packard, where she was chief executive, president and chairman, she is private and guarded.

Fiorina’s work ethic is legendary, and her discipline is one reason Boxer — a lioness of the left seeking her fourth Senate term — is in arguably the toughest race of her career. But Fiorina can be so on-message that she comes across as a machine.

During a recent heat wave, Fiorina met with business leaders in a sweltering City of Industry warehouse. A visitor joked that the record heat might cause her to rethink her position on global warming. Fiorina was not amused, launching instantly into her talking points about climate change — contending that she reserved the right to “challenge the science.”

On the campaign trail, it can be difficult to envision the Fiorina who could often be found dancing with the interns and the secretaries at the end of corporate parties, long after the other executives were gone. Or the woman who, on a recent boat trip, suddenly disappeared; she had jumped off the stern and hauled herself onto a tiny raft with her step-granddaughters.

Friends say she’s a fair cook and has a nice touch on the piano. She was raised Episcopalian but is not a regular churchgoer. She does Jane Fonda-style aerobics, whether she’s home or on the road.

She reads policy briefs on her iPad but reads books the old-fashioned way. She’s a voracious shopper, said one friend of 20 years, and gave one Hong Kong jeweler enough business that he put her picture in the window. She has at her disposal a household net worth estimated as high as $121 million and yachts on both coasts, and will be one of the wealthiest members of Congress if she wins.

She and her husband, Frank Fiorina, a former AT&T executive with blue-collar roots in Pittsburgh, have been married for 25 years. It is a second marriage for both; she calls him a “hunk” with some frequency.

Last fall, she threw him a sock-hop-themed 60th birthday party, tracking down friends he hadn’t seen in 30 years. Fiorina was stylish as ever, said an old friend, Kathy Fitzgerald, in a black dress and textured stockings — and, since she was being treated for breast cancer, bald.

Cara Carleton Sneed was born in Austin, Texas. Her mother, a talented oil painter, was a refugee from a troubled childhood in Ohio. Her father, Joseph Tyree Sneed III, was a University of Texas law professor whose ambition in academia meant that she was perpetually “the new kid,” she wrote in her autobiography, as the family moved repeatedly.

In 1969, while teenagers across America experimented with a new counterculture, Fiorina was in Ghana, where her father was teaching students about the country’s new constitution.

Fiorina’s father soon joined the Stanford law faculty, and she graduated from Stanford with a degree in philosophy and medieval history — which, she jokes, rendered her unemployable. She bounced from job to job, working as a typist, a temp, a receptionist. In 1980, she signed on as a management trainee with AT&T.

Fiorina presents a sharp contrast in images

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The military is accepting openly gay recruits for the first time in the nation’s history, even as it tries in the courts to slow the movement to abolish its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

At least two service members discharged for being gay began the process to re-enlist after the Pentagon’s Tuesday announcement.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in California who overturned the 17-year policy last week was likely to reject the government’s latest effort to halt her order telling the military to stop enforcing the law.

The Justice Department will likely appeal if she does not suspend her order.

The Defense Department has said it would comply with U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ order and had frozen any discharge cases. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.

Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of the policy could be reversed at any time, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.

Gay rights groups were continuing to tell service members to avoid revealing that they are gay, fearing they could find themselves in trouble should the law be reinstated.

“What people aren’t really getting is that the discretion and caution that gay troops are showing now is exactly the same standard of conduct that they will adhere to when the ban is lifted permanently,” said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays and the military at the University of California Santa Barbara. “Yes, a few will try to become celebrities.”

An Air Force officer and co-founder of a gay service member support group called OutServe said financial considerations are playing a big role in gay service members staying quiet.

“The military has financially trapped us,” he said, noting that he could owe the military about $200,000 if he were to be dismissed.

The officer, who asked not to be identified for fear of being discharged, said he’s hearing increasingly about heterosexual service members approaching gay colleagues and telling them they can come out now.

