Washed It!

DANNEMORA, N.Y. – Long Island serial killer Joel Rifkin says he’s not thrilled by the diabolic handiwork of a murderer who dumped the bodies of four women near Oak Beach.
With the feel of a veteran addressing an amateur, Rifkin said the sicko (being hunted by cops and the FBI) should never have dumped all the corpses in one place.

“I dumped them hundreds of miles apart,” Rifkin calmly told the Daily News Wednesday in a 70-minute interview at the upstate prison where he is serving life in prison.
Rifkin killed 17 prostitutes in a four-year time period – and took pains to dispose of their bodies.

He dumped his victims in rivers and woodland areas from the east end of Long Island to upstate. Three have never been found.
In Oak Beach, four decomposing bodies were found within a quarter-mile area just off a remote highway – and cops believe it’s a sole killer’s job.

Rifkin suggested the killer was haphazard for selecting a single dumping ground because it informed cops to the likelihood of a serial killer and brought more focus to the case.
Rifkin, who once lived in East Meadow, L.I., said he was always more frightened about dumping his bodies than strangling or dismembering his victims.

“I was surprised I didn’t get caught sooner,” said Rifkin, who was arrested in 1993 with his last victim’s body in the back of his mother’s pickup truck.
He said his arrest was the result of “a 25-cent mistake” – a missing license plate.

Rifkin who is 51 now said cops looking for the Oak Beach killer should probably focus on white men, aged 18 to 45, but admitted the magnitude of that challenge.
“That’s like half the country,” he said.

Police detained eight unlicensed welders Tuesday in connection with Monday’s deadly apartment fire in Shanghai that left 53 people dead and at least 70 injured, city officials said.

Investigators believe that the welders may have been using their equipment improperly, sparking a blaze that engulfed a 28-story building in the heart of the sprawling Chinese metropolis.

About 17 people remain in critical condition, said Shanghai Deputy Mayor Shen Jun.
Family members were reportedly scouring local hospitals for any information on missing loved ones, and aiming their frustration at authorities.

“It is hard to believe the government now. The drills on TV are successful, but when a fire truly happens, it’s just useless. We feel helpless,” a woman who gave only her surname, Liu, told the Associated Press. Her mother lived on the ninth floor of the building and died in the fire.

Chen Fei, director of the city’s firefighting bureau, said the blaze erupted on the building’s 10th floor.

Survivors either had to scamper down stairs or descend scaffolding that surrounded the tower. The apartment block, which housed 440 people, was undergoing renovations to add insulation at the time of the fire.

Firefighters facing difficulty reaching the upper levels set up hoses on top of an adjacent building to finally contain the blaze, which raged for more than four hours.

Rescuers were seen carrying survivors out of the building. Earlier attempts to airlift people off the roof with helicopters had to be called off because of thick smoke.

One resident said he and his wife climbed down to safety on the scaffolding from the 23rd floor, where their apartment was, according to the Xinmin Evening Post, a local newspaper.

The man, who identified himself as a retired teacher with the surname Zhou, said he was napping when he was awakened by smoke. He said he rushed through his front door into the hallway and uncoiled a fire hose to extinguish flames next to a window by a stairwell. He and his wife were then able to flee, the newspaper said.

Another survivor, Li Xiuyun, 61, said she hurried down stairs inside the building with her husband, son and granddaughter from their home on the 16th floor, cutting her feet on shattered glass along the way.

“The smoke was very strong and the glass from the windows was scalding,” she told the Agence France-Presse news service.

“My son took off his socks and soaked them with water, and we used them to cover our noses. I stumbled on people on the floor when walking,” she said at one of the nine hospitals that took in victims.

China’s minister of public security, Meng Jianzhu, rushed to Shanghai and called for a thorough investigation through the State Council, the country’s Cabinet, the New China News Agency said.

Although China has been undergoing a construction boom for many years, building safety has remained controversial.

Last year, firefighters could do little to stop a massive blaze in a nearly completed Beijing skyscraper housed in the same complex as China’s state television headquarters. The building, slated to be a luxury hotel, burned after being set alight by an illegal fireworks show.

Critics also point to substandard construction practices as a major source of safety problems.

They cite the collapse of thousands of buildings, including many shoddily built schools, during the deadly 2008 Sichuan earthquake as a prime example of the poor construction common in much of China.

The following year, a nearly completed 13-story apartment tower in Shanghai toppled, killing one worker in a high-profile incident that attracted stunned onlookers for days because the building remained largely intact on its side.

