Washed It!

A plume of chromium-tainted groundwater is once again bearing down on residents of Hinkley, Calif., where more than a decade ago an underdog battle with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spawned a multimillion-dollar settlement and the Oscar-winning film “Erin Brockovich.”

The border of the plume has shifted 1,800 feet beyond a containment boundary set by PG&E in 2008, spreading higher levels of hexavalent chromium, a cancer-causing heavy metal isotope linked to stomach cancers and other health hazards, according to state water officials. The isotope also has been discovered in a lower aquifer that, until recently, PG&E believed was protected from contaminated groundwater above it by a thick layer of clay, the officials added.

In 1997, PG&E paid 660 Hinkley residents $333 million to settle lawsuits alleging injuries including intestinal tumors and breast cancer from chromium-laced waste water that had seeped from the utility’s disposal ponds between 1951 and 1966, winding its way into the community’s drinking wells.

PG&E’s handling and reporting of the migrating plume is under investigation by the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state regulatory agency responsible for protecting the area’s water.

“We definitely know there are violations, and that what PG&E is doing right now to contain the plume is not enough,” said Lauri Kemper, assistant executive officer for the water board. “We have the authority to impose fines of up to $5,000 per day for each day the plume exists outside of the boundary set in 2008.”

Kemper said the water board has retained a state water attorney to help prepare a legal case against the utility, a process that could take six months.

Utility officials acknowledge that parts of the plume have spread but say it is being controlled by ongoing cleanup efforts. They deny that its spread has violated any legal agreements and said more scientific research is needed to determine whether spikes in concentrations of hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium 6, detected in many local wells could be linked to the plume or to natural occurrences.

“These concentrations remain within the realms of naturally occurring background concentrations,” said Robert C. Doss, PG&E principal engineer. “There is no way to determine whether our plume is having an impact or not.”

A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for May 2011.

Doss said he understands that the situation “represents a worry about the health of Hinkley families and their investments.” But he also suggested that critics have exaggerated the health hazards posed by contamination in the plume’s outer edges and have mistakenly interpreted its constantly changing shape as “overall growth.”

The amoeba-like plume is about 2 1/2 miles long and a mile wide, and advancing west and northwest at a rate of about a foot a day, officials said.

“In some places the plume grows and then shrinks, in others it might sprout a lobe as it responds to hydrological pressures,” Doss said.

As for PG&E’s remediation efforts in Hinkley, Doss said, “It’s fair to say what we are doing now needs to be supplemented to bring it up to a final cleanup. But we take exception to any assertions that the measures we’ve taken have not had a positive effect on the problem.”

Many property owners in this dusty agricultural town about five miles west of Barstow in San Bernardino County are frustrated with PG&E’s efforts to contain the plume and the water board’s apparent hesitation to charge the utility with civil violations.

“Obviously, the community would be happy to see us file civil liability complaints against the company,” Kemper said. “We are considering that internally. But we haven’t yet because we are busy every day trying to stay on top of the situation to ensure they are continuing to clean up this plume.”

“They’ve had 23 years to fix this problem,” said Carmela Gonzalez, 44, a lifelong resident who was not part of the original Hinkley lawsuit. “Instead, they’ve allowed the contamination plume to grow and put fear in the hearts of Hinkley residents that they are still not safe and that their property is worthless.”

Added Gonzalez: “People around here no longer trust the water board to do right by Hinkley. PG&E should be helping residents get out of here if they want to by giving them reasonable compensation for their losses.”

Some of the hundreds of plaintiffs in the earlier case are exploring their options, given that they signed agreements barring them from discussing details of their settlements. Some residents, who were not involved in that case, talk of launching another class-action lawsuit.

Lillie Stone and her husband, Jim, who is disabled, live on fixed incomes and want PG&E to buy their property at a reasonable price, or pay to help them relocate. Neither received any settlement money from the original Hinkley case.

Tainted PG&E groundwater plume again threatens residents of Hinkley, Calif.

