San Francisco on HuffingtonPost.com

The Unluckiest Group In The Search For An Affordable Apartment

2013-06-20T00:12:39Z

Marisol was at the end of her rope.

The 24-year-old San Francisco State University student, her husband Zach and their dog Lucy had spent months vainly searching for a new place to live. Every time the couple turned in an application for a promising apartment, a familiar script would play out.

"We'd meet the landlord and we'd be getting along great," recounted Marisol, who didn't want to be identified by her last name to avoid unwanted attention to her immigration status. "But when we started to fill out all the forms, we'd have to start asking questions.

"It'd get to the part where the form would ask for a credit score and I'd say, 'What if I don't have a credit score?' Then, it'd get to the part where it would ask for a Social Security number and I'd say, 'What if I don't have a Social Security number?' They always said it was fine and they'd work with us, but no one ever called back."

Finding an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most expensive U.S. rental markets, is tough for anyone. But for an undocumented immigrant like Marisol, the task can seem Sisyphean.

Due to high demand driven by a surging, tech-fueled economy and a scarce supply of available units, San Francisco is one of the most competitive U.S. housing markets, with more than 90 percent of all apartments receiving multiple offers almost immediately. Open houses for cramped, one-bedroom apartments regularly draw throngs of hopeful tenants clamoring to shell out sky-high rents.

Charlie Goss, government and community affairs director at the San Francisco Apartment Association, said landlords tend to rent apartments based on what makes the most business sense, regardless of an applicant's immigration status.

"If a person meets the landlord's objective expectations of income, credit and references, that person tends to be offered the apartment, without regard to where they are from or how they got here," Goss explained.

The extreme sellers' market, however, allows landlords to be very picky.

Even though it's illegal for landlords in California to directly ask a perspective tenant about citizenship status, the side effects of that status quickly become apparent during the application process. Building owners often have the opportunity to turn away dozens of applicants whose legal situation isn't in question before even considering someone like Marisol.

Marisol was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. with her parents when she was 9 months old. The family settled in a small, increasingly diverse town in San Bernardino County. Both of her parents became citizens through the 1980s amnesty program.

Her mother is a school district social worker and her father owns a roadside automotive repair business for semi-trucks. Though her father sponsored Marisol for citizenship, the application has been pending for well over a decade. She applied for President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program late last year, but has not gotten a response.

"When I was growing up, no one ever asked us if we were undocumented," she explained. "We lived in such as close-knit community that everyone there knew us."

After graduating from high school, Marisol bounced around to a few junior colleges, primarily studying dance, before being accepted at San Francisco State. She said she hopes to become a nutritionist. "I want to show people that eating well isn't as hard or as daunting as it seems," she said.

However, her inability to find a place to live is making that dream difficult. She is currently living with friends in Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood, but the lease ends this summer. She hopes to find something near school, in San Francisco, or the home in Berkeley where she babysits for a 6-year old boy with epilepsy.

Even if she were to be able to stay in her current housing situation, the location isn't ideal. Marisol noted that the neighborhood -- in one of Oakland's most violent districts -- isn't one where she feels comfortable going for a run by herself at 8 p.m.

"Undocumented immigrants often end up in informal housing arrangements," explained Justin Skinner, a staff attorney with immigration advocacy group International Institute of the Bay Area. "A lot of times the only things they're able to rent are single rooms inside of a house or a sublet from someone who doesn't care about documentation."

While Marisol and her husband have seen some of these subletting opportunities on Craigslist, most are only for short periods -- a few months at the most -- and don't lead to anything resembling a permanent solution.

"Difficulties with housing are one of the reasons why undocumented immigrants tend to move around quite a bit," Skinner added.

Lucia Kimble, an organizer with the San Francisco-based social justice organization Causa Justa-Just Cause, said housing is one of most troublesome issues faced by thousands of the predominately Latino Bay Area residents her group works with each year.

"We see a lot of discrimination based on immigration status and a lot of it goes unchecked," Kimble said, noting that many undocumented immigrants are forced to live in overcrowded, substandard dwellings, often with mold, a lack of heat and poor ventilation.

"Many folks are fearful that if they complain about the poor housing conditions they’ll face consequences," Kimble said. "We’ve heard of landlords tell tenants they'll call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on them if they lodge any complaints.

"Since people feel they're treated like criminals just for being in the country, they're afraid to stand up and defend their rights," Kimble said. She suggested undocumented immigrants learn their rights through programs like the ones offered by Causa Justa-Just Cause.

Additionally, as an increasing number of apartment listings appear exclusively online, many undocumented immigrants without Internet access fall on the wrong side of the digital divide and are shut out of the process before they're even able to apply.

While Internet access isn't Marisol's problem (she recently took to popular social news site Reddit to vent about her situation) she's doing her best to remain hopeful. "I just want somewhere to be comfortable and safe," she said with a sigh. "I'm not picky."

Hero Dog Saves Hikers From Rattlesnake

2013-06-19T23:28:59Z

If it wasn’t for their dog’s instincts, a San Francisco couple would probably have spent Father’s Day in the hospital.

Mighty Shakira is being hailed a hero by her owners, who say the 13-month-old Anatolian Shepherd foiled a potentially deadly rattlesnake attack on Sunday at Mount Tamalpais State Park, San Francisco Chronicle outdoors columnist Tom Stienstra reports. John Forsyth of San Francisco and his wife, Diane Castanaon, were about a quarter mile up the Matt Davis Trail when the dog spotted them in their tracks.

Arianna Huffington: The Most Important Movie of the Summer (Hint: It's Not Man of Steel)

2013-06-19T23:01:41Z

The biggest movie of the summer isn't Man of Steel, or The Lone Ranger, or Fast & Furious 6. It's a new documentary called How to Make Money Selling Drugs, which will be released in theaters and on demand on June 26.

Now, when I say "biggest," I'm not talking about budget size or box office receipts -- I'm talking impact and importance. Written and directed by Matthew Cooke, and produced by Bert Marcus and Adrian Grenier, How to Make Money Selling Drugs exposes the hypocrisy, insanity and destructiveness of America's drug war. Of course, the problem with saying a movie is "important" is that it can leave the impression that it isn't entertaining. That's certainly not the case with this film. Indeed, Cooke's goal is, as he put it, borrowing from Malcolm X, to bring about change "by the most entertaining means necessary." Or, as Hamlet said, "The play is the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Or, in this case, the conscience of the public, which will in turn hopefully catch the conscience of the king -- aka our leaders.

The movie is loosely structured as a satirical how-to, showing how easy it is to make a ton of money as a player in America's war on drugs. And though the film mainly focuses on the stories of former drug dealers, along the way it lays bare the complicity of law enforcement, our justice system, and our political system. It also features interviews with, among others, Susan Sarandon, 50 Cent, The Wire creator David Simon, HuffPost senior writer Radley Balko, and Russell Simmons. (And, full disclosure, a cameo by me.)