He also said more gay service members are coming out to their peers who are friends, while keeping their orientation secret from leadership. He said he has come out to two peers in the last few days.

“People are coming out informally in their units,” the officer said. “Discussions are happening right now.”

An opponent of the judge’s ruling said confusion that has come up is exactly what Pentagon officials feared and shows the need for her to immediately freeze her order while the government appeals.

“It’s only logical that a stay should be granted to avoid the confusion that is already occurring with reports that the Pentagon is telling recruiters to begin accepting homosexual applicants,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group based in Washington that supports the policy.

The uncertain status of the law has caused much confusion within an institution that has historically discriminated against gays.

Before the 1993 law, the military banned gays entirely and declared them incompatible with military service. There have been instances in which gays have served, with the knowledge of their colleagues.

Twenty-nine nations, including Israel, Canada, Germany and Sweden, allow openly gay troops, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group and plaintiff in the lawsuit before Phillips.

The Pentagon guidance to recruiters comes after Dan Woods, the group’s attorney, sent a letter last week warning the Justice Department that Army recruiters who turned away Omar Lopez in Austin, Texas may have caused the government to violate Phillips’ injunction. Woods wrote that the government could be subject to a citation for contempt.

Military recruiters told to accept gay applicants, as gov’t appeals court decision

President Obama laid out a broad case Saturday for rejecting Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm elections, accusing his political opponents of cynically refusing to cooperate in difficult times while accepting help from secretive special-interest groups pumping millions of dollars into various campaigns.

Obama spoke at a rally for a longtime political ally and friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who is locked in a tough reelection campaign against Republican Charlie Baker. The president also spent part of his quick trip to Boston at a fundraising event for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A Democratic official said people paid up to $30,400 apiece to attend a VIP reception and have their picture taken with the president.

With unemployment at nearly 10% and people anxious about job security, Obama has struggled to articulate a single compelling message for keeping Democrats in power. At the Patrick event, he rolled out a range of arguments for voting against Republicans on Nov. 2.

While he and fellow Democrats labored to fix the economy, he said, the Republican leadership watched from a safe distance, hoping they would founder.

Speaking to more than 15,000 people at the Hynes Convention Center, Obama said that Democrats were enmeshed in the “grinding, frustrating work of delivering change inch by inch, day by day.”

Republicans, in turn, made the “tactical decision” that if they stay “on the sidelines and don’t lift a finger to help … they figured they could ride people’s anger and frustration all the way to the ballot box,” Obama said.

Obama reverted to a favorite metaphor, saying he and other Democrats had been down in the ditch trying to get the battered car going while Republicans fanned themselves and enjoyed Slurpees.

Now that the metaphorical car’ is on the mend, “they can get in and ride with us if they want, but they’ve got to get in the back seat,” Obama said.

The president’s speech was interrupted by hecklers who shouted their disapproval over his AIDS funding policies. That touched off a counter-chant of “four more years” from supporters of Obama and Patrick.

Obama, wearing a jacket but no tie, stared at the demonstrators, who held up a sign that read, “Keep the promise.”

“Take a look at what the Republican leadership has to say about AIDS funding,” the president challenged.

Obama renewed a charge that special-interest groups aligned with the Republicans were spending huge sums of money in the campaign without revealing their donors. Because the source of funds is unknown, “foreign-controlled corporations” could be underwriting the TV ad buys, Obama said.

“They don’t even have the courage to stand up and disclose their identity,” he said. “They could be insurance companies, they could be banks, they could even be foreign-controlled corporations — we will never know.”

The White House has faced a backlash over such attacks. Critics have said that Democrats have yet to produce concrete evidence that foreign money is fueling campaign attack ads.

They’ve also said that with the economy in such wretched shape, Obama is distracting voters from deeper problems by focusing on campaign finance disclosure.

Obama’s visit to Boston testifies to his special connection to the Massachusetts governor.

Patrick worked in the Clinton administration in the 1990s, yet when it came time to endorse a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary in 2008, he chose Obama over rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A recent poll by Suffolk University showed Patrick leading Baker by 7 points.