Google Inc.’s decision to give all of its 23,300 employees a 10% pay raise next year — and a $1,000 bonus to boot — is just the latest volley in what has become a full-fledged war for top Silicon Valley talent.

With engineers in short supply, technology companies are competing for employees who can write the software programs needed for new products and services. And they’re increasingly stealing them from one another.

Google is particularly vulnerable. The Internet search giant, long known for aggressively recruiting the smartest in the business, is under siege from Facebook Inc. and other competitors that are trying to lure them away.

A few weeks ago, Lars Rasmussen, the brainy co-founder of Google Maps and a six-year Google veteran, bolted for Facebook, joining more than 200 former Google employees who now work at the world’s most popular social networking service.

Facebook tapped its most persuasive pitchman to close the deal. Founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg personally wooed Rasmussen to move halfway around the world from his Google office in Sydney, Australia, to Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto.

Facebook could be “a once-in-a-decade type of company,” the Danish-born computer science engineer said in explaining his decision.

That kind of talk rankles Google executives, who think they run the hottest company in Silicon Valley.

With 2,000 employees, Facebook is a much smaller operation than Google. Even so, 1 in 5 employees can list “Google” somewhere on their resumes, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Executive Chef Josef Desimone, who prepares fresh meals for Facebook employees.

Facebook says its recruiters don’t target Google; they seek out top candidates wherever they work.

“For us, it’s just important to find the best talent,” said Thomas Arnold, Facebook’s director of recruiting, who himself hails from Google. “If it comes from Google, that’s great. If it comes from Hewlett Packard, that’s great. If it comes from a start-up you have never heard of, that’s great. If it’s a kid sitting in a basement in small town somewhere who has created something neat on the Web, that’s even better.”

The flight to Facebook is not a subject Google would discuss, though it did throw out a few counterpunches: Google’s attrition, it said, remains below the industry standard. It hires more people every 10 days than Facebook has recruited in all from Google. And when Google makes a counteroffer to its employees, 70% decide to stay at Google rather than leave for Facebook, the company said.

“Google is an attraction and training ground for incredible talent,” recruiter Paul Daversa said. “The question is: Can Google fill up on talent as fast as it’s losing it?”

The skirmish for talent is driving up compensation and prompting a flood of offers and counteroffers. In one case, Google countered an offer from Facebook to a software developer with a promise of a 15% bump to his $150,000 salary, a quadrupling of stock benefits and a $500,000 cash bonus to stay a year, according to people familiar with the situation. He still took off for Facebook.

Google is hardly alone as it tries to make itself as sticky as flypaper to prospective recruits and employees alike.

Despite California’s unemployment rate of 12.4%, tech job listings are up 62% year over year in Silicon Valley, which has shown 11 straight months of growth, according to technology and engineering career website Dice.com. On any given day, companies are trying to fill 4,600 jobs on Dice.com, up from 2,800 open positions last year.

That reflects the strength of Silicon Valley’s major tech companies, chiefly Google, Apple Inc. and Facebook. Google dominates Internet advertising, Apple rolls out one must-have gadget after another, and Facebook has taken flight with more than 500 million users.

Along with these companies, there are newcomers such as Zynga Gaming Network Inc., a San Francisco company that makes wildly popular social games on Facebook and elsewhere. Zynga added 800 of its 1,200 employees in the last year alone.

With strong demand for their products and services, Silicon Valley companies have plenty of money to shower on signing bonuses and retention incentives.

“We believe this trend will only accelerate in the next 18 months,” Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, said on a call to discuss the company’s strong third-quarter results. “We strongly believe that the difference between the winners and the losers in our industry will be to a large extent determined by who can continue to attract and retain the very best people.”

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose firm helps the companies it invests in recruit engineers and other key employees, says the supercharged recruiting market is the “single hardest challenge in Silicon Valley.”

“A good engineer can easily have 10 job offers,” Andreessen said.

