A Chinese national and a US citizen have been charged with conspiring to steal sensitive microchip designs capable of use in military technology, according to an AFP report. The US Attorney’s office in northern California said Lee Lan and Ge Yuefei had been indicted on multiple charges of conspiracy to commit economic espionage and to steal trade secrets. Lee, 42, a US citizen, and Ge, 34, a Chinese national, had sought to steal secrets from their employer, NetLogics Microsystems, and from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, a statement said. The two men had set up a company for the purpose of developing and marketing products related to the stolen trade secrets, and had attempted to secure funding from the Chinese government, it added.

The courts do not have the authority or the expertise to decide injury lawsuits concerning global warming, a judge in San Francisco ruled in dismissing a suit brought by the State of California against six auto companies. The State of California claimed that these companies produced vehicles that accounted for more than 20 percent of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions in the United States and more than 30 percent of those emitted in California, and sought billions of dollars in damages. Judge Martin Jenkins, however, did not believe this was an appropriate role for the courts: “The adjudication of plaintiff’s claim would require the court to balance the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development,” Jenkins wrote.

Several people suspected of participating in an international money laundering and financial fraud ring have been arrested by Fresno police, according to a report in Mercury News. Two of those arrested were immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Fresno police Lt. Don Gross said. Four more were arrested in other states. Three others fled the United States for Italy, Switzerland and the Central Asian Republic of Georgia, and another man was deported before police could charge him, Gross said. The group is accused of committing fraud against banks by opening accounts, buying expensive items with insufficient funds and then shipping the items out of the country before the checks bounced, Gross said. The suspects also defrauded lenders by falsely appraising real estate that was for sale. In one case, they obtained a $1 million loan on a property that sold for $200,000, Gross said.

A coalition of California marijuana growers and dealers has offered Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger one billion dollars to solve the current state budget crisis, according to a press release issued by the group- which calls itself “Let Us Pay Taxes”. The offer comes at a time when the California legislature is deadlocked on a new budget and California has stopped issuing checks for vitally needed social services. Legislators are currently arguing over which programs will be cut in order to balance the budget.

“It is ridiculous that California can’t pay its bills,” said spokesman Clifford Schaffer. “It is a tragedy that they will cut badly needed services and programs such as medical care for the elderly and prison drug treatment when the money to fund all these programs and more is there and available. Everyone who is currently waiting for a check from the state should be enraged at this foolishness.”

Regulation and taxation of marijuana could produce six billion dollars in additional tax revenue, according to economic studies linked from their web site LetUsPayTaxes.com. In addition, it could save up to ten billion dollars in enforcement costs. “That is a conservative estimate,” said Schaffer. “By other estimates, the revenues could be five times that. The economists are with us all the way on this one. Marijuana prohibition is an economic disaster.”

“Let’s face reality,” Schaffer says. “Marijuana legalization is inevitable. The situation is already beyond control in California. The state and local authorities have offered safe harbor for medical marijuana use and the Federal Government simply doesn’t have the resources for effective control.” More importantly, says Schaffer, the operators of the medical marijuana clubs are no longer afraid of the Federal Government. “If you talk to them, you will find that they know they are going to win this battle.

A new state agency called the “Economic and Employment Enforcement Coalition” (EEEC) has targeted construction companies in Orange County it says are operating illegally. According to CompNewsNetwork, EEEC is a multi-agency task force “designed to root out California’s underground economy”. In last week’s enforcement sweep of construction sites, the EEEC targeted businesses that avoid labor, tax and licensing laws, safety and health regulations and carry no workers’ compensation insurance for their employees.

Launched in July 05 with the full support of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the EEEC was formed with a dual mission: To enforce California labor laws; and to educate business owners and workers on those laws and regulations. On the enforcement side, the EEEC aims to root out businesses participating in the underground economy, which cost the state and legitimate businesses millions each year, in many cases passing the cost on to the consumer. In addition, EEEC helps educate business owners on California’s employment laws and their responsibilities, and educates employees on their rights as workers.

EEEC is a collaboration of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency’s Department of Industrial Relations (Division of Occupational Safety and Health; Division of Labor Standards Enforcement) and the Employment Development Department. The U.S. Department of Labor participates in the EEEC, as well as the Contractors State License Board when targeting the construction industry.