Partisan emotions were strong at the rally. Before Obama spoke, the audience heard from Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Markey, in a reference to Delaware Senate Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell, said, “We have gone from Democrats who say, ‘Yes we can!’ to Republicans who say, ‘Yes, wiccan.’”

O’Donnell has said that when she was young, she “dabbled” in witchcraft.

With election day about two weeks away, Obama is stepping up his campaign travel, flying across the country to raise money and stump for Democratic candidates. On Sunday he and First Lady Michelle Obama are attending a rally at Ohio State University in what will be the president’s 11th visit to the perennial swing state since he took office.

On Wednesday he leaves the White House for a three-day Western swing that includes stops in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Portland, Ore.

peter.nicholas@latimes.com
Obama says GOP accepts special-interest money while refusing to cooperate in government

Pope Benedict XVI gave Australia its first saint Sunday, canonizing a 19th-century nun and also declaring five other saints in a Mass attended by tens of thousands of people.

Chants of “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi” echoed throughout St. Peter’s Square as a raucous crowd of flag-and-balloon-bearing Australians cheered their native Mary MacKillop. In Sydney, huge images of the nun were projected onto the sandstone pylons of the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Speaking in Latin on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, Benedict solemnly read out the names of each of the six new saints, declaring each one worthy of veneration in all the Catholic Church. Also among them was Brother Andre Bessette, a Canadian brother known as a “miracle worker” and revered by millions of Canadians and Americans for healing thousands of sick who came to him.

“Let us be drawn by these shining examples, let us be guided by their teachings,” Benedict said in his homily, delivered in English, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish to reflect the languages spoken by the church’s newest saints.

A cheer had broken out in the crowd when MacKillop’s name was announced earlier in the Mass, evidence of the significant turnout of Australians celebrating the humble nun who was briefly excommunicated in part because her religious order exposed a pedophile priest.

Even more MacKillop admirers– an estimated 10,000 — converged Sunday at the Sydney chapel where she is buried and at Sydney’s Catholic cathedral, where a wooden cross made from floorboards taken from the first school that MacKillop established was placed on the steps.

Thousands of others in Australia spent their Sunday evenings watching live broadcasts of the Vatican ceremony on television in homes and on large outdoor screens in Sydney; in Melbourne, where she was born; and in Penola, where she established her first school.

Born in 1842, MacKillop grew up in poverty as the first of eight children of Scottish immigrants. She moved to the sleepy farming town of Penola in southern Australia to become a teacher, inviting the poor and the Aborigines of the area to attend free classes in a six-room stable.

She co-founded her order, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, with the goal of serving the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged, particularly through education.

“She supported Aboriginal people because she believed in supporting people who were disadvantaged,” said Melissa Brickell, a pilgrim from Melbourne who was in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday for the ceremony. “She is a friend of Aboriginal people from the early days.”

As a young nun in 1871, MacKillop and 47 other nuns from her order were briefly dismissed from the Roman Catholic Church in a clash with high clergy. In addition to bitter rivalries among priests, one of the catalysts for the move was that her order had exposed a pedophile priest.

Five months later, the bishop revoked his ruling from his deathbed, restoring MacKillop to her order and paving the way for her decades of work educating the poor across Australia and New Zealand.

In his homily, Benedict praised MacKillop for her “courageous and saintly example of zeal, perseverance and prayer.”

“She dedicated herself as a young woman to the education of the poor in the difficult and demanding terrain of rural Australia, inspiring other women to join her in the first women’s community of religious sisters of that country,” Benedict said in English.

MacKillop became eligible for sainthood after the Vatican approved a second miracle attributed to her intercession, that of Kathleen Evans, who was cured of lung and brain cancer in 1993.

In a statement Sunday, Evans said she was humbled by MacKillop’s example, grateful for her healing and overjoyed that MacKillop’s example will now be known to others.