All the top companies are poaching from the same pool: sought-after workers with a prized mix of engineering chops, ingenuity and initiative.

They raid one another’s ranks, mine colleges and universities for promising prospects and jump at unusual opportunities to nab engineers. As soon as news broke this week that Ask.com was laying off 130 people, job offers started popping up on Twitter.

In September, Feross Aboukhadijeh, a computer science major at Stanford University, bet his roommate that in one hour he could create software that would search YouTube in real time. He lost the bet (it took him three hours) but YouTube Instant racked up 1 million users in 10 days, netting Aboukhadijeh a job offer from YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. Aboukhadijeh, already an intern at Facebook, decided to take the job at YouTube while he continues his studies at Stanford.

As the behemoths duke it out, some fleet-footed start-ups are giving everyone a run for their money in the recruiting department.

Facebook is competing with companies started by its own employees such as Asana, Path and Quora. These spinoffs are snapping up their share of the brightest engineers by appealing to their entrepreneurial instincts.

“There is definitely stepped-up and accelerated pace and urgency around courting the name talent and the high-quality talent,” Daversa said. “He who courts best is going to win. You have to embrace a candidate with a big bear hug. If you blink, he’s gone.”

jessica.guynn@latimes.com
War heats up for top Silicon Valley talent

A dispute among influential Republican lawmakers over a ban on “earmark” spending threatens an area of potential bipartisan agreement between the GOP and White House in the aftermath of last week’s midterm election.

The incoming House Republican majority has proposed extending a moratorium on earmarks, which are funds requested by individual lawmakers for specific projects back home. On Tuesday, conservative Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina said that he would press his GOP colleagues in the Senate to adopt a similar moratorium when lawmakers returned to Washington next week.

But several senior Republican lawmakers consider earmarks part of their constitutional obligation to determine how federal money is spent. They disagree with election-year rhetoric that government spending can be reined in with a strict earmark ban. A ban is an idea that “doesn’t save any money,” said Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader.

The disagreement is surfacing at a crucial point. Republicans, fresh from winning control of the House and gaining seats in the Senate, will make their first attempt next week to convert ideas from successful political campaigns into governing policy.

Earmark spending is a favorite campaign symbol of government excess. Examples of pork projects go back years — among the most well-known is the “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska.

Yet attempts to limit lawmakers’ ability to steer funding to their home states regularly runs into dissent. Popular Capitol wisdom holds that one lawmaker’s pork is another’s vital infrastructure project, representing a road or hospital that would not get built without federal government funds.

The House GOP this year imposed a moratorium on earmarks within its own ranks as a way to burnish its conservative credentials heading into campaign season, particularly among “tea party” voters. Earmarks soared to unprecedented levels prior to 2006, the last time the GOP had been in the majority.

Senate Republicans, though, did not agree to such a ban. DeMint proposed a halt on earmarks this spring, but senators voted it down.

Now, in a first test of their newly bolstered numbers in Congress, Republicans in both chambers are returning to the issue. The GOP is intent on showing voters it understood the lesson of the election and the message of tea party conservatives who helped propel the party to power.

President Obama identified the earmark ban as an issue “we can work on together.” Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said he would like to take Obama up on the offer.

Yet old spending habits are hard to break among Congress members who see the power of the purse as one of their greatest strengths. Although earmarks make up a tiny fraction of the federal budget, they are an enormous source of power for lawmakers to provide resources to constituents.

The Republican leaders of the main House and Senate spending committees are divided on the question. Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands supports an earmark moratorium, while Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi does not.

In recent days, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) has appeared on 10 conservative radio talk shows across the country with an appeal about the importance of such spending.

“People now realize you can’t have a ban on earmarks,” Inhofe said.

If Congress chooses not to direct spending, Inhofe argues, the responsibility will fall to the administration, which already exerts influence over its own pet projects in the president’s annual budget. Inhofe said his aim was to reform the earmarking process, not eliminate it.

