Pitfalls seen in growth of part-time work

Although the state's unemployment rate is at its lowest level in almost four years and the number of employed Californians is growing, labor experts see a different reality: Full-time work has faded in many industries.

Nubia Calderón Barillas, 32, left a job in retail in May for a housekeeping job at the Holiday Inn LAX that promised better pay and steady work.

But nearly nine months later, the mother of three said, she rarely works more than two days a week. She has asked for more hours, she said, but to no avail, even in an industry that set a new peak employment level last year.

"It's been difficult lately," she said. "I practically didn't work all of December except for the holidays."

California employers picked up the rate of hiring during 2012 — at times at nearly twice the rate of the country as a whole. But a significant portion of those jobs are less than full time, according to federal data released last week.

The number of people involuntarily working part time nationwide has grown to 7.9 million, an 80% increase from 2006, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.

That trend is particularly pronounced in the Golden State, which saw the number of involuntary part-time workers swell to 1.3 million, up 126% from 585,100 in 2006. Only four other states, Nevada and Florida among them, had higher rates of involuntary part-time workers.

Various industries are increasingly relying on part-time workers and other contingent employees, such as temporary workers, to save money, said Michael Bernick, a Milken Institute fellow who studies labor markets.

"As you have more and more costs associated with full-time workers in terms of healthcare or other costs, employers look for alternative ways to reduce costs," Bernick said. "One way is on-demand and part-time work."

The increase isn't limited to industries that typically employ part-time workers, such as leisure and hospitality. Other sectors with strong job growth, such as professional and business services, have also seen a rise in part-time workers as employers aim to keep payroll costs down, Bernick said.

Nationwide, the number of involuntary part-time workers in professional and business services, which includes white-collar occupations such as accountants and lawyers, nearly doubled to 711,000 last year from 367,000 in 2007. A sector-by-sector breakdown is unavailable for California because the sample size of the household survey that the federal data rely on is too small.

Part-time work is common in California's leisure and hospitality sector, which added almost 61,000 jobs since December 2011, accounting for more than a quarter of the state's net jobs created in that time period.

Growth of low-wage industries such as hospitality provides work opportunities for people with limited education, even if the work is only part time, said Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast.

"We shouldn't look with dismay" on the rapid growth of a sector that is so dependent on part-time work, he said. "If that were the only sector we were growing, then that would be worrisome."

Tom Walsh, president of Unite Here Local 11, a union representing hospitality workers in Los Angeles and Orange counties, said in negotiations with employers, his group has pushed for workers' hours to be maximized.

Although full-time work sometimes isn't ensured, Walsh said, employers are urged to give part-time workers as many hours as possible.

"I think it's an example of certain employers being penny wise but pound foolish," he said. "They figure they can save money by having more part-time workers and having low pay. If they don't change that, folks are going to take jobs somewhere else the first chance they get."

The long-term implication of part-time work, economists said, is growing wage disparities and the risk of dampening consumer spending, a major driver of the economy. Part-time workers also are more likely to rely on state aid, such as food stamps, to make ends meet.

Kellie Flowers moved to Los Angeles late last year hoping to find work as an event coordinator or wardrobe stylist.

But full-time work has been elusive, even with a college degree.

The 30-year-old Virginia native managed to land two part-time jobs when she first relocated, one at a Manhattan Beach boutique and the other at a running store.

She earned $10 per hour at both jobs but didn't have benefits or health insurance.

"It was very hard working two jobs," she said. "You definitely don't have any spending money."

Flowers recently started a new job, selling spa packages, on commission. She sells between six to 10 a day, earning $15 for each.

"I'm going to look for other jobs that make me happier. Until then I just need to make money," she said.

Meanwhile, Barillas, the Holiday Inn housekeeper, said she hopes she'll eventually work more hours.

She and her husband are falling behind on utility bills at the one-bedroom Koreatown apartment they share with their three children. She recently applied for food stamps, a decision she said was embarrassing.

"I've always had work," she said. "I used to think people on food stamps just didn't want to work, but now I find myself with the need to ask for help."

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

Read More..

Child porn suspect indicted by federal grand jury

A North Hills woman whom authorities allege plied a young girl with crack cocaine and photographed her having sex with an older man was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of producing child pornography and sex trafficking.