“I think she would be delighted to see so many people looking at their own lives and considering how they can live better and care more,” said Evans, who brought relics of MacKillop up to the altar during the canonization Mass.

Veronica Hopson, 72, was MacKillop’s first miracle, cured of leukemia in 1961. She broke half a century of silence about her case, telling Australia’s Channel Seven’s Sunday Night program: “How does a miracle feel? I feel very fortunate that I was given the opportunity to live my life, have a family, have grandchildren, so that’s a miracle.”

Hopson was 22 when she was diagnosed with leukemia and given only weeks to live. She said her mother contacted nuns at Saint Joseph’s convent in northern Sydney where Hopson was taught as a schoolgirl and where MacKillop once lived. The nuns brought cloth that MacKillop had worn and prayed for Hopson.

Hopson, who went on to have six children and now has four grandchildren, is recovering from recent bowel cancer. She said her miracle also carried a message for people who did not believe in God.

“I guess they must have some sort of hope, not just give in and just let the illness or sad things that happen in their life take over their life. Just keep hoping that it will get better,” she said.

Quebec’s flag was also out in force in St. Peter’s Square in support of Brother Andre, a Canadian brother who legend says healed thousands of sick who prayed with him at his Montreal oratory.

Born in 1845, Brother Andre was orphaned at the age of 12. After taking his religious vows, he devoted his life to helping others and gained a reputation as a healer. When he died in 1937 at the age of 91, an estimated 1 million people came to pay homage.

Benedict noted that Brother Andre was poorly educated but nevertheless understood what was essential to his faith.

“Doorman at the Notre Dame College in Montreal, he showed boundless charity and did everything possible to soothe the despair of those who confided in him,” Benedict said in French.

“I think all the people from Quebec are happy now,” said Alain Pilote, a 49-year-old pilgrim from Rougemont, near Montreal, who came to Rome for the Mass.

Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, was in Rome for the canonization, as was Canada’s foreign minister, Lawrence Cannon. The Polish president, Bronislaw Komorowski, joined thousands of Polish pilgrims to honor that country’s latest saint, Stanislaw Kazimiercyzk.

Also being canonized Sunday were Italian nuns Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla da Varano, and Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola of Spain.
Pope canonizes first Australian saint, 5 others

At the age of 80, Exaltacion Divinagracia thought that life would be easier.

The petite widow still works part time at a nursery school. To keep the house she rented with her late husband, she has taken six roommates, all over 75. After church on Saturdays and Sundays, she drags a beat-up suitcase from one food pantry to the next in search of enough to eat for the coming week.

Divinagracia takes home less than $13,000 a year, including public benefits. But according to the government’s income standards, she is not impoverished. To get that designation a single person must live on $10,830 a year or less.

Experts say the standard — which is used nationwide to assess need, determine eligibility for aid and measure the effectiveness of public programs — has little to do with reality, particularly in places like Los Angeles, where housing costs are high.

A recent UCLA study found that most older Californians, those 65 or older, need at least twice the income calculated by the federal government to make ends meet — $21,763 a year on average for a single person renting a one-bedroom apartment, or $30,634 for a couple.

“There is this whole hidden group of adults in need,” said Susan Smith, program director at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, which commissioned the research.

In California, Smith said, many more people seek help from food pantries and other services than are officially recognized as living in poverty. An earlier UCLA study found that in 2007, 47% of older Californians — about 1.76 million people — did not make enough to cover basic needs, although just 8% fell below the federal poverty level that year.

“One size does not fit all,” said Steven P. Wallace, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and lead author of the two studies. “California’s high costs make a single national income standard … totally inadequate for seniors.”

Divinagracia’s husband, a teacher from the Philippines, was already retired when the couple were offered the opportunity to come to the U.S. and become citizens in the 1990s because he had fought alongside U.S. forces in World War II.