The conservative Oklahoman, who is perhaps most widely known for calling global warming a hoax, is intent on branding earmark foes as “goguers” — those who demagogue the issue to score political points.

“It’s the most demagogued thing I’ve run into in the years I’ve been in politics,” Inhofe said. “Many of the big-spending Republicans demagogue earmarks so people think they’re conservative.”

Inhofe will argue for new Senate rules to make the earmarking process more transparent, without an outright ban.

But he will face a challenge from fellow conservative DeMint, who will be seeking an unqualified ban next week from his peers.

The South Carolina senator counts support from several newly elected colleagues — including Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania — and other tea-party-backed candidates he supported in the election.

“Many Republicans are still addicted to earmarks and won’t give them up without a fight,” DeMint wrote in a letter to supporters Tuesday. “I know it’s difficult to quit this habit.”

He should know. DeMint confided to supporters, “I used to request earmarks too.”

lmascaro@tribune.com
‘Earmark’ ban proves an early obstacle to GOP unity

On a sticky June night just outside London, the magic finally came to an end for the cast and crew of the “Harry Potter” movies. After a decade together, the small army that has been the busiest in British filmmaking wrapped the final shoot of the last “Potter” production.

The green-screen scene featuring the now world-famous main characters — a trio of young fugitive wizards named Harry, Ron and Hermione — required actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson to hurl themselves onto some off-camera mats to escape danger at the Ministry of Magic. It was an oddly slapstick finish for such a monumental franchise — but that didn’t sap the emotion of the moment.

“I admit it, I did cry like a little girl,” Radcliffe said, recalling the day. “There was a feeling that I had, that we all had, that it was the end of something very special.”

It’s doubtful that pop culture will ever see a phenomenon quite like this sprawling tale that for a decade cast a spell on the page, the screen and beyond. The fantasy epic begins its Hollywood fade-out Nov. 19 with the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1″ and finishes next summer with the eighth film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2.”

Both movies are poised to be global blockbusters — and may even earn the franchise its first nominations in marquee Academy Award categories — but the numbers posted by their predecessor films are extraordinary already. The six Warner Bros. movies released to date have pulled in $5.7 billion at theaters worldwide; home video adds an additional $1.3 billion. The seven novels from which they sprang, written by J.K. Rowling, account for 400 million books sold in 69 languages.

Then there’s a jaw-dropping $7 billion in retail products, a recently opened amusement attraction in Orlando, touring exhibits of props and costumes and plans for a permanent exhibit outside London.

Still, the true impact of the books and films may not be fully recognized for a decade or two. With ever-rising ticket prices, box-office records don’t stand for long, but no franchise has delivered anything close to eight films in 10 years.

P

roducer David Heyman and his team were able to keep their cast intact — including the young lead stars who started as adolescents and grew into young adults with millions in the bank, and no scandals. The movies arrived even as the audience for Rowling’s books grew, creating a unique synergistic effect. The “Potter” movies have earned Warner Bros. more than $1 billion in profit — and the admiration of industry rivals.

“The books and movies fed each other brilliantly to become these commercial tidal waves,” said veteran literary agent Ron Bernstein, of International Creative Management, who has no connection to the books or films.

Former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook, who launched his own mega-franchise with “Pirates of the Caribbean,” agreed that “Harry Potter” has been a breed apart.

“It has unequivocally been the best-managed franchise that we’ve ever seen, top to bottom,” he said. “The movies have been terrific and Warner Bros. managed to position each one as a worldwide event. Each movie has been unique and built on the last one and the anticipation has never been better. They’ve honored the source material and done everything right.”

And, unlike, say, “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the “Potter” movies adapted a living, breathing literary sensation whose ending was unknown. Rowling would visit the set and sometimes whisper to actors hints of their characters’ destiny, but screenwriter Steve Kloves, who penned seven of the eight scripts, said no one really knew how everything would conclude.

The entire exercise, he said, was a “10-year tightrope walk … and something that will be never be done again for the simple reason that you won’t see another Jo Rowling come along.”