Chinese have come to call buildings constructed poorly for the sake of cutting costs “tofu dregs,” a reference to the mushy curds left behind in the tofu-making process.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Tommy Yang of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
8 welders detained in deadly Shanghai high-rise blaze

Prince William is engaged to longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton, Britain’s royal family announced Tuesday.

The 28-year-old heir to the throne and his fiancee will marry next year, royal aides said.
Announcement of the engagement had been rumored for weeks, as palace watchers looked ahead on the royal calendar and speculated that a marriage would have to take place sometime in 2011, sandwiched between other official royal activities.

Announcing the engagement now gives Buckingham Palace time to prepare for the most highly anticipated royal event since the lavish wedding of William’s parents, Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, in 1981.

The marriage will end bachelorhood for William and the hopes of young women around the world who have followed his every move and been charmed by his good looks and affable manner.

The prince and Middleton, who is also 28, met as students at the University of St. Andrews near Edinburgh, Scotland. Their relationship has been minutely dissected in the British tabloids, which have gleefully picked on Middleton’s middle-class background.

With no royal or aristocratic pedigree, Middleton will be the first commoner to marry an heir to the throne in centuries. Her parents are entrepreneurs who became millionaires from a mail-order party-supplies business, which has prompted some ridicule in a society where snobbishness can still be a prized trait.

Middleton’s mother, Carole, has been especially sneered at as a social climber who once worked as a flight attendant and who was caught on camera chewing gum during William’s graduation ceremony from military academy.

The couple have reportedly split up at various times over the years, but their closeness in recent times has led to speculation that marriage was imminent. Middleton’s parents were recently invited for a shooting party at the royal residence in Scotland, which was taken as a sign that a blending of the two families was in the offing.

William is second in line to the British throne, after Prince Charles. His low-key style and resemblance to his mother have made him a popular figure for a family battered by tragedy and scandal.

The prince’s aides said the pair became engaged while on vacation in Kenya last month. The wedding is expected to take place sometime in the spring or summer of next year. Royal watchers said that Westminster Abbey, where William’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, was married, is a likely venue.

After their wedding, the couple will live in northern Wales, where William will continue to serve in Britain’s air force.

Congratulations quickly began pouring in. British Prime Minister David Cameron said he was passed a note with news of the engagement during a Cabinet meeting and that, when he informed his colleagues, a cheer went up around the table.

Cameron later spoke with the prince by telephone — though whether he thanked William for providing some good news at a time when the British government is imposing a sweeping austerity plan is not known.

henry.chu@latimes.com
Prince William engaged to longtime girlfriend

Fire engulfed a high-rise apartment building under renovation in China’s business center of Shanghai on Monday, killing at least eight people, injuring more than 90 and sending some residents racing down scaffolding to escape.

A witness said building materials caught fire, and the blaze spread to scaffolding and then to the 28-story building, which houses a number of retired teachers, the official New China News Agency reported.

More than 80 fire trucks were called to battle the blaze, Shanghai state television said, and streams of water could be seen flowing into the building, which appeared to be gutted.

The fire appeared to have been put out about six hours later, and firefighters could be seen taking bodies from the building.

Photos posted online showed a man clinging to the scaffolding. A building resident identified as Mr. Zhou told Hong Kong broadcaster Phoenix TV that he and his wife were napping in their 23rd floor apartment when they smelled smoke. He said they climbed down the scaffolding four stories before being rescued by firefighters.

At one point helicopters could be seen hovering over the building, and witnesses said at least one resident was rescued, but thick smoke hampered further efforts. By evening the helicopters were gone.

The city government said in a statement that 100 people were rescued, but it was not clear if that included the 90 people the news agency said were hurt.

A doctor at Shanghai’s Jing’an Hospital surnamed Zhang said more than 20 seriously hurt people had been admitted for treatment.

The state-run news website Eastday.com cited a construction worker surnamed Qian who escaped from the 28th story as saying crews were installing energy-saving insulation when the fire occurred.

Qian said thick, rolling smoke clouds surrounded the building and the room she was in filled with smoke, making it difficult to breathe, the report said. She said she called the city’s emergency hot line and then used a wet towel to cover her mouth and nose as she ran down a fire escape.
Shanghai high-rise fire kills at least 8, injures 90

At Sami Abu Hossein’s cramped bookstore, the hundred or so book titles listed on a wall aren’t bestsellers. They’re banned.