They rented a run-down house in Westlake. But since his death six years ago, Divinagracia has struggled to pay the $1,800-a-month rent. She earns just $215 a month working as a “foster grandparent” and gets the maximum cash aid for elderly and disabled people: $845 a month in Supplemental Security Income.

America “is a nice place for the young,” she said. “But for the old, it is no good.”

Her home has the cramped feel of student digs. The extra bedrooms are occupied by two widows and a couple who also participated in the naturalization program for World War II veterans from the Philippines. Another veteran and another widow are squeezed into the living room, with a curtain between them for privacy.

Each person’s space overflows with bits and pieces collected over a lifetime — part of an old uniform, sheets of scripture, family photographs. None of them takes in enough money to live independently.

In the evenings, the kitchen is so crowded that Esther Neri, 83, prefers to cook fish for her 89-year-old husband, Vance, on a hot plate in their room. She serves the meal on a child-size school desk. The bed is so narrow that they sleep head to toe.

Until a few months ago, they had their own apartment. It came with the job of managing a building. But the building was sold and they were told to leave. They now survive on less than $20,000 a year in Supplemental Security Income and a small pension.

“It’s OK for us,” Esther Neri said, surveying her new surroundings. “We are already poor.”

The government’s official poverty measure has been criticized for years because it is based on spending patterns from the 1950s, when about a third of a family’s income went toward food.

The official threshold was first calculated using the cost of a nutrition plan described by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the bare minimum needed to survive an emergency. It is adjusted annually for inflation. But it does not take into account changing standards of living, regional cost differences or public benefits and tax credits.

“We don’t spend a third of our income on food,” said Gerald McIntyre, a directing attorney at the Los Angeles office of the National Senior Citizens Law Center. “If we did, we’d have no place to live.”

For the elderly, poverty level doesn’t cut it

A federal judge in California issued a permanent ban Tuesday on the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military, ordering the Defense Department to immediately halt any efforts to remove personnel because of their sexual orientation.

The government has 60 days to appeal the ruling, which gives the administration until after the midterm election next month to make a decision. But it also presents a problem for President Obama as he tries to rally his Democratic base.

As a presidential candidate, Obama said he would work to do away with the policy. But should the Justice Department appeal the ruling, it could anger many of the president’s liberal supporters, something Obama and congressional Democrats can ill afford.

In a separate case that posed a similar problem, the administration decided Tuesday to appeal two court rulings in Massachusetts that found unconstitutional the federal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

The administration filed a notice of appeal to protect the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which bars gay marriages, although Obama opposes the law. A Justice Department spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the administration was obligated to defend federal laws when challenged in court.

“As a policy matter, the president has made clear that he believes DOMA is discriminatory and should be repealed,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. “The Justice Department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged.”

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, called on the administration to immediately appeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” decision. Otherwise, he said, it would “only further the desire of voters to change Congress” out of anger at “activist judges and arrogant politicians.”

Justice Department officials said no decision had been made, though the government has known for a month that the ruling might be coming. U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside said on Sept. 9 that she considered the policy unconstitutional.

At the Pentagon, spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith said the ruling was under review. Other Pentagon officials said a task force created to examine the issue had not completed its study and that town hall meetings with military families were continuing, as was an online opinion survey. If there is no appeal, they said, the ruling would short-circuit that effort.

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was enacted by Congress in 1993 in an effort to reform the military’s practice of searching out and discharging gay personnel.

Under the policy, gays and lesbians could serve in the military as long as they kept their sexual orientation secret. More than 13,000 service members have been discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In her three-page order Tuesday, Phillips declared that the policy “infringes on the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members.”

She also said it violated due process and freedom of speech, and did not allow targeted service members “to petition the government for redress of grievances” to fight for their jobs if they were outed as homosexuals.

Phillips ordered the military to immediately stop “enforcing or applying” the policy and implementing the regulations “against any person under their jurisdiction or command.”

She further ordered them “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation or other proceedings” that were underway.

If the government does not appeal, the question will be whether a district court judge can unilaterally invalidate a longstanding policy of the United States military.