Lucky break

The rags-to-riches story of Rowling seems as unreal as the world of dragons and goblins she created. Joanne Kathleen Rowling (“J.K.” was manufactured by a publishing executive who thought a gender-neutral author name might sell more books to boys) was a single mom in Edinburgh, getting by with the help of welfare, when she finished “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” her first novel.

In late 1997, a copy of the book found its way to Heyman’s London office but ended up on a shelf for low-priority leads. A curious secretary took it home for the weekend. Her enthusiasm prompted Heyman to get past what he has called “that rubbish title,” and the story captured his imagination.

“The funny thing is with all of the magic, all of the wizardry, what really makes the ‘Harry Potter’ stories work are the characters,” he said. “The fantastical elements and the action are wonderful, but the characters are what people remember.”

Heyman sent the book to his friend and fellow Brit Lionel Wigram, a production executive at Warner Bros., to gauge the studio’s interest. Wigram said some in Burbank questioned the viability of the creaky fantasy-adventure genre and viewed the tale of a magical boarding school called Hogwarts as too British for the American heartland. “Don’t spend too much on it,” was the word from the home office, Wigram recalled.

Warner Bros. secured the rights for four “Harry Potter” novels for about $2 million. At that point, only the first book was on shelves in England and none had reached America. Warner Bros. tried to get a financial partner on the project, reaching out to studios including Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, which passed.

The end nears for ‘Harry Potter’ on film

In a blow to the state’s civil lawsuit charging eight current and former Bell city leaders with plotting to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge warned Thursday that Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s case is in jeopardy of being dismissed.

Brown appears to have overreached his authority in the lawsuit, which seeks to force the city leaders to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in back salaries and slash their future pensions, Judge Ralph W. Dau said.

The judge also questioned whether the suit, filed at the height of Brown’s contentious run for governor, was more about politics than law.

“There is a real question of authority here,” said Dau during a hearing Thursday. “You say they’re looting the city and you can enforce it, but where is the case that says the attorney general can enforce it?”

Dau added, “So I’m wondering, is this just a political lawsuit?”

On Thursday, the attorney general’s office responded, telling the judge the state has the authority to pursue a civil claim on behalf of residents and taxpayers.

The sweeping civil lawsuit was the first legal action taken against the city and its current and past leaders. The suit contends former City Administrator Robert Rizzo and others conspired to drive up their salaries, inflate their future pensions and conceal how much it was costing the city.

“They engaged in a collaboration that amounted to a civil conspiracy to defraud the public, Brown said when he announced the suit at a Los Angeles news conference in mid-September.

Besides Rizzo, the suit named former Assistant City Administrator Angela Spaccia, ex-Police Chief Randy Adams, Mayor Oscar Hernandez and council members Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal. The suit also named George Cole and Victor Bello — both former council members. Rizzo was being paid nearly $800,000 a year and stands to collect about $1 million annually in retirement.

Dau ruled that some of the claims in the lawsuit, including an allegation that Bell’s leadership conspired to waste public funds, could proceed, but that other allegations would have to be revised. Still, the judge cautioned that the entire case is in doubt.

Dau agreed the lucrative salaries paid to Rizzo and others were outrageous and said he appreciated the depth of anger that Bell residents now feel. But, he said, the place to resolve those concerns should be the “ballot box and criminals courts,” not civil court.

Outside the downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Rizzo’s attorney predicted the state’s widely publicized lawsuit will be dismissed.

“This case is dead, ” James Spertus said.

When the suit was filed, some legal experts called it an unprecedented tactic by a government agency, and Brown himself conceded his office was exploring a “novel” area of the law.

“We’re testing the proposition of what public officials can pay themselves,” he said. “The fact that someone is elected doesn’t mean they get a license to steal.”

Even if Brown’s lawsuit is ultimately dismissed, it would have no bearing on the felony fraud and theft charges filed against Rizzo and others. The U.S. attorney’s office, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the state controller’s office and the state Department of Corporations also are investigating the city’s financial activity.