But the reason the film truly feels like a blockbuster is that you can't leave the theater without being shocked and outraged by what you've seen. Even if you go in feeling like you're well-versed in the insanity of the drug war, you'll walk out stunned. That's what happened to me. I've been passionate about this issue for years. In fact, the injustice of the war on drugs has been one of The Huffington Post's core issues since its founding. It's also why this week we've been running a dedicated series of blog posts in conjunction with the movie's release.

On no issue is the cowardice and hypocrisy of our elected leaders writ larger than on the drug war -- with staggering consequences in lives and in money. Not only is the war on drugs America's longest-running war, it's also arguably its most destructive. The statistics, as laid out by the film's producers, give a sense of the magnitude of the epic failure of the drug war:

In 1981, the U.S. spent1.5 billion on the drug war. Last year, the number was 25 billion.

In the 1980s there were about 3,000 SWAT-style drug raids per year. Today there are around 50,000.

The U.S. is the top consumer of cocaine worldwide.

African-American dealers are four times more likely to be arrested than Caucasian dealers -- even though more buyers and sellers are Caucasian.

Ninety percent of those convicted on drug charges under the Rockefeller drug laws are African-American and Latino.

In 2011, 48 percent of federal inmates were in prison for drug crimes, compared with 8 percent for violent crimes.

"I think we're led to believe we're a nation of 2 types: criminals and citizens," writes Cooke in his director's statement. "But truly we are one people. If we are divided by anything it's by two conversations. The truth Americans speak on the streets. And the conversation between our commercial news and Washington elites, blasted across our media -- drowning the rest of us out."

That's why it's so important that we all lend our voices to a conversation that can reach Washington and finally overwhelm the entrenched forces that keep this disastrous war -- a war not on drugs but on our people -- going year after devastating year.

And to help fuel that conversation, we'd like you to send us your stories. How has the drug war affected you, your family, or your friends? Are you involved in local efforts to fight it? Let us know how you're intersecting with the war on drugs.

And if you've missed the parts of the conversation we've been running on HuffPost in conjunction with the film, here are some highlights:

Director Matthew Cooke kicked it off by writing about how, "from the standpoint of social responsibility, the war on drugs has in fact created a crisis of epic proportions not just in the United States but across the planet." In sum, he continues, "If we want to save lives we need to end the war on drugs. We know this."

And to that end, he also recommends supporting three organizations on the front lines of ending this war:

1) The Drug Policy Alliance is a fantastic organization with tons of information, resources and easy action steps on contacting congresspeople. 2) Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is an inspired group of former and current police officers, judges and prison guards who are calling for legalization of all drugs to save lives. 3) Marijuana Majority, while focused solely on marijuana, is a great coalition of famous names who are joining forces to help spread the word that indeed 72 percent of the nation already agrees "no jail time for marijuana". We're making progress!

Producer Adrian Grenier writes about having grown up with parents involved in the hippie movement and being exposed both to casual drug use and to those with more serious drug problems. Though he says he doesn't advocate drug use, criminalizing it isn't the answer:

I was lucky -- I grew up white and middle class.

In a minority community, the enforcement of drug laws would have ripped my family apart. These communities are systematically targeted and destroyed by drug laws, leaving countless children without their parents. I can only imagine the horror of actually watching a friend, family member, or mentor put behind bars. Is it really more beneficial to society to lock a father in prison, rather than send him to treatment, where he can learn to make better choices as he continues to provide for his family?

Neill Franklin is executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a non-profit representing over 5,000 law enforcement workers opposed to the drug war. He's also a 34-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department and the Maryland State Police. From his very credentialed perspective, Franklin writes about how futile it is to focus on the supply end of the drug war. For inner city children, drug dealing "often means the only avenue of escape from a life of poverty." He continues:

Prosecuting individual drug suppliers is a lot like squeezing a water balloon: when you tighten in one place, another part of the balloon necessarily expands out. The police might arrest a dealer in one area of the city, but when they do, they create a vacuum in the market, which others enthusiastically fill. Worse, the scramble to fill that void often leads to violent confrontations between groups competing for market share. This is one way in which drug prohibition not only fails to prevent violence, it actively generates it.

And that's, of course, because of the massive amount of money the system generates. "Pretty much every ill in America is funded by profits from drugs," Franklin writes.

And then there are the opportunity costs of having our limited law enforcement resources focused so intently on the futile drug war. As Franklin notes, as the drug war has grown, the national percentage of murders that get solved has dropped, going from 91 percent in 1963 to 61 percent in 2007.

"We cannot arrest our way out of this problem," he concludes. "Take it from someone who tried for 34 years."

For a different angle on the supply side, there's Violeta Ayala, an award-winning indigenous Bolivian filmmaker, who writes about how "the indigenous people of Bolivia have a relationship with the coca leaf that goes back thousands of years." To the Bolivians, cocaine is simply "a way to get out of poverty."

She details how the Bolivians were one of the top targets of the U.S. after Nixon launched the drug war in 1972. But after 25 years of accepting the consequences of the U.S. war on drugs, everything changed when Evo Morales was elected and refused to go along. The result? "Bolivia has a growing middle class," Ayala writes, "we're fighting illiteracy with more children attending school than ever and the number of people living below the poverty line is decreasing by the day."

She concludes that, "ultimately, as long as there's demand for cocaine, there will be cocaine production in Bolivia."

Susan Sarandon writes about the passage of Amendment 64 in Colorado, "a common sense step toward ending the archaic prohibition mindset that has resulted in the U.S. leading the world in the incarceration of our people -- a prison system packed with non-violent drug offenders."

She also reminds us that the drug offenders our prisons are packed with are not evenly distributed across race and class lines: While African-Americans and whites have virtually identical rates of drug use, African-Americans are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated for pot.

But Sarandon is hopeful for the future:

With the ascendance of the baby boomers I believe we've finally reached a tipping point. The majority of my generation knows better than to believe the government's breathless anti-marijuana propaganda...
I encourage everyone to get involved in your own state. Eventually we'll reach enough of a critical mass to prompt reform at the federal level and we can end this national outrage once and for all.

HuffPost's Radley Balko posts an entry that's taken from his book (to be published July 9) Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. Radley writes about another way to make money -- big money -- from the drug war. And with no risk of jail time:

Want to make money on the drug war? Start a company that builds military equipment, then sell that gear to local police departments. Thanks to the generation-long trend toward more militarized police forces, there's now a massive and growing market for private companies to outfit your neighborhood cops with gear that's more appropriate for a battlefield.

How big of a market? By 2014, the homeland security market for local law enforcement agencies will reach over $19 billion. And, as Radley notes, because most of these localities will never face the real threat of terrorism, much of this equipment -- "armored personnel carriers, high-power weapons, aircraft and other military-grade gear" -- will instead be used to further prosecute the drug war, "namely, to perform raids on people suspected of nonviolent consensual drug crimes."

It's part of what Radley calls "the police-industrial complex," and he shows how the confluence of the drug war and 9/11 has perverted the relationship between even small-town police departments and communities across the country.