“A federal judge always has the power to declare a law unconstitutional,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.

“The interesting question concerns a nationwide injunction. On the one hand, I think she is on strong ground in doing so. On the other hand, one district judge doesn’t have the authority to bind judges in other districts or circuits. They can decide for themselves. The key question is whether the Obama administration will appeal.”

There also is an effort underway in Congress to repeal the law. The House this year voted to repeal the act, as did the Senate Armed Services Committee. But Republicans blocked action on the Senate floor.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- San Francisco), said the speaker welcomed the judge’s order and “continues to believe, until the Senate can act on the repeal of this policy and send it to the president’s desk, the administration should place a moratorium on all dismissals under this policy.”

The judge was ruling in a case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest gay GOP political organization. In the trial in July, Justice Department lawyer Paul G. Freeborne argued that Congress and not the courts should decide the fate of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Many gay and lesbian groups praised the order, but Aaron Tax, legal director for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, predicted that the government would appeal.

With that in mind, he said, homosexual “service members must proceed safely and should not come out at this time.”

richard.serrano@latimes.com

David Cloud in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
Judge orders halt to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

A trio of economics scholars, including an MIT professor whose nomination to the Federal Reserve board has been held up in the Senate, won the Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for their studies of markets and how mismatches between buyers and sellers can contribute to such problems as high unemployment.

Peter A. Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and fellow American Dale T. Mortensen, a professor at Northwestern University, will share the $1.5 million award with Christopher A. Pissarides, a British and Cypriot citizen who teaches at the London School of Economics.

The three men pioneered and developed models that help explain, among other things, why there are so many jobless people even as there are a large number of job openings — a problem that is particularly relevant today as the United States and other developed countries grapple with stubbornly high unemployment.

The U.S. jobless figure for September was reported Friday at 9.6%.

“The laureates’ models help us understand the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing the prize.

“This may refer to benefit levels in unemployment insurance or rules in regard to hiring and firing,” the statement said. “One conclusion is that more generous unemployment benefits give rise to higher unemployment and longer search times.”

The idea that more-generous jobless benefits can provide a disincentive for workers to seek or take jobs has been hotly debated in the U.S. as policymakers have continued to face pressure to extend unemployment checks for millions of people.

Mortensen, in a conference call from Denmark, where he is currently a visiting professor at Aarhus University, said his models do show a negative effect of higher jobless benefits.

But he dismissed that as a major factor in the high unemployment, saying instead that the current job troubles are a function of the impaired financial markets.

“I really don’t think this is the time to worry about that,” Mortensen, 71, said of unemployment benefits.

The works of Diamond, who first developed a theoretical framework on “search markets” in the early 1970s, and Mortensen and Pissarides also offer insights into another ongoing debate among economists — whether the high unemployment today reflects structural deficiencies such as mismatches in skills or problems that are more cyclical in nature because of weak demand.

Some economists have argued the troubles are structural, suggesting that unemployment won’t be going back to the normal range of 5%, while others have emphasized that the terrible labor situation demands more substantial government stimulus to bolster demand for goods and services.

Diamond acknowledged that the process of improving the job market “is going to be slow and painful” for the whole economy and people looking for work. But he didn’t view it as a structural problem, suggesting more optimism for the future.

“I think the economy is very adaptive,” he said. “Workers and employers will adapt.”

Diamond, 70, who received his Ph.D. from MIT and has been a professor there since 1966, is considered by peers as a brilliant theorist whose works on social security systems are highly regarded.

Last spring he was nominated by President Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the Fed’s board. But while two other nominees to the Fed board were cleared recently, Diamond’s confirmation was effectively blocked by Senate Republicans.

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, questioned whether the MIT professor had enough practical experience to serve as a Fed governor.