Letha Montemayor Tucker was named Tuesday in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all the charges, Tucker would face a mandatory minimum federal sentence of 10 years and could get up to life in prison, authorities said.

The charges come a month after authorities sought the public's help in the investigation by releasing photographs of a man and woman depicted in a set of widely circulated child pornography photos.

Tips started pouring in immediately after the photos were released, investigators said.

Tucker, who goes by the name Butterfly, was located about 10 hours after the release of the photos and taken into custody, said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The alleged victim, who was about 12 when the photos were taken, was found within a week of the case going public, Arnold said. She is an adult now and is cooperating with authorities, he said.

In addition to photographing the girl having sex with the man, authorities said, Tucker also committed sex acts with the alleged victim.

The photos were part of a child pornography collection known as the "Jen Series."

The 40-plus photos were first discovered by investigators in the Chicago area in 2007. Investigators said images in the series have been reported about 300 times and have been found on computers across the country.

The victim "didn't even know these images were out there," Arnold said.

"The horror of child pornography is it's for life, the victimization," Arnold said. "Once the photos are there in cyberspace, they're there forever."

The girl, identified in court records only by the initials J.M.M., lived in the same Los Angeles County residential hotel as Tucker, who worked as a prostitute, authorities said.

Around 2000 or 2001, the girl stopped attending school regularly and spent more and more time in Tucker's room, smoking crack cocaine Tucker provided, according to the indictment.

The girl was present when Tucker engaged in prostitution with clients and was usually high when this happened, authorities allege. Tucker instructed the child to take off her clothes in front of the clients, prosecutors alleged in court papers.

The faces of Tucker and the girl are "clearly visible" in the photos, according to the indictment. Tucker had an eyebrow piercing and a tattoo of a sleeping cat behind her shoulder, which made her easier to identify, authorities said.

The face of the man, however, is blacked out in the photographs. Authorities are still trying to identify the man, Arnold said.

"Obviously, we want him also to answer for his crimes," Arnold said.

Arnold said the alleged victim is "going to be dealing with this for a long time."

Now that she has been identified, she will receive a victim notification every time one of the images turns up in an investigation, he said.

Tucker is being held without bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court on Feb. 13. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

Read More..

Fox cuts ties to commentator Dick Morris

NEW YORK (AP) — Political commentator Dick Morris' prediction of a huge landslide for Mitt Romney didn't pan out. And now he's lost his job at Fox News Channel.

Network spokeswoman Dana Klinghoffer said Tuesday that Fox wasn't renewing its contract with Morris, who was steadfast throughout the campaign in his prediction of a big Romney win over President Barack Obama. He has made few appearances on Fox since the election.

Morris had also been criticized for accepting paid advertisements on his website from candidates that he discussed on the air at Fox.

On his website, Morris said he'll be appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan show Wednesday to talk politics.

Read More..

Question Mark: Women’s Eggs Diminish With Age

Baby girls enter the world with enough of them to populate perhaps 40 small cities. A dozen or so years later, the first will make a debut of its own. And in the months and years to come, others will appear regularly, sometimes greeted with relief, other times with disappointment, perhaps most often with a touch of annoyance.

Abdullah Pope/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Not women's eggs, obviously.

Now, for women in the baby boom generation, they may be coming more sporadically, or not at all, signaling unmistakably that one time of life is over, and another begun. But what happened to all those eggs?

When girls are born, they have about two million eggs in their ovaries, nestled in fluid-filled cavities called follicles. That may sound like a lot, but consider that months earlier, when they were still in utero, they may have had as many as six or seven million eggs. Those eggs are still immature, and the proper name for them, by the way, is oocytes (rhymes with: nothing).

The first eggs to bite the dust were those in the fetus, which waste away. And by the time a girl reaches puberty, most of her remaining eggs have also deteriorated and been reabsorbed. If that sounds ominously like something from a “Star Trek” episode about the Borg, imagine if all those eggs had to take the customary path out of the body.

Even with the Great Egg Disappearance, girls enter puberty with many more than they will use, 300,000 or more. Each month, the body produces a hormone, FSH, which stimulates the follicles to prepare an egg for maturation and release.