Eric Sterling is the head of the non-profit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. But from 1979 to 1989, he was counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and helped write anti-drug legislation, especially the law -- written "with no hearings or effective input from anyone" -- mandating sentencing disparities for those convicted of selling crack cocaine versus powered cocaine.

"You would think that Eric Holder, the first African American Attorney General, and Barack Obama, the first African American President, would be vigilant that there was no racial discrimination in the Justice Department of their Administration," Sterling writes. "You would think."

He notes that in 2008, lawmakers, including then-Senators Obama, Biden and Clinton, co-sponsored legislation to address the disparity. But the version that finally passed in 2010, and was signed by President Obama, adjusted the triggering quantities only slightly. The result?

... the racial disparity in federal crack cocaine cases is even worse! In FY 2009, blacks were 79.0 percent of all federal crack cocaine defendants. By FY 2012, that percentage had gone UP to 82.6 percent. In FY 2009, whites were only 9.8 percent of all federal crack cocaine defendants. But FY 2012, that percentage had gone DOWN to 6.7 percent. Under Holder and Obama, the racial disparity has gotten significantly worse.

Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, also brings attention to President Obama's hypocrisy on the issue. As Nadelmann notes, in his 2008 campaign, Obama promised to change the government's emphasis to a public health approach instead of criminalization. How did that turn out?

The Obama administration's budget continues to emphasize enforcement, prosecution and incarceration at home -- and interdiction, eradication and military escalation abroad. Even what the government does spend on treatment and prevention is overstated, as many of its programs are wasteful and counterproductive.

As Nadelmann points out, in 2011, of the 1.5 million people arrested for drugs, over 80 percent were for low-level possession. "On any given night," he writes, "roughly 500,000 people go to sleep behind bars in the U.S. for nothing more than a drug law violation -- that's 10 times the number in 1980."

Nor is this an issue the president can blame on John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Congress, the tea party or the media.

Nadelmann also writes about how the people are fighting back, as seen in the passage of decriminalization initiatives in Washington and Colorado. Yet even as progress has been made, it's important not to let up. "Nothing concerns me more than when people look at what we accomplished on Election Day and declare 'we've won!'" he writes. "The truth is, we may have scored two major victories, but winning the war against the war on drugs is a long way off... The drug war remains entrenched and codified in a complex, global web of policies. We can't stop fighting until policymakers adopt a fundamentally better way of dealing with drugs, people who use them, and their children, families and communities."

Back in 2001, I wrote about how I hoped the movie Traffic would ignite a conversation about the drug war. And for a while it did. Yes, progress has been made at the state level -- but only in a few states. And while the momentum of demographic change will undoubtedly keep that progress going, we need to bring a sense of urgency to this injustice. I hope there will come a day when the government no longer wages this insane war against its own citizens. But how many lives are going to be destroyed before that happens?

So please, get involved. See this powerful film -- it will motivate you to take action. And be sure to tell us your drug war stories.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post to mark the theatrical and on-demand release of "How To Make Money Selling Drugs," a new documentary by Matthew Cooke that examines the drug trade from a variety of angles. For more info on the film, click here.

Sam Liccardo: Why San Jose Sued Major League Baseball -- And Wrote Its Own Declaration of Independence

2013-06-19T22:59:32Z

Original Joe's has become a San Jose institution by serving the best eggplant parmesan in the Bay Area for over 50 years. It has thrived in Downtown San Jose because the owners, the Rocca family, like so many other San Jose businesspeople, know what it takes to compete. As they compete for the loyalty of their patrons, Original Joe's has helped to support the college tuitions and mortgages of generations of cooks and wait staff.

An independent study shows that downtown hotels, clubs, restaurants, shops, and cafes like Original Joe's would benefit from the over $83 million in annual spending from visitors to a Downtown ballpark, but they're denied that opportunity. They're denied that opportunity because the San Francisco Giants' lawyers, lobbyists, and billionaire owners are afraid of competition, and Major League Baseball protects them from competition.

In San Jose, we welcome competition, because we know that an economy that values competition is the same economy that enables Silicon Valley to lead the world in the innovation. San Jose is already the largest city in Northern California, and every projection tells us that over the next couple of decades, we'll grow more than the next three largest cities -- Fremont, SF, and Oakland -- combined. We provide a home to the world's most talented, diverse workforce, and to hundreds of great companies -- from Adobe to Brocade to Cisco to Xilinx -- that drive global innovation. Those companies -- like the companies in every other American industry -- must compete fairly against their peers, as required by federal anti-trust laws. Every American industry, that is, except Major League Baseball.

We relish the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. This lawsuit is San Jose's declaration of independence -- the time is long since past for San Jose to take its future into its own hands. Our destiny won't be shaped by billionaire team owners, their lawyers, or their lobbyists. And if Major League Baseball doesn't want to allow one of their teams to move to San Jose, we're happy to take their money -- as federal antitrust law provides for treble damages for anticompetitive behavior.

What will this lawsuit cost San Jose taxpayers? The City of San Jose will not pay a dime in attorneys' fees. One of the finest litigation firms in the nation, the law firm of Cotchett, Pitre, & McCarthy, will take this case without a fee from the City. Federal antitrust law allows them to collect their fee, if we prevail, from Major League Baseball. If we don't prevail, they don't collect a fee. If we do, then MLB picks up the tab -- along with tens of millions of dollars to be paid to San Jose taxpayers.

How do San Jose taxpayers benefit? Direct net revenues as a result of a half-billion-dollar ballpark development will very conservatively exceed $30 million to the City of San Jose over the next 30 years, according to a 2009 independent published analysis. School districts, the County, and other public agencies would garner tens of millions more. That's real money that San Jose taxpayers have foregone as a result of the anti-competitive meddling of the San Francisco Giant's ownership.

The A's ownership and the San Jose City Council have publicly committed that the stadium will be wholly privately financed, so taxpayers benefit from all of these revenues to support police, libraries, and other vital city services.

On Sunday, a sewage pipe backup at the 47-year-old O.co Coliseum forced the A's and Seattle Mariners to vacate their clubhouses. The opposing teams moved into the same locker room, sharing the one used by the NFL's Oakland Raiders, the stadium's other tenant.

Nothing sings "Do you know the way to San Jose?" like a backed-up sewage in locker rooms.

Darden Restaurants Continues War Against Obamacare

2013-06-19T22:32:04Z

Darden Restaurants has run into an obstacle in its battle against Obamacare: the state of California.

On Tuesday, the Orlando Sentinel first reported that Clarence Otis, the CEO of the fast-casual chain that owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden, is fighting a bill that intends to prevent companies from cutting workers' hours to avoid paying for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

If the legislation is enacted, large employers will be forced to pay an average additional penalty of roughly $5,500 to the state for any employee who works full time and chooses Medicaid coverage, Jimmy Gomez (D), the bill's sponsor and a California State Assembly member, told The Huffington Post. The penalty will be prorated depending on the average number of hours employees work during the year, he added.