Asked about the Fed nomination during a news conference at MIT, Diamond said he would not withdraw his candidacy but declined to comment further.

don.lee@latimes.com
Three share Nobel Prize in economics

It wasn’t tough decisions on California’s ailing schools, or the prison crisis or the direction of healthcare reform that kept lawmakers locked in chambers for more than 20 hours before they finally passed the latest budget in state history Friday morning.

What bedeviled the process of approving the $125-billion spending plan was such matters as whether electronic highway billboards should have advertisements, whether a big political donor should be appointed to a state commission, whose name should adorn a disaster-relief bill, and whether the state needs a paid secretary of volunteerism.

The vote was supposed to be easy, a bipartisan election-year feint that pushed tough decisions into the future, papering over the deficit with clever accounting.

The budget lawmakers passed would keep state services at the status quo, with a freeze on school spending, modest trims to healthcare programs and some new money for universities.

It assumes billions of dollars in federal aid that most experts agree will never materialize and relies on loans and bookkeeping maneuvers such as transfers and funding shifts.

Yet the approval process became an all-night affair, with tens of millions of dollars in transportation spending lost because lawmakers had a spat over electronic billboards and DUI checkpoints.

Some Democrats disliked a provision to sell advertising space for soft drinks, automobiles or other products alongside the flashing alerts about abducted children and hazardous road conditions on the more than 700 state-owned electronic freeway billboards. The proposal was pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Who thinks it’s a good idea to give drivers one more reason to take their eyes off the road?” said Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). He chairs a budget subcommittee that initially rejected the plan, which was later reinserted into the budget by legislative leaders.

Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) sought to make the multi-provision bill more palatable by adding a new measure. It addressed an element of alleged corruption in Bell, where the city was reported to be making money by towing the cars of sober immigrants from DUI checkpoints if they did not have proper ID.

Without a provision banning such a practice, Cedillo was refusing to vote for it and other parts of the budget, which was contained in 21 bills. Democrats added it. Some Republicans said the proposal could interfere with legitimate law-enforcement actions, and the bill failed to garner enough votes to pass. So the Senate killed the entire $112-million transportation bill.

Just after dawn, an impromptu hearing was needed to get a bill authorizing schools funding back on track. GOP senators were refusing to put up the votes for it, and the measure came up short. Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) abruptly announced there would be a 120-second hearing, stopped business on the budget and conducted a confirmation proceeding that took just slightly longer.

Senators approved a Schwarzenegger nominee to the California Transportation Commission whom they had refused to confirm through the normal committee process. Steinberg, with a hint of sarcasm, declared the nominee, Fresno developer and GOP donor Darius Assemi, “eminently qualified.”

Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) spoke in praise of Assemi and changed his vote. The education bill passed.

Over in the Assembly, meanwhile, lawmakers were annoyed by a demand they said came from the governor. It called for the state to create a “Secretary of Volunteerism,” a paid post. The idea was heavily mocked in side conversations and during floor debates.

“I would like to volunteer to be the Wizard of Adjournment,” Assemblyman Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) said after 3:30 a.m., when the legislation finally passed the lower house

Ultimately, the full Legislature approved the post, with some lawmakers expressing worry that the governor might otherwise use his line-item veto authority to retaliate.

“This was the governor’s thing — or else his blue pencil came out,” said Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills).

Other last-minute side issues included a bid by Republicans to secure a tax break for online travel companies such as Orbitz and Expedia. It didn’t survive. A proposal to help San Diego use more redevelopment funds in a way that could help facilitate construction of a new NFL stadium made it to the governor’s desk.

Special tax breaks for a timber company, cable companies and software firms made it to the governor’s desk too. So did a provision that could help boost the bottom line of an ethanol company founded by former Secretary of State Bill Jones, an ally of and contributor to Schwarzenegger.

Not all of the bickering was partisan. Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco, a Democrat, refused to vote with most of his caucus on many elements of the budget. He paid a price: Disaster-relief legislation that he wrote for families affected by the San Bruno explosion and fire was killed, and Democrats later moved to Schwarzenegger an identical measure without Yee’s name on it.

Lawmakers sweat the small stuff