And the cheery Abu Hossein can you get you any of them, sometimes in the few minutes it takes to sit down and drink a cup of thick-brewed Turkish coffee.

“There are three no-nos,” the owner of Al Taliya Books explains with a big smile. “Sex, politics and religion. Unfortunately, that’s all anyone ever wants to read about.”

He laughs uproariously.

“These are all the banned ones,” he says, gesturing to the list taped to the wall above the store entrance, books on sexuality to ones that critically examine the life and times of the prophet Muhammad, the most taboo topic in the Arab world.

“We have them,” he says, grinning broadly, “but don’t tell anyone.”

The tubby father of five seems to get a tremendous kick out of bucking the rules. (Not that they’re strictly enforced; he’s never been arrested or even summoned by the authorities.)

His partner in thought crime is Hossein Yassin, a self-described Marxist in a worn beige linen suit. Abu Hossein summons his wiry 48-year-old comrade in for the really tough jobs.

Yassin jokes that he’s the Special Forces for getting banned or hard-to-find books. He makes allusions to a murky past as an underground revolutionary. He says he calls upon a network that stretches across the Middle East to locate and transport hard-to-find titles.

“I can get any book,” he boasts. “But don’t ask how I get them.”

The most widely requested banned book remains “The Satanic Verses,” the 1988 novel that suggested some parts of the Koran weren’t God’s words and thereby earned its author, Salman Rushdie, a fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the hatred of pious Muslims worldwide.

Other top requests include “23 Years,” by the Iranian scholar Ali Dashti, which questions miracles ascribed to Muhammad in the Koran; and “The Joke in the Arab World,” by the Egyptian writer Khaled Qashtin, a sarcastic view of the Middle East, its rulers and customs.

Abu Hossein’s shop, in the capital’s rambling but lively downtown, also sells nonblacklisted books. His shelves are filled with titles from serious political studies about the Middle East to romance novels and pirated software manuals.

But his shop is known as the place in Amman to get forbidden fruits of knowledge.

Censoring books in the age of the Internet may seem like a quaint idea. Even the government official in charge of restricting them recently announced in a newspaper article that “stopping books from reaching the people is a page we’ve turned.”

The censor, Abdullah Abu Roman, occasionally stops by the bookstore to hobnob with Abu Hossein. So do plainclothes security officials. Abu Hossein serves them his Turkish coffee. They very politely ask him for the copies of the forbidden books. He hands them over. It’s all very civilized.

“Allah maakon,” he bids them farewell. God be with you.

“They are very sensitive to politics and criticism of politicians,” says Abu Hossein, who has been working at his family shop for decades. “But there are some books that are banned arbitrarily. Sometimes a censor will ban a book for a sentence he doesn’t like.”

A thickly bearded man wearing a headdress and flowing white dishdasha walks in. He’s one of the regulars, a Saudi religious scholar named Thaer Balawi who perhaps enjoys the challenge of subjecting his puritanical Salafist beliefs to the scrutiny of critical intellects. “You can’t stop an idea by censoring it,” he says.

“Mamnoueh maqroubieh,” goes the Arabic proverb. All that is forbidden is desired.

Abu Hossein recalls a memoir by a former interior minister that the censors immediately forbade for its sensitive revelations. It became a bestseller. But later, the political sands shifted, and the book was removed from the blacklist. Now it hardly sells.

In walks Raed Toguj, iPod ear buds firmly in place, a Web designer in his 20s with a penchant for philosophy and social theory. Censorship, he says, is a product of political ideology. “What I see as the solution is critical thinking,” he says.

Toguj acknowledges that the Internet has made his task superfluous. Many banned books are already available for download, and those with money can order copies from online bookstores abroad.

But Abu Hossein and his customers insisted that there’s something special about holding a book in your hand, feeling its pages, gabbing with the bookseller and fellow seekers of knowledge, like Carol Kaplanian, a 29-year-old doctoral student writing a thesis on honor killings of women in the Middle East, picking through a pile of books on gender relations.

The afternoon wears on. Abu Hossein keeps serving cups of coffee for his guests, the Salafist, the communist, the feminist and the Web dude with a passion for philosophy. They sift through titles and chat quietly, their murmurs softened by the stacks of books surrounding them.

daragahi@latimes.com
In Jordan, a bookstore devoted to forbidden titles

Autobiography of Mark Twain

Volume 1

Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, et al.