In an emailed statement to HuffPost, Darden Director of Communications Rich Jeffers said the bill "threatens job opportunities and economic growth and would be a sad step back from work to welfare."

In 2012, the company flirted with the idea of hiring more part-time workers to reduce health care costs, but the policy was recanted after widespread public protest. Jeffers said that the opposition to the California bill in no way signals a plan to higher more part-time workers.

The legislation was written to avoid what drafters described to the Orlando Sentinel as a "Walmart Loophole" of reducing employee hours or terminating workers to avoid health care fines. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Walmart was only hiring temporary workers at many of its U.S. stores, a move that many interpreted as a way to skirt Obamacare requirements to provide health care to full-time employees.

"If an employer's business model is based on workers' health coverage being covered by Medi-Cal [California's Medicaid program] and they don't pay anything, then the question is why is it up to the taxpayer to subsidize their business model," Gomez said.

In an emailed statement to HuffPost, Walmart Director Of Communications Delia Garcia wrote that part-time associates always have the "first shot" at full-time job openings.

California's legislation looks to offset the costs of the Medicaid expansion it is planning under Obamacare. Starting next year, anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level will be eligible to enroll in a Medicaid program, increasing state spending by around 3 percent, according to a November report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute.

Previous efforts to force corporations to increase health care spending have run into trouble. In 2006, labor unions and health care advocates in Maryland attempted to pass legislation that would have required Walmart to spend more on employee health care, reducing state Medicaid costs in the process. The so-called "Walmart law" was struck down by a federal judge later that year.

Roughly 250,000 workers in California are in low-wage jobs at companies with more than 500 workers and depend on Medi-Cal for health coverage, according to an April report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Close to half of the workers are employed at restaurants or retail chains. Darden operates more than 137 restaurants in California and has approximately 16,000 employees, Jeffers wrote in an email.

Joe S. Whitworth: Reaping the Whirlwind: Water War Along the California-Oregon Border

2013-06-19T22:16:09Z

Not clear how many HuffPosters go Biblical, but this one fits. With a fresh backdrop of unprecedented forest fires in the West, ferocious storms along the Eastern Seaboard (tornadoes attacking elsewhere), alternating drought and flood in the country's interior wreaking havoc on the Mississippi and the next of many rounds on its way, you can almost hear the booming voice indicting us with a good, "they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

But before anybody cranks up the old Climate Deny Machine to deconstruct whether 19 of 20 scientists can agree these weather events are related, let's pivot to something that we definitively know humans made happen: a burgeoning water war along the Oregon-California border. As you read this, Oregon state employees are traveling across the Klamath Basin, shutting down the irrigation systems of ranchers and farmers to make sure that the Klamath Tribes get water they just found out they are legally entitled to.

This water war, pitting tribes and fish and wildlife against ranchers and farmers, is truly the result of human actions: in every sense, this environmental whirlwind was engineered by America legally, physically and economically. It is the obvious result of the application of a century-old water law that struggles to keep up with changing demands and modern priorities.

The law that allowed this war to start, called "Prior Appropriation," was drawn up to encourage the settling of a dry land for a nation in a hurry. Hastened by gold, railroads and Manifest Destiny in 1800s, we needed a practical and simple way to know who could use scarce water resources when. Prior Appropriation grew out of a time and place where the West seemed boundless. A world where no one could predict that someday in the future, just about every drop of water would eventually be promised to someone before it reached the ocean. Prior appropriation did just that: it allocated "water rights" to all comers on a first come first serve basis. And it over-allocated many: across the Western United States, more people hold water rights "on paper" than there is actual water in streams in a given year.

Despite the lack of water accounting, for a long time the system worked. Settlement grew. Agriculture grew. The desert literally bloomed. What didn't grow was the water budget. In fact, we have no more water on Earth today than we did when the planet opened for business. But in this country, our water is highly managed--it moves when and how we say it moves. The plumbing system of the American West has enough water in ditches, canals and reservoirs to put all of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and a chunk of Montana under a foot of water simultaneously.

Prior Appropriation creates clear winners and losers during times of water shortage. In dry years, those with older (aka "prior") water rights can tell those with younger water rights to shut off. And from this long-standing interpretation of water law came the current conflict in the Klamath. Before this year, most of the water right owners in the Klamath didn't know who had the prior rights and who had the less valuable junior rights. That is because the basin had not yet finalized their Water Rights in a process called "adjudication."

The Klamath water rights were finalized barely a month ago and this process once-and-for all legally determined who gets what water in dry years. It was through this process that the Klamath Tribes were awarded water rights with priority dates that go back to "Time Immemorial." That trumps every other water right holder's date in the Klamath Basin. As coincidence would have it, this year is off to a dry start. The Klamath Tribes have made a call on their water, shutting off an untold number of ranchers and farmers downstream, to ensure that they can use their water for traditional needs of fishing, hunting, and agriculture.

This has predictably upset the apple cart (quasi-Biblical) for those farming in the basin and tensions are as high as they have been since agriculture was shut off to help endangered salmon in 2001. Right now, for safety in the basin, watermasters (the state of Oregon employees who have to shut off junior users) have taken to going out in teams of two and notifying the sheriffs' office where they are headed. In a developed nation, that seems pretty wild.

To me, the real question has become: What events will jar us into realizing we need to shift our water management style? Our high capacity to ignore big, observable facts gives preference to how things used to be over how things ought to be--and that won't work on the road ahead. The environmental issues we will face will be violent, fast and unpredictable. Several factors will move beyond our control. But our water future is something within our control, and we should solve for that.

A pathway exists to achieve more optimized use of water, but it will look different than how we have done it in the past. We need to accurately quantify the annual water budget, leaving enough for streams and ecosystems to function properly. Then we need to allow the trading of water among uses to allocate the water to the most productive uses and users.

This won't be an easy transition. Some enviros will say that the market is no way to allocate a public resource like water; some ranchers and farmers will claim that family farms will be out-competed for water by bigger, more sophisticated agribusiness interests. Risks have to be managed, but such a sea-change in water management is not without successful precedent Instead of creating winners and losers according to whose great-great-great grandfather settled first, a system in Australia efficiently and fairly promotes economic and environmental gains, and ours should too. A race to produce more with less rather than a race to the bottom of the well is the better one to run.

House Republicans Push For Cuts To Popular Program

2013-06-19T21:59:04Z

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are pushing to eliminate money for high-speed rail and a popular grant program for transportation projects.

The belt-tightening comes as the GOP-led House works on $44 billion measure covering transportation and housing programs. The legislation reflects the austere budget mandated by automatic cuts – fallout from Washington's failure to address the deficit this spring.

Republicans also are trying to cope with stiff defense cuts by shifting money from domestic programs to the Pentagon.

The bill's author, Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, protected air traffic controllers from furloughs that could disrupt air travel, but he dealt with a $7.7 billion cut, or 15 percent, compared with levels approved earlier this year.