Dau also rejected an effort by Spertus to prevent the city from obtaining Rizzo’s private e-mails. The city has already received about 4,000 e-mails from Rizzo’s private e-mail provider. The city contended Rizzo used his private e-mail to conduct city business in an effort to conceal his activities.

About 10 of the e-mails involved potential attorney-client privilege issues, defense attorneys told the judge.

City Atty. James Casso agreed to delete one e-mail involving Spertus and Rizzo, but the city will be able to retain e-mails between Rizzo and Tom Brown, a former attorney for the city.

Casso said his office is interested in determining whether the city — in effect — paid for Rizzo’s defense costs in a drunk-driving case. Rizzo was arrested of suspicion of drunken driving after crashing into a neighbor’s mailbox in Huntington Beach.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Attorney general’s lawsuit against Bell officials could be in jeopardy

As Nevadans streamed to the polls Tuesday morning, Sen. Harry Reid gave handshakes and hugs to volunteers phone-banking in a Las Vegas campaign office, which was down the street from an apartment complex touting its “Recession Special!”

The embattled Democrat was notably relaxed, considering his battle with Republican Sharron Angle has been so filled with mud-slinging that a radio station Tuesday dubbed the pair “Dirty Harry” and “Psycho Sharron.”

Dressed in a button-down shirt and khaki pants, Reid joked about being scheduled to serve the volunteers doughnuts, a box of which had been opened in a different room. While in high school, Reid said, he worked part of the year at a Henderson, Nev., bakery glazing baked goods.

“Even today, I can’t stand the smell of doughnuts,” he said to laughter.

Reid told reporters — who outnumbered volunteers — that his team estimated nearly two-thirds of ballots had been cast in two weeks of early voting, during which he’d done “extremely well.” He also bragged about his “second-to-none” turnout operation, whose effectiveness will likely determine the razor-close race. (Indeed, the office lobby had a poster labeled “getting out the vote to victory.” A drawing of a thermometer had been colored in just below a line marked “800 shifts.”)

“We feel comfortable where we are,” Reid said, a sentiment he’s repeated often in recent days, even as public polls showed Angle gaining momentum. Reid, who’s been endorsed by numerous GOP rainmakers, said he’d likely peeled off support from moderate Republicans alarmed at Angle’s conservative “tea party” beliefs.

“They don’t want a Republican Party with her brand on it,” he said, but instead coveted GOP leaders in line with Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush.

A comic strip riffing on “Peanuts” taped to the office wall — called “It’s A Tough Election, Harry Reid” — summed up what the Reid considered the race’s “clear choice” between the powerful Senate majority leader and a Republican prone to lightning-rod statements. Reid was portrayed as Charlie Brown and Angle as Lucy.

“Harry Reid, stop being lazy like the unemployed and try to kick this football,” Angle says.

Unlike Charlie Brown, Reid nails the kick. “Good grief, you’re a terrible candidate,” he says.

ashley.powers@latimes.com
In campaign’s closing hours, a relaxed Harry Reid hands out handshakes, hugs and doughnuts

Seated in a tan leather couch, Petty Officer Sarax suddenly straightens his back and begins flailing his right arm.

“She doesn’t know what I’ve been through,” Sarax, who just returned from Iraq, says when asked about his marriage. “There are things that I just don’t want to talk about with her. And she keeps pushing.”

He talks and behaves like a soldier overcome by combat trauma, but Sarax isn’t real. He is a software program, a life-size projection on a movie screen that is reacting and responding to questions from a psychologist being trained to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sarax is a virtual patient, one of many computer-simulated humans created by psychologists, engineers and scientists at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. By the end of the year, the virtual patient is expected to be in use in university classrooms, and eventually in clinical hospitals and military bases.

Interactive computer patients are just one of many cutting-edge virtual technologies being developed at the institute. Many of them are used as training tools for U.S. military personnel, from fighting insurgents to calming nerves of combat-weary soldiers.