The EEEC conducts enforcement sweeps in various industries, including garment, agriculture, construction, horse race track, car wash, janitorial and restaurant, which have been identified as having a high degree of workplace violations and lack of regulatory compliance. EEEC also holds workshops throughout the state to educate employers and workers on labor and wage issues.

General Vang Pao, who once commanded a CIA-backed “secret army” of hilltribe fighters and mercenaries during the Vietnam war, has been arrested at his home in Southern California and charged with plotting the violent overthrow of the Government of Laos.  When the Washington-backed Lao royal government fell in 1975, General Pao was airlifted to Thailand and, along with other Hmong, resettled in the United States.   From exile, the fervent anti-communist remained a leader of the Hmong community and a defender of the minority, many of whose members, according to human rights groups, are still persecuted and killed in isolated Laos.   On Monday, at age 77, Pao was arrested along with eight others, charged with plotting to overthrow the Lao government using explosives, AK-47 assault rifles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles.  The nine suspects, according to the criminal complaint, wanted to bomb Lao government buildings and make them “look like the results of the attack upon the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.” 

An undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives secretly recorded a Feb. 7 luncheon meeting with Vang Pao, former California National Guard Lt. Col. Harrison Jack and others at a Thai restaurant a few blocks from the state Capitol in Sacramento, according to the agent’s affidavit.  They then walked to a recreational vehicle parked nearby to examine machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank rockets, anti-personnel mines and other weapons, the agent wrote.

California’s large Hmong community are said to be stunned by the arrest.  “People don’t know right now whether the charges are justified or a witch hunt. We just want people to remember that for 20 years the Hmong community has worked to make sure that this is our home,” said Peter Vang, refugee community liaison for Fresno County, home to about 30,000 ethnic Hmong.   US Attorney McGregor Scott, announcing the arrests, said: “The United States cannot provide a safe harbour to those plotting to overthrow a government with whom we are at peace.”

“Big Oil Buys Sacramento” it the headline of an editorial in the L.A. Times about the corruption that has gripped both the Schwarzenegger administration and the State Legislature as large Corporations use “non-profits” of their own design to fund junkets, make pay-offs in the form of “campaign contributions” and gain access to our elected leaders that is denied to ordinary citizens:

WHO’S AFRAID of Big Oil? Apparently, California’s elected officials. Gasoline prices are stuck well above last year’s record highs and about 50 cents above the national average. Yet state politicians are not saying or doing a thing, except for raking in political cash from the oil companies and flying around the world on their dime.

Take Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once claimed that he was so rich he did not need anyone else’s money — and who isn’t running for another office. Yet as gasoline prices were breaking last year’s record of $3.38 a gallon, Schwarzenegger collected a $100,000 check May 1 from Chevron, the West’s largest refiner. The company certainly had the cash on hand. Just three days earlier, it reported a $4.7-billion first-quarter profit, up 18% over the same period last year.

The contribution brought Schwarzenegger’s take from Chevron to $665,000 (making it his 15th largest donor) since 2003, and his total political tribute from the energy industry is now $4 million. According to a recent Schwarzenegger fundraising solicitation, Chevron’s $100,000 buys the company special briefings with the governor, something that beleaguered motorists aren’t getting.

Like power plant owners during California’s 2001 electricity crisis, refiners such as Chevron have discovered that they can make more money by producing less gasoline. So they do. They have, over more than 20 years, deliberately reduced their capacity until they can barely meet California’s needs under the best of circumstances. Industry spokesmen defend this as efficiency. But there is no slack in the production system, which shorts the market and raises prices.

Any planned or unplanned refinery outage, pipeline break or power failure causes prices to jump. Take the case of a possum and a raccoon that, in March, bit through power substation lines feeding two refineries in the South Bay. The critters expired, but the outage caused a 7-cent jump in local wholesale gasoline prices. The cost of refining gasoline is stable over time, so these price spikes equal pure profit for Chevron and Co.

Just as troubling is the access that oil companies have to our elected officeholders that the public doesn’t. Schwarzenegger’s powerful chief of staff, Susan P. Kennedy, and her partner spent a legislative spring break in Rio de Janeiro at the posh Copacabana Palace with Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and his wife — on the tab of a foundation largely financed by Chevron and other energy companies. During the 12-day conference, Chevron’s lobbyist got an entire day on the official agenda, which the public knows about only because of our Public Records Act request. Nuñez, who last year was highly critical of oil companies, seems to have nothing to say this year.