The measure is $4.4 billion below current levels required under automatic spending cuts known as sequestration.

Targets include "zeroing out" President Barack Obama's $3 billion-plus request for high-speed rail programs. A Transportation Department grant program first established under Obama's 2009 economic stimulus bill also would be eliminated, and $237 million in previously appropriated grant money would be rescinded.

Community Development Block Grants, a flexible source of money popular with local governments, would fall dramatically. Obama's $2.8 billion request would drop to $1.6 billion.

Amtrak's operating subsidy would decline by 21 percent, said Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., while the railroad's capital budget would drop by $352 million from levels approved in March and more than $1.5 billion below Obama's budget request. That would delay improvements along Amtrak's busy Northeast Corridor.

Democrats warned that a deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over the bigger budget picture threatens to derail the annual appropriations process. That's the nuts and bolts work of Congress determining the annual operating budgets for federal agencies and programs.

"A deal must be reached soon or most of this year's appropriations bills stand no chance," said the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Nita Lowey of New York.

While clearly unhappy with the hand the GOP's budget has dealt him, Latham said he had made the best of a bad situation by maintaining dollars for core highway projects paid for by gasoline taxes and making sure that everyone who now receives a housing voucher will continue to receive one next year.

U.S. Airports Face Increasing Threat From Rising Seas

2013-06-19T21:56:41Z

From Climate Central's Andrew Freedman:

When Hurricane Sandy struck New York City on October 29, 2012, the dark waters of Flushing Bay poured over the edges of LaGuardia Airport, flooding parts of the facility’s 7,000-foot long east-west runway, and damaging lighting and navigation systems. The floodwaters created an eerie image of jetways ending in water, as if they had been converted into boat ramps.

This was not the first time that LaGuardia suffered major flooding during a storm, nor will it be the last. Due to climate change-related sea level rise, LaGuardia and other coastal hubs throughout the U.S. face a growing risk of flooding during even modest storms.

What LaGuardia Airport could look like at high tide with 5 feet of sea level rise, an amount that could occur by 2100, according to some estimates. Click on the image to enlarge.
Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront interpretation of Climate Central data.

A draft federal assessment of climate change impacts, which was released on Jan. 11, named a dozen major U.S. airports as being particularly vulnerable to sea level rise-related flooding risks, including all three of the major New York-area airports. And just last week, a new report found that the New York metropolitan area may face a greater amount of sea level rise during the next several decades than was anticipated just a few years ago.

The region's two other major airports also experienced storm-surge flooding during Hurricane Sandy, albeit to a lesser degree. John F. Kennedy International Airport saw flooding from Jamaica Bay, and Newark (N.J.) International Airport was hit by the storm surge that coursed through New York Harbor and into Newark Bay, flooding the eastern sections of the busy international gateway, and parts of the neighboring port, where waters reached 4 feet above ground level.

All three hubs closed on Oct. 28, before the storm hit, causing a ripple effect of tens of thousands of flight cancellations around the world. Newark and JFK Airports were able to resume limited service on Oct. 31, while LaGuardia was the last to reopen at a reduced capacity a day later. According to FlightStats.com, more than 20,000 flights nationwide were canceled due to Hurricane Sandy with roughly half of those cancellations coming from the New York-area airports.

U.S. Airports Most Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise
San Francisco Int'l (SFO)

Oakland International (OAK)

Honolulu International (HNL)

New Orleans Louis Armstrong Int'l (MSY)

Tampa International (TPA)

Miami Int'l (MIA)

Ft. Lauderdale Int'l (FLL)

Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA)

Newark Liberty Int'l (EWR)

LaGuardia (LGA)

Philadelphia Int'l (PHL)

John F. Kennedy Int'l (JFK)

The trio of airports serve more passengers annually than any other metropolitan area in the world, other than London. Passenger traffic at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's four commercial airports — which includes the underutilized Stewart International Airport in Orange County, N.Y. — totaled 109.4 million in 2012. LaGuardia alone accounted for 25.7 million passengers during the year, with more than 1,000 daily landings and takeoffs, according to Port Authority figures.

The New York area's high-capacity airports may have been the first to get hit, but Hurricane Sandy should serve as a wakeup call to officials in charge of other low-lying airports across the country, since the latest climate science shows coastal airports face a growing danger from storm-surge impacts such as sea level rise. More flooding will cause more delays, potentially costing billions of dollars in the years ahead from lost revenue and storm cleanup operations. The impact of weather-related delays on air travel already costs more than $4 billion annually.

The threat isn't that sea level rise will gradually breach the defenses surrounding each airport. Instead, at least during the next few decades, scientists say that sea level rise will be more of an enabler of storm-surge flooding, making it easier for even minor storms to produce more damaging surges and flooding. And when powerful storms hit, the threat is multiplied since they likely will produce unprecedented surges, much as Hurricane Sandy did in New York.

According to the draft National Climate Assessment, 12 of the nation’s largest airports have at least one runway with an elevation within 12 feet of current sea levels. In addition to the three airports in and around New York, the other vulnerable airfields listed are in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Miami, San Francisco, Honolulu, New Orleans, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale and Oakland.

Those airports face critical challenges ahead, beginning with conducting risk assessments for long-lasting infrastructure, such as new terminals, runways, and maintenance facilities. Planners are studying options to better protect low-lying runways and airport buildings, such as navigation systems to allow aircraft to land in low visibility, and hardening or raising tank farms for storing aviation fuel.

Some, such as the managers of New York City's airports as well as San Fransisco and Oakland International Airports, have taken initial steps to assess their vulnerabilities, often in association with broader regional studies. Most, though, have not yet begun that work, putting them behind the curve.

The risk assessments that have been carried out so far are sobering, and once again, LaGuardia Airport is front and center.

One of the reports released on June 11 in conjunction with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $20 billion city-wide climate resilience proposal found that for LaGuardia Airport, at least, Sandy was not a worst-case scenario. The storm struck at low-tide along the western part of Long Island Sound, while it was high tide along the New Jersey coast and in other parts of New York City. LaGuardia flooded to a level of about 14 feet above Mean Lower Low Water, or about 9 feet above ground level.

A computer-model simulation from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., found that had the storm hit at LaGuardia’s high tide, which was just nine hours earlier, the floodwaters would have reached a height of up to 12 feet above ground level. That most likely would have breached the terminal buildings, leading to a longer and more expensive shutdown of the facility after the storm subsided.

What LaGuardia could look like at high tide with 12 feet of sea level rise, an amount that could occur by 2100, according to some estimates. Click on the image to enlarge.
Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront interpretation of Climate Central data.

Futhermore, a new analysis from the New York City Panel on Climate Change found that sea level in New York City may increase by as much as 11 inches by the 2020s, and more than 2.5 feet by the 2050s. That would dramatically boost coastal flooding risks, and render LaGuardia’s current levees useless against even minor storms.

"More and more of the City's airport infrastructure will be at risk as storm surges will move from flooding outlying runways to threatening the terminal buildings," said a transportation sector breakdown accompanying the report.