With eggs backed up like bowling balls on a busy Saturday night at the lanes, the ovaries can afford to be a little wasteful, and as many as several dozen follicles are called into action. Then a single mature egg — usually, anyway — gets the tap on the shoulder and begins its travels to the uterus.

As for the maturing eggs that didn’t make the grade, there is no second chance. But they do not go out on their own. “Each month you probably lose a thousand or so,” said Dr. James T. Breeden, president of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “There’s just a natural death of them.”

For all the eggs a woman begins with, in the end only about 400 will go through ovulation. While men produce sperm throughout their lives, over time the number of eggs declines, and they disappear with increasing frequency the decade or so before menopause. Those that remain may decline in quality. “When you have a thousand or less within the ovaries, you’re thought to have undergone menopause,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosen, the director of the Fertility Preservation Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

It’s true that women make far more eggs than they end up using, but men should not pass judgment. “They produce millions of sperm, millions,” Dr. Rosen said. “The whole process is not the most efficient in the world.”

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. You can reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described estrogen levels at the time of ovulation. They rise, rather than fall.

Read More..

Dell founder to take PC maker private in $24.4-billion buyout

Once-mighty Dell Inc., which has struggled for years in a competitive and increasingly mobile device-driven industry, will try to transform itself as a private company in a $24.4-billion buyout led by founder Michael Dell.

Away from the scrutiny and glare of Wall Street, Dell is hoping the company will stand a better chance reinventing itself for the long term. But many of the fundamental challenges that have toppled the company from its perch as the world's biggest PC maker won't go away once it becomes privately held, analysts say.

"The PC guys really miscalculated the disruptive nature of tablets and the way they've cannibalized the PC business," said Tim Bajarin, president of industry analysis firm Creative Strategies Inc. "And the result is that all of them are really struggling with a shrinking market. That means that they have to find other ways to shore up their business."

In the coming years, analysts project, almost all growth in consumer electronics will come from tablets and smartphones while sales of PCs will decline.

Computing giants have taken different roads to adapt. Microsoft has launched the touch-based Windows 8 that works across traditional and mobile platforms. Intel is focusing on making chips. HP has announced a five-year turnaround plan to make the company a leader in business computing and cloud-based services.

Dell, now the world's third-largest PC maker, wants to pursue a strategy similar to HP's.

"Dell has made solid progress executing this strategy over the past four years," CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. "But we recognize that it will still take more time, investment and patience."

And so, after weeks of rumors, Dell confirmed the biggest leveraged buyout since the Great Recession. Under the terms of the agreement, the Round Rock, Texas, company will be acquired by Michael Dell and global technology investment firm Silver Lake, with a $2-billion investment from Microsoft Corp.

Michael Dell — who currently holds about a 16% stake in the company — said the going-private transaction would "open an exciting new chapter for Dell, our customers and team members."

"We can deliver immediate value to stockholders, while we continue the execution of our long-term strategy and focus on delivering best-in-class solutions to our customers as a private enterprise," he said.

Dell stockholders will receive $13.65 in cash for each share of Dell common stock they hold, representing a 25% premium over Dell's closing share price of $10.88 on Jan. 11, the last trading day before rumors of a possible sale began. The company currently has a $23.3-billion market value. Dell shares rose 15 cents, or 1%, to $13.42.

Dell wants to complete the transaction by the end of July. The company said it would solicit competing offers for 45 days, although analysts said they didn't expect a counteroffer to emerge.

Despite the advantages of being a private company, Dell will be saddled with huge debt as part of the deal that may make it difficult to make large acquisitions. Already, Dell had been outbid on deals by rivals such as HP.

"I think they have some real structural issues that can't be fixed by going private," said Bill Kreher, an analyst at Edward Jones, pointing to Dell's continued dependence on traditional PC sales.

Many of the industry's tech stalwarts have struggled with PC sales. IBM sold its PC business in 2004 to Lenovo. HP briefly considered exiting the business two years ago, but then quickly backed down amid controversy.

The Dell deal quickly sent waves across the personal computer industry, with some big rivals — perhaps seeking to take advantage of the turmoil that the transition may cause Dell — slamming the company and its prospects.