The chairs of the state Senate and Assembly energy committees spent spring break in Japan sipping sake and munching sushi with energy and telecommunications executives. The trip was financed by the same foundation, the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy. On board was an executive with Sound Energy Solutions, a company working with ConocoPhillips to establish a liquefied natural gas, or LNG, terminal at the port of Long Beach. Residents have stalled that particular project, no thanks to a junket itinerary that included a lengthy LNG plant tour.

No matter what underlies the current inaction on gas prices, the governor and legislators should understand that consumers’ rage may not be fleeting. Former Gov. Gray Davis discovered that in the 2003 recall as the energy crisis lingered in memory. Schwarzenegger is more popular, but he is not immune to the anger mounting over every $75 fill-up of the minivan.

“A Chinese American engineer was found guilty Thursday of conspiring to send information about U.S. Navy technology to China that would make it easier to detect U.S. submarines. Chi Mak, a naturalized citizen, was convicted of conspiracy to violate export control laws, attempting to violate export control laws, acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China, and lying to the FBI. After six weeks of testimony in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, the jury deliberated less than three days. ‘We were confident about this case from the start,’ said Assistant U.S. Atty. Gregory W. Staples. Prosecutors described Mak as a sleeper agent who began preparing for his assignment in the U.S. in the 1960s, when he moved from China to Hong Kong, then a British colony. Federal agents said Mak admitted sending military-related documents to China and they found thousands of pages of the files in his home.”

The Orange County register has given it’s take on junkets being funded by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a non-profit organization founded by several large Corporations in the Energy and Telecommunications industry. Their take is that this abuse of non-profit status is similar to the Abramoff case and could be considered “bribery” – though it would be difficult to prove. Our take has already been written here. We wouldn’t begrudge Schwarzenegger Administration officials and California Legislators an occasional junket if there were doing a decent job of international business development in the interests of California companies and citizens- but they are not doing a decent job- they are doing a crappy job. Also, where are the “trip reports” for these junkets? I can’t find them, and they certainly don’t seem to be on the CFEE website. How can the recipients of these junkets claim they were in the public interest, if the information they (should have) generated is not available to the public? Excepts from the OC register article:

At the end of March, lawmakers and members of the Public Utility Commission joined corporate executives on a trip to Japan. The expenses, valued at $8,000 to $9,500 per person, were picked up by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy – a nonprofit in San Francisco funded and connected to firms represented on the trip.

Lawmakers say trips like these are valuable educational experiences; government watchdogs say they’re attempts to buy influence and circumvent the law, which bars corporations from buying trips for government officials or funneling money through organizations that can.

But without evidence, like a memo or an e-mail, directly linking corporate money to officials’ travel, the law says it’s OK. ‘It’s extraordinarily frustrating,’ said Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer and Rights. The foundation recently uncovered documents showing the value of the Japan trip. ‘You don’t need a smoking gun in California to know a $10,000 gift to the Speaker of the Assembly is illegal,’ Balber said. ‘But the law does require that smoking gun if that $10,000 gift is funneled through a nonprofit organization. And that’s absurd.’

The Jack Abramoff case illustrates the kind of concrete evidence needed to substantiate such a connection. By now, it’s known the disgraced former lobbyist used the National Center for Public Policy Research and other nonprofits as intermediaries for himself and his clients to pay for trips to Scotland and other things. (At the time, businesses were allowed to pay for House of Representatives trips; Abramoff was trying to dodge a rule that required trip sponsors to be directly connected to the reason for the travel.)

But proving those links required a mountain of documentation and testimony: e-mails showing Abramoff arranging pass-through payments; donations dated the same day trips were taken; sworn statements by insiders. I asked Bryan Sierra, a Department of Justice spokesman, why political corruption cases require reams of evidence. He said the burden of proof can be incredibly high.

For bribery, he said prosecutors have to prove the intent of two parties: the briber, who must be shown to have offered something of value and delivered it, and the bribed, who must be shown to have taken an official action directly because of that thing offered or delivered.

“Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who cut short his trip to Central America and Mexico in the wake of the May Day clash between Los Angeles police and protesters, is scheduled to speak this afternoon about the matter, into which the FBI has opened an inquiry. The mayor, speaking to reporters Thursday in Mexico City on a stop during a trade mission, said he would welcome the FBI’s investigation into the violence at the end of mostly peaceful immigrant rights marches and rallies. The mayor, who was seeking to stimulate trade and encourage international cooperation in fighting street gangs, announced late Thursday night that he was flying back to Los Angeles today”

As if California Real Estate agents don’t have enough bad news these days, now many of them will be joining the ranks of those in California without health insurance. According to an AP report, a judge has ruled that Blue Shield could cancel coverage for members of the California Association of Realtors because the group’s enrollment fell below a threshold required under its contract with the health care provider. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr. declined a request to stop cancellation of the coverage for about 8,000 members and their families. Blue Shield claimed the ruling affirmed it had acted fairly. “The California Association of Realtors simply didn’t meet its contractual obligations,” said Seth Jacobs, Blue Shield’s general counsel.

The Orange County Register, a reliably conservative publication, has written an editorial attacking the Federal Government’s abuse of the U.S. Constitution’s “commerce clause” as a justification in banning medical marijuana. According to the Register, the law is the result of the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Ashcroft v. Raich, which allowed federal charges against medical marijuana users in states where it was legal. That, in turn, originated in mistreatment of the Commerce Clause, “tortured from its narrow original purpose into federal authority so broad that some law schools call it ‘the everything clause’.”

Medical marijuana both grown and used in California is not interstate commerce. As 9th Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson recognized in the ruling that the high court overturned in Ashcroft v. Raich, “The cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes and not for exchange or distribution is not properly characterized by commercial or economic activity,” so that federal drug laws do not override state laws. Despite the absence of interstate commerce, however, the Commerce Clause is the sole basis for the holding that Washington can override California’s medical marijuana law.

The Commerce Clause arose to prevent states from imposing duties on goods from other states, by allowing only Congress to regulate (with its traditional meaning of “to make regular” or “to remove impediments”) interstate commerce. But it did not create a federal power to also control every aspect of life not involving interstate commerce.

In the Federalist Papers, Federalist 11 terms it not a grant of federal power, but a “prohibitory regulation, extending … throughout the states.” Federalist 42 describes its purpose as “the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter.” Federalist 45 cemented its narrow scope: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and prosperities of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

A California woman of Iranian descent is suing the California Highway Patrol alleging that a patrol officer said that her ‘people’ responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to a report in Tehran Press TV, Zahra Sedaghatpur 38, from Fremont was pulled over by a highway patrol for speeding, when Officer Jon Schatmeier 38 accused her and people like her of being responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. According to a lawsuit filed on March 29 2007 in federal court in San Francisco Schatmeire told the woman to “shut up” and refused to show his identification card. ‘Today is September 12. Do you remember Sept.11? Do you know what happened on Sept.11?’ the officer allegedly said. ‘It’s people like you who killed all of our people. This is our country. Why don’t you go back to your own country?’ “

“Whether he is a journalist or not, as many debate, Josh Wolf believed strongly enough in the journalistic principle of protecting his sources that he was willing to spend seven and a half months in a federal prison being faithful to it. Tuesday afternoon, he walked out of the Dublin Federal Correctional Institution in California a free man. Wolf was in prison for refusing to hand over video he shot during a protest in San Francisco in 2005. In a deal brokered between his lawyers and federal prosecutors, Wolf posted the uncut video of the protest on his site, JoshWolf.net, gave prosecutors a copy, told them he had not witnessed any crimes and was released. In exchange, prosecutors acceded to Wolf’s key contention: that he not be made to appear before a grand jury and identify those on his videotape. ‘Journalists absolutely have to remain independent of law enforcement,’ Wolf told reporters outside the gates of the prison. ‘Otherwise, people will never trust journalists’. “

Microsoft has announced lawsuits in California and five other States against companies it accuses of participating in the gray market software trade. Microsoft said the companies named in the suits were importing low-cost, educational versions of its products from Jordan and other countries and reselling them at full commercial prices. The companies look at how gray market software finds its way into the United States from foreign countries was an international operation. The Jordanian government, among others, assisted with the investigation. “Companies that break Jordan’s intellectual property laws will be prosecuted,” said His Excellency Eng. Basem Rousan, Jordan’s minister of information and communications technology.