If sea level rise matches the high-end estimate of 31 inches by the 2050s, then today's 1-in-100 year flood, which has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year, may occur about five times more often.

While much of JFK Airport is outside of the city’s updated 100-year flood zone, as sea levels rise that is likely to change, the panel's report showed.

Since 1900, relative sea level has already risen by about 13 inches in New York City, due to manmade climate change and land-elevation shifts.

Climate studies examining Newark Airport have been more limited, since the climate assessments conducted by New York City have only focused on airports within its jurisdiction. The Port Authority, however, has found that Newark is also going to be at greater risk of storm-surge flooding as seas rise, but it is not considered to be as imperiled as LaGuardia. A 2012 New York State Climate Assessment also found that Newark is at slightly greater risk of flooding in severe storms compared to JFK.

What LaGuardia could look like at high tide with 25 feet of sea level rise, an amount that would require a worst-case scenario involving melting of large parts of Greenland and Antarctica. Click image to enlarge.
Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront interpretation of Climate Central data.

Klaus Jacob, an expert in natural disasters at Columbia University and an advisor to New York state as well as the city, said that in addition to considering the impacts of sea level rise on the airport grounds, officials also need to take into account the networks of access roads and public transportation systems that transport airport workers and passengers to and from the facilities.

For example, Jacob said that although JFK Airport itself has a lower risk of flooding in today's typical storms compared to LaGuardia, its access roads could flood more easily from heavy rains during storm situations, potentially leading to situations where passengers and airport workers are cut off from the airport.

“While the airport itself may not be jeopardized, the access to it may be jeopardized,” Jacob said in an interview. “The Federal Aviation Administration may not take note of that, but in terms of operations it may cause significant problems.”

On the opposite side of the country, there have been several studies looking at transportation infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay region, home to two major airports on the federal government's "most vulnerable" list: San Francisco International and Oakland International Airport.

According to one study published by the Adapting to Rising Tides Project, funded by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Services Center, general aviation facilities and runways at Oakland International Airport are likely to be inundated by new daily high tides with just 16 inches of sea level rise, which is within the range of most mid-century projections.

During a storm event, the airport could see flooding at a height of between 1 to 7 feet above ground level at various locations around the airport, including flooding of the longest runway, which is used by most jetliners. In addition, storm events coming on top of the 16 inches of sea level rise could render the main airport access roads impassable, the report found.

With 55 inches of sea level rise, which some studies project could occur by 2100 depending on how quickly the polar ice caps melt, the entire airport would be exposed to flooding during the daily high tide, the report found. That scenario would render the airport unusable on a regular basis unless new flood protection measures were in place.

Oakland International and San Francisco International Airport — the 7th-largest U.S. airport by passenger volume — were both built on land reclaimed from wetlands, and are about 10 feet above the current local sea level.

Climate change acts as a storm-surge risk magnifier in other locations, too, and not just in New York and the San Francisco Bay region. For example, Climate Central research shows that there is a greater than 30 percent chance that the water level will exceed 8 feet above the average local high-tide line at least once by 2030 in Washington, D.C., which would flood parts of Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport. And in Tampa, which is long overdue for a major hurricane strike, a Climate Central report says that there is a 40 percent chance that the water level, including the effects of a storm surge plus sea level rise, will top 5 feet above the average local high tide line at least once by 2030. That would flood part of Tampa-St. Petersburg International Airport, in addition to MacDill Air Force Base, home to the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

Solutions

Girding an airport against the threat of a damaging surge is not as easy as simply building a tall sea wall, since jetliners would have to be able to clear such a wall or levee when landing or taking off, Jacob said. One possible solution could be for the runways to be raised or partially elevated, in combination with the construction of a dike and levee system.

Jacob, who led part of a New York State sponsored assessment of sea level rise that was released in 2012, said he is unaware of any national or local strategic planning efforts underway by airport management agencies or regulators to prepare for sea level rise and increased risks of flooding, indicating that most of this work is just beginning to get underway in an ad hoc fashion.

Multiple phone calls and emails to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates New York’s airports, went unreturned. However, Port Authority documents indicate that the agency is aware of the risk posed by sea level rise, and is increasingly incorporating that into their planning procedures and existing sustainability policy.

Mayor Bloomberg's climate resilience plan includes working with non-city agencies such as the Port Authority to ensure they are including climate change-related threats, including sea level rise, into their capital projects.

The federal Transportation Research Board has also urged airport managers, such as the Port Authority, to include climate-change adaptation in long-term planning, given the long lifespan of infrastructure built today.

There are a handful of airports here and abroad providing inspiration. San Francisco airport officials have been discussing the possibility of extending the airport’s runways onto floating platforms to increase runway length. That may have an added benefit of allowing the runways to rise with the sea level. In addition, a partial seawall and planned levees around San Francisco International Airport are expected to give that airport additional protection during the next couple of decades, depending on the rate and extent of sea level rise.

In St. Paul, Minn., the airport has suffered from frequent flooding from the Mississippi River, having been inundated three times during the past 15 years. To prevent the recurrence of such flooding, the airport installed a modular floodwall, which can be easily added to when floods threaten. A similar modular system is planned for protecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan from flooding, and could be constructed low enough to avoid interfering with aircraft takeoffs and landings. Such a system, also known as an integrated flood-protection system, would function much like building blocks, with some permanent structures installed and other temporary measures that could be added before a storm strikes.

Other airports that have incorporated flood-protection measures include Raratonga Airport in the Cook Islands, which installed a wave-protection barrier, and Brisbane International Airport in Queensland, Australia, which uses a combination of strategies, including pumps and strategically elevated land.

Whatever the solutions may be, one thing is clear: the ocean increasingly wants to be another passenger coming into low-lying coastal airports, and it will be up to this generation of engineers and airport managers to keep the water out.

9 Mind-Blowing Marijuana Gadgets That Will Revolutionize Weed Smoking

2013-06-19T21:49:31Z

A gadget that turns any Starbucks venti cup into a bong, a power cleaner for resin-clogged pipes, and chewing gum that cures cotton mouth are among products that marijuana aficionados may see in their favorite head shops before the end of the year.

A flock of American businesses, seeking to take advantage of an investment rush into the marijuana industry, are behind a wave of new weed-smoking accessories designed to improve on such classic devices as the bong, the pipe and the one-hitter. The new so-called ganjapreneurs are hoping to capitalize on a speculative mania that cannabis industry insiders call a “green rush.”

“People have been trying to do this for a really long while and now is really the time,” said Ross Kirsh, owner at New York based Quark, which creates accessories used to store and display medical marijuana.

At two marijuana business networking conferences last week in New York, ganjapreneurs shook hands, smoked joints, made deals, and shared plans for profiting from the creeping legalization of pot. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana, and two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized recreational adult use of cannabis last year. The federal government still considers pot illegal to possess or use.