"Dell has a very tough road ahead," HP said in a statement. "The company faces an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers."

It added: "Leveraged buyouts tend to leave existing customers and innovation at the curb. We believe Dell's customers will now be eager to explore alternatives, and HP plans to take full advantage of that opportunity."

Lenovo, meanwhile, said that it was focused on its products and customers "rather than distracting financial maneuvers and major strategic shifts."

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft didn't detail why it was making the investment in Dell other than to say it wanted to help support "the long-term success of the entire PC ecosystem."

With Dell a "key channel" for Microsoft products, the software giant probably wants to keep an eye on Dell as it reinvents itself, said Jayson Noland, a senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.

"Microsoft is going to be there, talking in their ear," Noland said. "It's to keep the ecosystem healthy; it's to influence a key supplier relationship."

The buyout marks the start of a new chapter in what is already one of technology's most remarkable entrepreneurial stories. In 1984, when he was 19, Michael Dell started PC's Ltd. in his University of Texas at Austin dorm room with $1,000. The company would go on to become Dell.

With its hyper-efficient supply chain, Dell became a PC-selling juggernaut. In 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Dell was the world's largest PC maker with a market value of more than $100 billion. The founder left in 2004 when the company seemed unstoppable but returned as CEO three years later to a company that had lost its title as leading seller of PCs and was facing an accounting scandal.

The private equity buyout is Michael Dell's biggest gamble yet to revive the fortunes of the company that bears his name.

"To make this transition is not something you can do overnight," Bajarin said. "One of the things you need is time. And one of the things that Wall Street is not good at is giving you time."

andrea.chang@latimes.com

chris.obrien@latimes.com

Read More..

Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON -- More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a skeleton unearthed in central England last summer as that of Richard III, the medieval king portrayed by William Shakespeare as a homicidal tyrant who killed his two young nephews in order to ascend the throne.

DNA from the bones, found beneath the ruins of an old church, matches that of a living descendant of the monarch's sister, researchers said.

"Rarely have the conclusions of academic research been so eagerly awaited," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the excavation, told a phalanx of reporters Monday morning. "Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed ... is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England."

PHOTOS: Remains of King Richard III

The dramatic announcement capped a brief hunt for Richard's remains, the progress of which has been closely charted by international media and whose success has been barely short of miraculous.

Working from old maps of Leicester, about 100 miles northwest of London, archaeologists from the local university had less than a month to dig in a small municipal parking lot -- one of the few spaces not built over in the crowded city center. The team stumbled on the ruins of the medieval priory where records say Richard was buried, then found the bones a few days later last September.

"It was an extraordinary discovery that stunned all of us," Buckley said.

The nearly intact skeleton bore obvious traces of trauma to the skull and of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that matched contemporary descriptions of Richard's appearance. The feet were missing, almost certainly the result of later disturbance, and the hands were crossed at the wrist, which suggests that they may have been tied.

Scientists at the University of Leicester, which pioneered the practice of DNA fingerprinting, were able to extract samples from the bones and compare them to a man descended from Richard III's sister Anne. The match through the maternal line was virtually perfect.

"The DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III," said Turi King, the project’s geneticist.

Richard reigned from 1483 to 1485, and occupies a unique place in England's long line of colorful rulers. He was the last English king to be killed in combat, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by his successor, Henry VII. His death ended the Plantagenet dynasty and ushered in the long era of the Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Jo Appleby, an osteologist at the university, said the skeleton belonged to an adult male in his late 20s to late 30s; Richard III was 32 when he died. The man would have stood 5-foot-8 at full height, but the curved spine would have made him appear shorter.

The skull was riddled with wounds strongly indicative of death in battle, including two blows from bladed weapons, either of which would have been fatal, Appleby said.

Richard III is one of England's most controversial monarchs, reviled by some as a bloodthirsty despot who stopped at nothing to gain power, but revered by others who insist that he has been unfairly maligned. His supporters note that the repugnant portrait of Richard in today's popular imagination is based almost entirely on accounts from the time of the usurping Tudors, especially Shakespeare's indelible characterization of him as a "deform'd, unfinish'd" man without scruples.