“Three former Inland military airports could be used as federal transportation hubs for deportation flights returning immigrants to their home countries, but the surrounding land is not suitable to house immigrant detainees, local officials said. As part of a massive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, a bill introduced last week includes a provision to double space for detainees to 40,000, build 20 new detention centers on former military bases, and establish three additional U.S. Marshals Service flight hubs. The detention centers and transportation hubs would cost about $3 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. The bipartisan bill, H.R.1645, is a wide-ranging assortment of immigration-law changes. It aims to tighten border security, increase enforcement of laws against employing illegal immigrants, and add a large new guest-worker program that would permit millions of undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the United States and eventually become citizens. The Riverside-San Bernardino area is home to 215,000 undocumented immigrants, nearly 9 percent of the 2.5 million living in California, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy study group whose estimates are widely used in the national debate over immigration. “

“Assemblyman Dave Jones last week revealed that a state-run web site had been selling access to the Social Security numbers of thousands of California consumers, a practice that began in 2004 and only ended this week when Jones raised objections. According to Jones this is ‘potentially the longest running government Internet breach in California’s history… ‘For the past 3 years, the state has been in the data broker business,” Jones said. ‘It has sold Social Security numbers for a mere $6 each to any member of the public with an Internet connection and a credit card. This is a gold mine for identity thieves.’… Jones discovered earlier this month that an Internet web site maintained by the Secretary of State’s office was selling public records containing the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and sometimes the signatures of tens of thousands of Californians who have taken out secured loans. Though legal, selling this information to the general public could have enabled criminals to fraudulently secure credit cards in other individuals’ names, according to Jones.”

“Oracle Corp. sued its archrival SAP on Thursday, alleging that its German competitor secretly and illegally obtained proprietary materials from the Redwood City giant’s customer support Web site The legal action highlights what has become an increasingly bitter rivalry between the two makers of business software. Oracle accused SAP of using its customers’ log-in information to obtain more than 10,000 unauthorized downloads of software and supporter materials related to hundreds of programs. ‘This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale, committed by the largest German software company,’ the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco said. SAP is the world’s No. 1 seller of business applications known as enterprise resource planning software, which companies use to perform such tasks as keeping track of financial transactions and monitoring inventory. Oracle, the world’s No. 1 seller of database systems, has been trying to expand into that market, mainly by buying other players, including onetime Bay Area technology firms such as PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems.”

The Wall Street Journal covered the situation of Eric Volz on their front cover on Monday. Mr. Volz had been a student of Latin American studies at the University of California, San Diego, when he moved to San Juan to pursue a dream of starting a bilingual magazine. Something went horribly wrong with his dream, however, as he was charged with the murder and rape of his girlfriend and given a sentence of 30 years after an obviously grossly unfair show trial complete with anti-American mobs outside the court room:

In Nicaragua, the Volz case became a tabloid sensation with headlines cheering the near lynching of the Gringo. There were declarative statements from prosecutor Peña labeling Volz’s alibi as false, as well as misrepresenting evidence, demands for “justice,” cries to not let the Gringo buy his way out… On the day before Eric’s preliminary hearing, announcements were made via loud speakers throughout the streets of San Juan encouraging San Juan residents to attend the hearing so they can “Stand up for their rights and bring justice to the gringo. An angry mob, numbering in the hundreds and wielding machetes and clubs, waited outside the courthouse chanting, “Send out the gringo, we’ll kill him!”

There was strong evidence that Mr. Volz wasn’t even San Juan at the time of the crime but was in Managua over two hours away. Judge Ivette Toruño Blanco, however, threw out all the defense evidence, which included testimony of multiple alibi witnesses, cell phone and computer records, signed credit vouchers, and more. Two other men – native Nicaraguans – had also been arrested and charged with the murder and rape but the first judge to hear the case dropped all charges against the two Nicaraguan defendants. The only testimony allowed was from one of the men who had also been accused of the murder and this was used as the sole basis of the conviction. The family of Mr. Volz, with assistance of the State Department, is now trying to arrange an appeal in another city where it is hoped there will be less bigotry towards Americans and the actual facts of the case can be considered.

“The California Department of Transportation shielded from public view details of at least 290 contracts worth more than $13 million, though there is no record the agency was given authority to strike the information from state records, an Associated Press investigation has found. The contracts—labeled “confidential” and in many cases awarded without competitive bidding—went out between 2002 and 2006 and ranged from $10,000 to more than $1 million. In some cases, they authorized payments of up to $7,000 per day to experts in various fields for their testimony or legal opinions…. Robert Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies and a former general counsel at the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said the situation raises questions about who is watching over billions in taxpayer dollars. ‘Who is minding the store? Why aren’t they paying attention to this?’ Stern asked. ‘If nobody is watching, people have an incentive to pay more and could be fleecing the taxpayers’. “