University of California Press: 738 pp., $34.95

Having created a quintessentially American brand of humor and style of literature, Mark Twain (1835-1910) can now add to his myriad accomplishments the title of America’s first blogger. No matter that the “Autobiography of Mark Twain,” edited by a team led by Harriet Elinor Smith, weighs in at more than 5,000 pages. Volume One, covering the period from 1870 to 1906, and clocking in at a bit over 700 pages (including 200 pages of notes), is being published to coincide with Twain’s 175th birthday, Nov. 30.

But what a blog it is: A prose paean to Twain’s enormous energy level, his incessant need to express himself, and, on a parallel track, his unwavering narcissism. He rejected traditional means of orderly exposition in favor of creating a freewheeling record of his thoughts, unrestrained and unfiltered except by the King — himself.

No American author has ever captured the imagination the way that Twain did and continues to do a century after his death at 74. (Average life expectancy for men at the time was 47.) He was the first American global celebrity, with his signature claiming a higher price than President Roosevelt’s (to Twain’s delight, since he did not much care for Teddy). His great accomplishment in creating a distinct American sense of self and attitude is well described by Charles Kuralt: “If I had to say as much about America as I possibly could in only two words, I would say these two words: ‘Huck Finn.’”

Composing his mammoth “Autobiography” took Twain, on and off, more than 35 years of a life that included much satisfying success as well as devastating losses. He started writing installments the same year he married Olivia Langdon, in 1870, when he was 35. His first effort described the land investment his father had made, a purchase that weighed upon Twain like a millstone due to the annual taxes he had to pay after his father’s death. (In an ironic twist, after the land was sold, oil was discovered there.) While sustaining such a self-focus over such a long time would be an improbable passion for most mere mortals, Twain, despite his extremely modest beginnings in Florida, Mo., was not a humble guy. Indeed, he deemed his accomplishments so numerous and spectacular that by the end of his life he found the best analogy was comparing himself with Halley’s Comet: “The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’”

Never one to rest for any prolonged period of time, by the time of his death, Twain had managed to cross the Atlantic 29 times, completed an around-the-world lecture tour at age 59, written more than 50,000 letters, scores of short stories, some 3,000 newspaper and magazine articles and more than 30 books.

Twain’s “Autobiography” offers a m

The U.S. Department of Justice has warned the Los Angeles Police Department that its investigations into racial profiling by officers are inadequate and that some cops still tolerate the practice.

As evidence of the ongoing problem, Justice officials pointed to two LAPD officers who were unknowingly recorded during a conversation with a supervisor being dismissive of racial profiling complaints.

“So, what?” one said, when told that other officers had been accused of stopping a motorist because of his race. The second officer is heard twice saying that he “couldn’t do [his] job without racially profiling.”

The officers’ comments, Justice officials found, spoke to a “perception and attitude of some LAPD officers on the street” and suggested “a culture that is inimical to race-neutral policing.”

The Justice Department’s concerns, which were conveyed in a recent letter obtained by The Times, are a setback for the LAPD, which remains under federal oversight on the issue. In order to rid itself of the federal scrutiny — which police officials have increasingly come to resent — the LAPD must assuage the Justice Department’s concerns.

The harsh assessment has also fed into internal tensions as members of the Police Commission, the civilian panel that oversees the LAPD, grow impatient with the pace of department efforts to more aggressively address the politically and socially explosive issue that has long dogged the city’s police.

Police Chief Charlie Beck disputed the Justice Department findings, saying they were based on cases that predated strict investigative guidelines put into place last year. He also rejected the suggestion that the candid comments of the two officers caught on the recording reflected a pervasive problem.

“It is a huge leap to paint the entire department with that brush,” Beck said. “And it is just not true. It’s not that type of department. We have a tough history that we must overcome and that takes time, but … the vast, vast majority of Los Angeles police officers today police in the right ways for the right reasons.”

Nonetheless, accusations of racial profiling — “biased policing” in modern LAPD lingo — have continued to hamper the department as it has worked to leave behind a reputation for racism and excessive force.

Profiling complaints typically occur after a traffic or pedestrian stop, when the officer is accused of targeting a person solely because of his or her race, ethnicity, religious garb or some other form of outward appearance. About 250 such cases arise each year, but more damaging is the widely held belief, especially among black and Latino men, that the practice is commonplace.