Fans say Richard III was an enlightened, capable ruler whose important social reforms included the presumption of innocence for defendants and the granting of bail, which remain pillars of the legal system in Britain and the U.S.

However, what happened to Richard's two nephews, who were his rivals for the throne and who were locked up in the Tower of London as young boys, never to be seen again, remains a mystery.

ALSO:

Race to unearth a royal mystery

Bones found in hunt for King Richard III's remains

Netanyahu officially asked to put together new Israeli government

Read More..

NJ Gov. Christie, Letterman laugh about fat jokes

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and David Letterman have shared some laughs about the many fat jokes the comedian has made about the lawmaker's ample girth.

Christie has termed his plumpness "fair game" for comedians. And during his first appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, the outspoken Republican and potential 2016 presidential contender read two of Letterman's jokes that he said were "some of my personal favorites."

The governor also drew loud laughs when he pulled out a doughnut and started eating it while Letterman asked him if he was bothered by the digs that have been made about his weight. Christie said he wasn't, noting that he laughs at the jokes if he finds them funny.

"Late Show" airs on CBS at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time.

Read More..

Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

---

Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

Read More..

California high court backs online retailers in privacy battle

Internet retailers of music and other downloadable products may seek personal identifying information from consumers that ordinary stores in California are barred from asking for, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

By a 4-3 vote, the state high court said Apple Inc., which sells music on its iTunes site, and similar retailers were not covered by a chttps://content.p2p.tribuneinteractive.com/content_items/edit/74291262onsumer law that prevents California businesses from collecting personal information from credit card users.

"While it is clear that the Legislature enacted the Credit Card Act to protect consumer privacy, it is also clear that the Legislature did not intend to achieve privacy protection without regard to exposing consumers and retailers to undue risk of fraud," Justice Goodwin Liu wrote for the majority.

The Credit Card Act prevents California retailers from recording any personal identifying information as a condition of accepting a credit card. In exempting Apple and similar online businesses from the law, the court said Internet retailers do not have the same safeguards against fraud as traditional stores.

"Unlike a brick-and-mortar retailer, an online retailer cannot visually inspect the credit card, the signature on the back of the card or the customer's photo identification," Liu wrote.

The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit, intended as a class action, by an Apple customer who was asked to provide his address and telephone number before buying items for download. A trial judge, noting the law did not specifically exempt Internet retailers, ruled for the customer, and a state appeals court declined to hear an appeal.

In overturning the lower-court decision, the state Supreme Court majority noted that the consumer privacy law was first enacted in 1990, nearly a decade before online shopping became widespread. The Legislature amended the law in 2011 to allow gas stations to require ZIP Codes when credit cards were used at the pump.

"It seems counterintuitive to posit that the Legislature created a fraud prevention exemption only for pay-at-the-pump retailers while leaving online retailers unprotected, when online retailers — a multibillion-dollar industry by the year 2011 — have at least as much if not more need for an exemption to protect themselves and consumers from fraud," Liu wrote.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard contended in a dissent that the decision would leave "Internet retailers free to demand personal identification information from their credit-card-using customers and to resell that information to others."

"The majority's decision is a major win for these sellers, but a major loss for consumers, who in their online activities already face an ever-increasing encroachment upon their privacy," Kennard wrote.

She said the state privacy law applies to purchases made over a telephone and likened them to transactions made on the Internet. Telephone retailers, like those selling downloadable products on the Internet, may not ask for a consumer's personal information even if the product is a gift being sent to a third party, she wrote.

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, also dissenting, complained the majority relied "on speculation and debatable factually assumptions to wholly strip online credit car users" of an important consumer protection.

The attorney for Apple in the case and a company spokeswoman declined to comment. An attorney for the consumer could not be reached.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Read More..

Greuel is in good position in mayor's race

Wendy Greuel's success in winning support of key city employee unions has enabled her to jump ahead of rivals in TV advertising in the Los Angeles mayor's race and left her chief opponent, Eric Garcetti, scrambling to slow her momentum.

With voting by mail beginning today, Greuel, the city controller, holds an enviable spot: For nearly a week, she has had the airwaves to herself. In a city where many voters know little or nothing about the eight people vying to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, first impressions will matter.