The institute’s wide-ranging virtual technologies, now found on 65 military sites across the country, have popped in and out of the public spotlight, but last week they were on full display when the institute opened the doors to its new 72,000-square-foot facility in Playa Vista.

“The move is a mark of a new era for us,” said Randall W. Hill Jr., executive director of the institute, which outgrew its facility in Marina del Rey. “But really, it’s a new era for the Army as well.”

The institute’s funding has increased from $5 million in 1999 to about $30 million today — as the Pentagon has stepped up spending on training military personnel through simulations. It has also attracted a diverse staff of more than 180 professionals, from graphic designers to former Disney artists and designers.

“Five years ago, the characters were talking heads with computer-generated voices with no emotion,” said Patrick G. Kenny, who leads the virtual patient program. “Today, it’s getting harder to distinguish what is real from what is not with virtual human characters.”

Walking through the institute’s new Playa Vista offices is like walking through a fraternity house for high-tech geeks. Cubicles have white boards on which workers can quickly jot down ideas whenever they have an “aha” moment. And a corner office is more likely to be occupied by a twentysomething in a T-shirt huddled over computer monitor than a supervisor in a suit.

On a recent visit, the institute engineers were testing one of their latest first-person, multi-player games that allows players to take part in a simulated attack that includes dealing with an improvised explosive device.

The game is designed to prepare soldiers for an insurgent ambush. It is already found on three military bases, including Camp Pendleton, in northern San Diego County.

In the training simulation, soldiers sit in mock Humvees and slowly roll through towns in either Iraq and Afghanistan, which are aesthetically true to life because the institute used satellite photographs to design the town’s landscape.

“We try to make it as real as possible,” said Todd Richmond, the game’s project director.

Richmond said he knew the institute got the game right after a Marine, who had been deployed overseas, was playing the game and pointed to a shop by the side of the road and said, “Hey, I went in that place and bought a Coke.”

In addition to mapping and satellite reconnaissance, the institute uses Hollywood movie writers to come in and make the story lines more compelling. The institute is one of the country’s only organizations that draws on the entertainment industry to do such work.

Maintaining this kind of realism is key to the institute’s success, said Peter W. Singer, author of “Wired for War,” a book that examines robotic warfare. “The stuff that ICT does is really in a class of its own.”

Singer estimates the U.S. military is spending about $6 billion each year on virtual training and expects that number to rise.

“This is a medium the iPhone generation knows,” Singer said. “You can’t simply teach them on a chalkboard anymore.”

william.hennigan@latimes.com
Computer simulation is a growing reality for instruction

As candidates count down the hours to election day, many campaigns are bracing for the possibility that it may take weeks before the final results are known. And that’s before the lawyers have their say.

In several states that host what may prove to be decisive contests for the House and Senate, elections officials say a definitive vote count may not be known until well after Nov. 2.

In Washington, for instance, all but 2% of ballots are expected to be cast by mail. With polls showing Sen. Patty Murray locked in a tight race with Republican Dino Rossi, it may be those votes arriving after election day that tip the balance.

“We do have a sense for the dramatic here in Washington,” said Secretary of State Sam Reed.

His office is also preparing for the possibility of a recount, which would automatically occur if the two leading candidates are separated by a margin within 0.5%. Recount laws vary by state, and in several, losing candidates have to pick up the tab if they seek one.

In Alaska, simply tallying the votes presents an additional challenge because of the write-in candidacy of Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Write-in ballots won’t be counted until mid-November, if officials decide it is necessary to do so.

For Rossi, a recount may provide a sense of d

If Republicans win control of the House in the Nov. 2 election, California’s congressional delegation will undergo a dramatic transfer of power, as Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills give way to a team of Republicans who could take over at least five committees.

Although Democrats are certain to remain in the majority of the state’s delegation, California Republicans hold enough seniority within their party to wield the chairmanship gavels of more committees than any other state:

•Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, in line to chair the top investigative committee, could become the Obama administration’s chief congressional antagonist.

•Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, the senior California House Republican, could return as Appropriations Committee chairman, tasked with carrying out his party’s pledge to rein in spending, even as his home state looks to Washington for more money.

•Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita is positioned to take control of the Armed Services Committee, setting up a possible confrontation with the White House it if sticks to its plan to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July. He also would take over the panel at a time when budget cuts loom over the state’s defense industry.

•Rep. David Dreier of San Dimas is likely to return as chairman of the Rules Committee, which sets the procedures for considering House bills. And Rep. Dan Lungren of Gold River, if he wins his tough reelection campaign, could chair the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the day-to-day operations of the House.

Republicans feel so good about their prospects that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) is working behind the scenes to win the Science and Technology Committee gavel. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who provided more than $1 million of his own campaign funds to help elect Republicans, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

And Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), in only his second term, is expected to move up in party leadership, perhaps to the third-ranking position of whip, responsible for counting votes and maintaining party discipline on important floor decisions. It would be a reward for the telegenic 45-year-old chief recruiter of Republican candidates who has traveled the country from Lake Oswego, Ore., to Frog Jump, Tenn., working to deliver a GOP majority.

California’s potential clout in a Republican-controlled House is striking given the blue tinge of the state, which still views President Obama more favorably than most other places, though six California Republicans chaired major committees before the Democrats won control of the House in 2006.

Democrats say they believe their party will hold onto the majority after Nov. 2, but are using the “what if” prospect of a Republican takeover in the campaign.

“Every time I try to encourage the White House to do more to help us elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, I send them a picture of Darrell Issa with the word ’subpoena’ underneath,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), in reference to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s power to drag administration officials before the bright TV lights of investigative hearings.

Democrats question how strongly California Republicans will look out for the state’s interests while shaping their party’s national agenda.

“When the Republican governor of California came to Congress with his hand out, saying, ‘I need your help,’ they all said, ‘no,’ ” said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff for Rep. George Miller of Martinez, one of five California Democrats who chair House committees.

All of the California Republicans present last summer opposed a $26-billion aid package for cash-strapped states, including $1.2 billion sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, attacking it as another expensive federal bailout.

“We will not be a prosperous state if our country has policies that are bringing us a trillion and a half dollars more in debt each year,” Rohrabacher said.

“Chasing after nonexistent federal dollars is hardly our priority,” added Dreier, chairman of the California Republican delegation. “Our goal is to implement fiscally responsible pro-growth economic policies so that we can get Californians working.”

Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Issa, said California Republicans would be “positioned to play key roles in addressing the failed efforts of this Congress and administration to lower unemployment — many California congressional Democrats don’t even seem to acknowledge that this administration’s job policies aren’t working as advertised.”

California Republicans could face resistance within their own party over aiding a blue state and the longtime mind-set among many lawmakers who would rather have federal resources go “anywhere but California.”

Among the biggest changes in a GOP power transfer would be Issa taking over as chairman of the oversight committee, which over the years has investigated subjects including steroid use in sports, and waste, fraud and abuse in government contracts.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, expects Issa to be “oftentimes partisan.”

But, she said, so was Waxman, an investigative pit bill while leading the panel, investigating such things as whether the George W. Bush administration sought to muzzle climate scientists in order to downplay the dangers of global warming and the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to deny California permission to implement its global warming law.

“We think it could be interesting having him as chairman of the committee,” Brian said.

But interesting isn’t a word Democrats use.

“So far, he’s given a lot of indications that he’s looking forward to using the position for partisan purposes,” Waxman said.

There is speculation that some longtime California Democrats may retire rather than try to adjust to life with less power. But if Republicans win the majority by only a few seats, those Democrats might stay on in hopes of regaining the majority in 2012.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) is among those eager for a Republican takeover of the House. “Most importantly, it will put people in charge who are not from San Francisco or Hollywood,” he said.

richard.simon@latimes.com

Election could shift power in state’s congressional delegation

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