In the letter to city and police officials, the Justice Department expressed “continuing concerns about the overall quality of … investigations of biased policing.” Federal officials criticized investigators for “going through the motions” and found they “simply take ordered statements from officers and then run down a checklist of required questions without following up on key points or asking fundamental questions one would expect.”

In one case the Justice Department reviewed, patrol officers passed a Latino man driving in the opposite direction and did a U-turn to pull him over for a broken brake light. After asking the driver if he was in a gang and checking to see if he had any outstanding warrants, the officers let him go with a warning.

“The investigating officer never asked the officers involved what prompted them to look behind them to actually observe a non-working brake light,” the Justice officials wrote. “The investigator accepted the officers’ single-word answers of ‘No’ to the question whether race was a factor in the stop.”

“They are criticizing us for the way we used to do things,” Beck said in an interview.

He said significant progress has been made, not only in the investigations but also with regard to officers’ attitudes. Still, he said he was concerned about the tape-recorded comments of the two officers, adding that a misconduct investigation has been opened. In that case, the officers were taped by a supervisor who neglected to turn off a recording device after interviewing two other officers accused of racial profiling.

The Justice Department did not respond to calls for comment.

Until last year, the LAPD was under a federal consent decree that the Justice Department imposed in 2001 after the Rampart corruption scandal. It required the Police Department to complete sweeping reforms on many issues and to submit to near-constant audits and monitoring.

The U.S. District Court judge who lifted the decree found that the department had completed most, but not all, of the required reforms. On racial profiling, the judge called on federal authorities to remain in an oversight role for a time to assess the quality of the LAPD’s investigations and the Police Commission’s ability to monitor the issue.

Justice officials sounded an alarm after a report in May from the inspector general, the commission’s watchdog, concluded that the LAPD generally was doing an adequate job. Justice officials criticized the inspector general’s office for “not asking more substantive and probing questions.”

In an effort to satisfy the Justice Department, Nicole Bershon, who took over as inspector general in May, is expected to release a detailed report at the end of the month that reviews 10 recent racial profiling investigations. The cases were handled by a special team of investigators the LAPD formed this year to look at complaints accusing police of searching or detaining a person because of race or ethnicity.

Police commissioners have grown frustrated with the department’s work on racial profiling. At a meeting earlier this month, the commission’s president, John Mack, and Commissioner Rob Saltzman questioned whether police officials were doing enough. They noted that no officer has been found guilty of racial profiling by an LAPD investigation for years, despite numerous complaints each year.

Police leaders have long argued that because racial profiling hinges on what an officer was thinking in the moment, it is all but impossible to determine if he or she racially profiled someone unless there is a confession. When the commanding officer of the Internal Affairs Division offered that explanation to the commission, Mack dismissed it.

“I’ve heard many times that we can’t get inside an officer’s head, but somehow, some way, we need to figure out a way to get to the facts,” Mack said. “I’m not talking about a witch hunt, but I am talking about reaching a point where we can say with confidence that these claims have been very fairly and very thoroughly investigated.”

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Justice Department warns LAPD to take a stronger stance against racial profiling

For years in her native Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has been known simply as “The Lady,” a pro-democracy stalwart and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has languished for years in an arbitrary solitary confinement imposed by the nation’s ruling military junta.

Although she was snatched from the public limelight, residents of the former Burma have always known this about the charismatic Buddhist activist, now 65: She would not be broken by the military generals she has long defied.

On Saturday, Suu Kyi proved them all right. She was finally released from the mildewing, two-story villa where she has spent much of her house arrest, spanning 15 of the last 21 years.

Whether in prison or not, supporters say, she has remained a quiet but defiant symbol of struggle against political repression for residents of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

Always cutting a slight figure, the daughter of a national hero who had generations earlier campaigned for Burma’s independence from Britain endured personal hardship to uphold her political principals, often going years without seeing her husband or sons.

But as popes, presidents and activists called unsuccessfully for her release, she never wavered. Once asked if she thought her story had the makings of a Greek tragedy, she responded: “Don’t be silly. I don’t go in for melodrama.”

She later added: “I look upon myself as a politician. That’s not a dirty word, you know. Some people think that there is something wrong with politicians. Of course, there is something wrong with some politicians.”

Time and again, Suu Kyi showed her mettle since taking up the democracy struggle in 1988.

Spending much of her early life abroad, Suu Kyi had returned home that year just as street protests erupted against a quarter-century of military rule. The daughter of martyred independence leader Gen. Aung San, she quickly assumed a leadership role.