“There was a lot of uncertainty in this business in 2011," Kirsh said. "People were hesitant to see where business would go after what was a federal crackdown. But after legalization in Colorado and Washington, the attitude has completely changed.”

Los Angeles-based Royght! plans to sell a gadget that fits snugly atop the standard-issue wax-paper cups used by takeout restaurants. For $19.95, super-sized becomes super high.

Matt Luxton, the company’s 30-year-old owner, said he’s gone through 24 prototypes, but believes “lucky number 25” is ready for market. He said designing, manufacturing and -- particularly -- testing his product has been an eye-opening experience for him as an entrepreneur.

“One of the things we’ve found in testing is people like the ability to fill the cup up with whatever -– coffee, orange juice, vodka, Coca-Cola from the McDonald’s fountain -– and smoke through that,” Luxton said.

Click on the slideshow below to see eight other products likely to come out of the marijuana industry’s “green rush.”

WATCH: CHP Copter Saves Teens From Cliff In Unbelievable Rescue

2013-06-19T21:00:10Z

SIERRA CITY, Calif. -- Two stranded teenage boys were plucked off a peak at an elevation of more than 8,000 feet by a California Highway Patrol helicopter amid gusty winds.

The boys had been climbing along a steep ridge before becoming stuck on a tiny plateau in the Sierra Nevada.

Austin Deschler, 16, said he and a 17-year-old friend had climbed to the spot to take a picture Saturday without realizing there was a sheer drop on the other side.

"As we went up there we made decisions to get up that made it so we couldn't get back," Deschler told Sacramento television station KXTV-TV. "We thought we could walk across the ridge, when we got up there and saw the other side it was heartbreaking – we actually almost cried ... That's when we realized, we're in trouble," Deschler said.

Hikers spotted the pair and called 911. The helicopter arrived as night was falling, but rescuers had nowhere to land near the boys.

In a dramatic rescue captured on video (on.news10.net/1aqMN8I), a harness was lowered to the boys from the helicopter, but it proved difficult with winds gusting over 20 mph.

"We had to make several attempts to get to them," said CHP Flight Officer David White, who led the rescue mission. "We lowered the hook a couple of times but the wind would blow us out of our position and we'd have to go back around and try it again."

Nearly four hours after they were first stuck, and with frightened parents watching, the boys were able to grab the hook from the helicopter and were hoisted to safety.

White said the rescue "was the most challenging that I've ever done in my 12 years in air operations."

Deschler called the experience "terrifying," and said he learned a key lesson.

"Stay on the trail," he said, "definitely stay on the trail."

___

Information from: KXTV-TV.

Three-Day Rave Expected To Draw 115,000 Per Night

2013-06-19T20:52:13Z

LAS VEGAS — Up to 115,000 partiers are expected each night this weekend for a dusk-to-dawn sensory salad of electronic dance music, lights, partying and mingling at a sprawling speedway complex outside Las Vegas.

Electric Daisy Carnival officials said Wednesday that all 345,000 available tickets had been sold for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night event at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The festival founder, Insomniac Events CEO Pasquale Rotella, likes to call the fans and the revelry the headline attraction at his nocturnal gatherings, which drew criticism in Los Angeles before moving to Las Vegas in 2011.

"That's one of the biggest spectacles of the entire event, 115,000 like-minded people all dressed up and having a good time," said Simon Rust Lamb, Insomniac chief operating officer and general counsel. "We want to create moments and memories that are full of joy and that help people create and connect with the people around them."

Hundreds of artists and theatrical performers like fire-twirlers and stilt-walkers are slated to roam the nearly 2-square-mile festival grounds, along with "art cars" blasting music from rolling mock-ups like a pirate ship or a boom box.

Fireworks are planned. Twenty art displays and three graffiti walls are being erected, along with a brightly-lit amusement park featuring several Ferris wheels. Performers include the collaborative fire art group Flaming Lotus Girls and a Rotella creation, Night Owl Experience.

Don't call it a concert. It's a carnival. And don't call it a rave, Lamb said, because that connotes an illegal underground warehouse party.

"The common thread is electronic music," he said. "There's nothing illegal, underground or warehouse about what we do."

The nonstop lineup on seven stages features more than 200 music producers and deejays, including Afrojack, Tiesto, Above & Beyond, Calvin Harris, Madeon, Armin van Buuren, Bloody Beetroots and former Swedish House Mafia member Steve Angelo.

Pat Christenson, whose role as Las Vegas Events president is to attract events to the city and tourists to the hotels, called Las Vegas uniquely able to handle the festival because it has years of experience hosting large events and a remote venue with parking for hundreds of thousands of fans.

"The footprint is big. The music is loud. But it's miles from downtown," Christenson said, "and the way the grandstand is, it's hard to hear the sound outside the speedway."

Insomniac Events has tried to expand the event – and the number of people booking hotel stays – by promoting pool parties, nightclub events and EDMbiz, a $500-per-ticket two-day conference on the business of dance music and culture. It began Wednesday.

"What I love about this festival is that it's new every year," Christenson said.

Lamb wouldn't disclose planned eye-poppers. But there will be a wedding chapel for ceremonies both legal and for fun.

Lamb said he hoped ticket-holders, whom he called "headliners," would be surprised and inspired by the scale of the event.

The festival moved to Las Vegas three years ago from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after the 2010 death of a 15-year-old girl who was treated for drug intoxication, and the arrest of 114 people on misconduct, drug and other charges.

Rotella and four other defendants face criminal charges in Los Angeles stemming from a 29-count indictment handed up in February 2012 alleging bribery, conspiracy, embezzlement and other charges relating to work contracts at the Coliseum. A trial date has not been set.

In Las Vegas, police have reported few major problems while festival crowds have swelled. One festival-goer died last year when he was hit by a vehicle at a speedway exit.

Insomniac estimated nightly crowds at 75,000 to 85,000 in 2011, while police reported 29 felony arrests, mostly on drug charges. Hundreds of people received medical attention, including at least 17 who were hospitalized on the first two nights.

Crowds topped out at more than 106,000 last year, and police reported 54 drug arrests while paramedics treated 485 people, including 16 who were hospitalized.

Lamb said traffic patterns have been revamped this year to incorporate lessons from high-attendance NASCAR racing events at the speedway. The goal is to smoothly move the equivalent of the population of Ann Arbor, Mich., in and out each night.

Meanwhile, Bill Cassell, a Las Vegas police officer and department spokesman, said hundreds of officers will be assigned to the event at Insomniac expense.

"We look for people who are disorderly or fighting or using narcotics," Cassell said, "people who are disturbing the good, safe time that other people are having."

Attendance isn't cheap, but demand is high. A first batch of 30,000 tickets – at $199 for one night or $450 for all three nights – sold out last November in an hour. Later, tickets sold for $289; passes, $500.

Shuttle coach bus service some 15 miles from Las Vegas Strip hotels to the speedway gate costs $80, plus about $15 in fees. Lamb said 35,000 shuttle passes had been sold.

Buses and taxis will have dedicated access lanes, Lamb said, and more parking attendants have been added.