Then 44, she campaigned for the government to stage proper elections and became the first secretary general of the fledging National League for Democracy.

Explaining why she risked prison or worse by taking on the nation’s military, she responded: “I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on.”

Her unsuccessful efforts to stop a brutal military suppression that killed thousands of protestors, repeatedly facing own armed soldiers, gained her worldwide notoriety, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, being proclaimed by the Nobel committee as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless.”

But Suu Kyi’s sons, Alexander and Kim, accepted the award in Oslo on behalf of their mother who, seen as a threat by the country’s new military rulers, was detained in 1989 on national security charges.

She spent the next six years under house arrest at the family home at 54 University Avenue, enduring various periods in detention since then. Over the years, she has waged repeated hunger strikes to call attention to the military’s brutal repression of protesting students.

But Suu Kyi endured. When her husband, British scholar Michael Aris, died in London in March 1999, they had only seen each other a handful of times since her first house arrest a decade earlier.

Press reports have painted her life in captivity as austere. Rising each day at 4 a.m., she meditated, read and listened to one of five radios that were her only link to the outside world. She had no telephone, no television, no Internet. Her mail, if delivered at all, was heavily censored.

Once an accomplished pianist, Myanmar’s muggy equatorial heat long ago warped her instrument. Her only companionship: two long-serving, mother-and-daughter assistants.

Recent months have brought particular frustration. Suu Kyi was just a few weeks away from being released last year when she had an unexpected visit by an American, John Yettaw. She was found guilty of harboring anti-government elements and her sentence was extended.

At the time, one of her assistants told reporters: “It has been a hard life, she has sacrificed a lot. But she is used [to it] now. And she keeps working, waiting for the day she will be released.”

john.glionna@latimes.com
Suu Kyi outlasted her oppressors

As Jerry Brown prepares to take over as governor, California faces a $25.4-billion deficit — far larger than state officials were projecting only days ago — the state’s chief budget analyst said Wednesday.

The figure, projected over the next year and a half, results from billions of dollars in phantom savings approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators last month, more budget restrictions passed by voters last week and predictions of a “painfully slow economic recovery,” according to the report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

In addition, more than $8 billion in temporary sales, car and income taxes are set to expire in the coming year, and the federal stimulus program that has helped prop up schools, healthcare for the poor and other state programs also will soon disappear.

The report shows $20-billion annual shortfalls in future years as well.

“There is no good news,” said Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor.

Simply keeping K-12 public schools funded at their current level would expand the deficit, Taylor said. That is because billions of dollars in school cutbacks are already factored in.

The predicted $25.4-billion deficit is the equivalent of about 29% of this year’s general fund budget. Erasing the gap will require a combination of severe cuts and more in tax collections over several years, the report said.

“They have to consider everything,” Taylor said of lawmakers and the governor-elect.

Brown, on a post-election vacation, was unavailable for comment. He is scheduled to return to Sacramento next week. One of his campaign pledges was that he would not raise taxes without voters’ approval.

Republicans immediately vowed to block any tax hikes, and Democrats pledged to protect core programs and jobs and to use the shortfall as a reason to restructure government. Senate minority leader Bob Dutton (R-Rancho Cucamonga) called for an emergency legislative session to immediately address the projected deficit.

Schwarzenegger signed the latest spending plan in modern history last month, 100 days into the fiscal year. The analyst’s report Wednesday estimated that $6 billion, or roughly a third, of the deficit-cutting that the governor and legislative leaders said they achieved will never materialize.

Prisons spending will outpace what was budgeted only a month ago by $965 million, and overly rosy assumptions of a helping hand from Washington will prove too optimistic by $3.5 billion, according to the report.

Any future aid from the nation’s capital, where Republicans decisively seized control of the House of Representatives last week on promises to curb federal spending, is also unlikely.

“Good luck,” Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) said Wednesday. “We’re going to be trying to reduce spending here, not increase spending.”

Taylor sought to lower expectations that a robust economic recovery would pave the way for California’s return to solvency. His report reduces tax receipt estimates for the current year, citing a “sluggishly” improving economy.

Tax collections in California — a center of the mortgage boom and bust — won’t return to their peak levels of 2007-08 until 2015-16, the report forecasts.

“It’s not just budget, it’s also the economy,” said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills).

Taylor projected a $22.4-billion deficit in fiscal 2012-13. That ebbs only slightly to $19.4 billion by fiscal 2015-16. Even those bleak figures could prove optimistic: They assume no cost-of-living adjustments and that California will win all pending lawsuits against the state.

Voters widened the deficits last week by approving two measures that constrain legislators’ ability to assess fees on businesses and to take funds from local governments. Combined, the measures unravel $800 million in savings this year and up to $1 billion annually in the future, the report said.

But Californians also voted to allow the Legislature, which Democrats control, to pass budgets with a simple majority rather than a two-thirds vote. That could eliminate the need for GOP approval, which has often stalled the budget process. But a two-thirds vote is still required to raise taxes, which necessitates some Republican support.

shane.goldmacher@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Simon in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Estimated state budget deficit reaches $25.4 billion

After a survey of U.S. troops and their families, a Pentagon study group has concluded that the military can lift the ban on gays serving openly in uniform with only minimal and isolated incidents of risk to current war efforts, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted two people familiar with a draft of the study, which is to be completed for Defense Secretary Robert Gates by Dec. 1., but with an uncertain public release date.

More than 70% of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays and lesbians in uniform would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, the sources told the newspaper.

The newspaper said the survey results have led the report’s authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them.

The long, detailed and nuanced report will almost certainly be used by opponents and supporters of repeal legislation to bolster their positions in what is likely to be a heated and partisan congressional debate. And it is expected to reveal challenges the services could face in overturning the long-held policy, including overcoming fierce opposition in some parts of the force — primarily in the Army and Marine Corps — even if they represent a minority.

The Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Amos, last week said that with forces fighting in Afghanistan and still deployed in Iraq, now was the wrong time to lift the ban.

“This is not a social thing. This is combat effectiveness,” Amos said.

That brought a mild rebuke from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, who said he was surprised that Amos had spoken publicly. He said the heads of the military services had committed to “look at the data and then make our recommendations privately.”

The Post said Gates, Mullen and uniformed and civilian leaders of the four military branches received copies of the draft report late last week.

The document totaled about 370 pages and is divided into two sections, the newspaper said. The first section explores whether repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would harm unit readiness or morale. The second part of the report presents a plan for ending enforcement of the ban. It is not meant to serve as the military’s official instruction manual on the issue but could be used if military leaders agreed, one of the sources told the newspaper.

Among other questions, the survey asked whether having an openly gay person in a unit would have an effect in an intense combat situation. Although a majority of respondents signaled no strong objections, a significant minority is opposed to serving alongside openly gay troops. About 40% of the Marine Corps is concerned about lifting the ban, according to one of the people familiar with the report, the Post said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said that of the 400,000 surveys sent randomly to troops, 115,052 responded. An additional 150,000 surveys were sent to spouses with 44,266 completed. Defense officials have said they were pleased with the response rate and believed it was enough to get an accurate sampling of the force.

President Obama has vowed to end the policy. A Democratic proposal to repeal the 1993 law already has passed the House as part of a broader defense policy bill that includes such popular provisions as a pay raise for the troops. But that same legislation sank in the Senate under Republican objections just weeks before the Nov. 2 elections.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has promised another vote by year’s end, although the political dynamics in this lame-duck session haven’t changed much. Gates has asked Congress to act before January, but Senate Democrats still hold a shaky majority and they are unlikely to give in to Republican demands for a protracted debate.

A Republican gay rights group, the Log Cabin Republicans, has challenged the constitutionality of the policy in court. The Obama administration on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court to keep the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in place while a federal appeals court considers the issue.

The administration filed court papers in defense of an appeals court order that allowed “don’t ask, don’t tell” to go back into effect after a federal judge declared it unconstitutional and barred its enforcement. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is reviewing the administration’s appeal.

The Log Cabin Republicans asked the Supreme Court to step into the case to reverse the appeals court decision that has allowed “don’t ask, don’t tell” to remain in effect despite the order by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips.

Among several recommendations, the Pentagon report urges an end to the military ban on sodomy between consenting adults, regardless of what Congress or the federal courts might do about “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the source told the Post.

The report also concludes that gay troops should not be put into a special class for equal employment or discrimination purposes, that person said. The recommendation is based on feedback the study group obtained from gay troops and same-sex partners who said they do not want a special classification, according to the source.

The report recommends few, if any, changes to policy covering military housing and benefits because the military must abide by the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which does not recognize same-sex marriage.
Pentagon draft study shows low risk to ending ‘don’t ask’ policy