Organizers are asking people to carpool to and from the event.

"We're encouraging people to come early and leave when they feel comfortable and recognize that parking for 115,000 people will take a little time," Lamb said.

‘I Want To Run For Governor'

2013-06-19T20:51:17Z

Outgoing LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Tuesday that he "fully expect[s]" to run for governor.

In an interview with KPCC's Larry Mantle, Villaraigosa said, “You mentioned governor. Look, I believe in public service. I want to run for governor. In fact, I fully expect that I will."

Villaraigosa, who leaves office June 30 after the maximum eight years, indicated in March that he would not run against Gov. Jerry Brown, 75, who will be up for a second term next year.

"One day I'd like to run for governor, but there's not a vacancy last time I looked," said the 60-year-old mayor, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Both Villaraigosa and Brown have recently polled well among voters. Villaraigosa had a 53 percent approval rating in a USC Price/Los Angeles Times poll released in April.

A Field Poll released in February found that 57 percent of voters approved of Brown's performance -- his highest approval rating since he took office in 2011.

Villaraigosa had earlier been rumored to have a shot at an appointment to President Obama's cabinet as either Secretary of Transportation or Secretary of Labor, but neither was forthcoming.

Two other prominent Democrats -- Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom -- are seen as strong potential candidates for the governor's office, CNN reports. Brown has not yet said whether he'll run for re-election in 2014.

This Is Why You Should Never Cheat

2013-06-19T19:51:31Z

Apparently, revenge is a dish best served as a completely humiliating scavenger hunt.

That's the impression we got after we took a peek at the cruel scavenger hunt one angry girlfriend sent her boyfriend on after discovering he had cheated on her.

The scavenger hunt -- entitled "My loser boyfriend's scavenger hunt: Acts of service to women" and posted on Reddit Wednesday morning -- called on the cheater to complete a number of embarrassing tasks, from slipping on a pair of Spanx and taking a picture, to hunting down a pair of four inch heels at a store and asking the storeclerk to snap a photo.

Take a look at the full scavenger hunt below:

Wow, worst trip to the mall ever.

What do you think? Is this revenge-minded scavenger hunt completely crazy or kind of clever? Share your thoughts in the comments!

h/t Redditor GORLOSSIS

7 Tips You Must Know Before Buying Furniture

2013-06-19T19:37:05Z

You'll never know what you'll find on Reddit. The other day, I learned that doorways just might contribute to memory lapses. (That could explain one awful day where I forgot my laptop at home, which would be like Dolly Parton going out without her false eyelashes. We both need these things to go about our days successfully.)

Today, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of furniture shopping tips by the good people on the personal finance subreddit. I highly encourage you to take a trip over to that part of the internet to read the whole thing. In the meantime, here are a few great takeaways for furnishing your home on a budget.

Don't buy furniture at places that offer "0% Down"-type deals.

wrathking
I wish I had the wisdom to seek this kind of advice when I bought my house. I had never had to furnish a place on my own before, and ended up getting one of those 0% interest two year loans a lot of places advertise to buy $6500 of furniture, basically furnishing a four bedroom house all at once. I bought into the logic of the 0 interest loan, forgetting that I could have saved more money by buying used over a longer period of time. I was just too eager to get all the furniture shopping done. So my advice is: Be patient!

Seriously, don't buy furniture at places that offer "0% Down"-type deals.

wrathking
The problem is that they offer 0% interest because they are building in the cost of financing into their pricing model up front. Any place that offers you 0% interest financing is selling you goods at a significant markup and counting on you to not notice the terrible deal you are getting because it feels like free money.

Go for quality, not quantity.

quebee
Buy a piece or two at a time and make your choices carefully. Do not rush.
Do not buy garbage if you can avoid it. As recent college grads, you will undoubtedly need to buy some things at places like Ikea, but if you can wait and buy nicer things, they will last longer (a lifetime) and look better. You will not regret it. You can find this stuff on Craigslist.
Avoid veneers. Try to buy American made if you can.
Do not spend as much on upholstered furniture, as it will invariably have a shorter life span.

Try estate sales to get the best quality at the best price.

Pollygolightly:
Buying new is expensive, and you'll likely get poor quality compared to what you'll be able to buy used. A $200 plastic and plywood table from Ikea will fall apart much faster than a $200 solid pine table that you buy used. Everything I bought from West Elm fell apart, but the desk I bought at an estate sale for $150 I'll probably be able to pass along to my grand children. It's stunning, and super sturdy.

Ignore sales -- except when it comes to floor samples.

Armadus:
Don't wait for sales. Sales are just an artificial means to drive traffic. How many times can a furniture store close? The answer seems to be infinite. The same deals can be had any day of the week. Floor model sales are the only exception. If you have your eye on a floor model, ignore the special sale price and start your negotiations at 50% off the price it would normally sell at – not the regular price. Expect to end up at 40-30% off. This means your paying just a little more than what they paid for it so they're making a little money and getting some floor space and you get a great deal, everybody is happy. If it's really marked up you might be able to get it at or below cost, but it's rare. If there is no profit in it, the salesperson isn't motivated to sell it, unless they are also in charge of merchandising, in which case floor space may be a big motivator.

This "test" will reveal an upholstered item's true quality.

chair_ee:
On upholstered pieces, rap the center of the sides and back with your knuckles. You're feeling to see if the piece is framed in. You may feel nothing (bad news) or even cardboard (still no). You want a solid piece. It'll make a huge difference. In your seat cushions, try to find cushions that have coils inside (like an innerspring mattress). It will keep your cushion from developing that butt dip from sitting in your favorite spot. In your back cushions, you'll want "bags and baffles". The foam in the back cushions should be in a bag (bagged) and have horizontal seams running across it to keep the foam higher up in the cushion (baffled). This will prevent all the foam from settling to the bottom of the cushion, giving you too much lower back support and not enough shoulder support.

What are your secrets to digging up the best deal on furniture?

Some new homeowners are passing on furnishings that used to be a staple. I guess that's one way to save money, but hey, we do love a good coffee table. See below to find out what's becoming "extinct."

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Young Dodger Fan's Grad Speech Is An Underdog's Anthem

2013-06-19T18:38:36Z

This fifth grade boy gives all underdogs a reason to keep going.

Casey, a die-hard Los Angeles Dodgers fan, delivered a memorable elementary school graduation speech, where he taught a lesson about loyalty.

Yahoo Sports speculates that Casey was asked to talk about his favorite school memory. So he went ahead and recalled the time he proudly donned Dodger gear and faced his classmates as they celebrated the San Francisco Giants' 2012 World Series victory.

"I'm a true fan," Casey said in the speech. "And true fans stand tough."

A video of the speech has since gone viral, with more than 68,000 views in around four days.

YouTube users -- many of them Dodger fans -- seemed overjoyed by Casey's enthusiasm.

"This kid knows how to take his lumps," user karimg7 wrote. "One of these days, we're gonna win the World Series. Go Blue!"