Early advertising is a luxury Greuel can afford thanks largely to an independent group of big-money donors preparing to spend heavily on her behalf before the March 5 primary.

The donors include Hollywood movie producers Norman Lear and Judd Apatow, but so far most of the group's cash is coming from the Department of Water and Power employees' union. The group is not bound by the strict donation and spending caps that constrain candidates' campaign committees.

Greuel also has won the backing of the city's police and firefighter unions, two of the most coveted endorsements in a mayoral contest.

"The firefighters are the single most valuable source of borrowed credibility that any politician can ever dream of, and the police are almost as good," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

Still, the race is very fluid, and Garcetti, a city councilman from Silver Lake, remains well positioned to win a spot in the May 21 runoff.

He is half Mexican and half Jewish, key assets in an election with large Latino and Jewish voting blocs up for grabs. Garcetti has raised slightly more money than Greuel. And in recent days he won the support of the 35,000-member United Teachers Los Angeles, which helped get Villaraigosa elected, and the Sierra Club, which has an extensive grassroots following.

But the surest sign of Garcetti's concern about Greuel's strength was his decision last week to go on the attack.

After months of unbroken civility between the two in mayoral forums that even supporters found dull, Garcetti lashed out at Greuel's ad, calling it a "flim-flam." The ad says she exposed $160 million in waste and fraud at City Hall and would root it out, using the savings for "job creation, better schools and faster emergency response."

Garcetti summoned news cameras to his Studio City campaign headquarters, where he told reporters the $160 million "simply doesn't exist."

"The centerpiece of her campaign is fraudulent," said Bill Carrick, Garcetti's top campaign advisor. "That is a huge problem."

Garcetti's team ties labor's tilt toward Greuel to Garcetti's support for laying off city workers and scaling back their health and retirement benefits after the recession caused a sharp drop in tax collections.

Tactically, Garcetti has decided to hold back on early advertising, so he'll have money to respond to attack ads he expects Greuel or her backers to air in the final run-up to the primary.

Greuel, whose effort to cast herself as a tough fiscal watchdog is aimed largely at locking down her San Fernando Valley base, answered Garcetti's attack by accusing him of turning a blind eye to the waste revealed by her audits. John Shallman, her chief strategist, took Garcetti's attacks as a good sign.

"When someone makes the decision to go negative, it's not because they're winning," he said. "It's because they're losing."

If the Greuel-Garcetti fight intensifies, the candidate best situated to benefit is Councilwoman Jan Perry.

"Her cause would be helped if you had Garcetti and Greuel going after each other with ball-peen hammers," said Garry South, an L.A. campaign consultant unaligned in the mayoral race.

Rancor between Garcetti and Greuel has yet to reach that level, he said, but independent groups like the one led by the DWP workers' union "tend to get out the meat cleaver" in their advertising.

"I think either of the other candidates would be making a big mistake to assume there's no way Jan Perry might finish second place in the primary and end up in the runoff," South said.

Having raised $1.5 million, less than half that of her top two opponents, Perry can afford little TV advertising. But she has plenty to wage an expansive mail campaign. Over the last few weeks, she has sent mailers introducing herself to thousands of carefully targeted voters. The lone African American in the race, Perry, who is Jewish, has combined biography, stressing her family's role in fighting for civil rights when she was growing up in Ohio, with pledges of fiscal restraint. Her slogan — "Tough enough to make Los Angeles work again" — plays off a winning campaign theme of former Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican.

The wild cards in the contest continue to be Emanuel Pleitez and Kevin James. Pleitez, 30, a former personal assistant to Villaraigosa and onetime Goldman Sachs financial analyst, has raised his profile in recent weeks as debate sponsors have invited him to participate. He has raised too little money to advertise widely in a city with 1.8 million voters, limiting the reach of his message, which emphasizes improving city services in the most underserved neighborhoods. But in a close contest, Pleitez, who lives in El Sereno, could affect the result, particularly if he draws a respectable share of the expanding Latino vote.

James, the sole Republican in the field, has spent heavily on high-priced consultants and had just $49,000 cash on hand as of Jan. 19 — a fraction of Pleitez's $320,000, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. An entertainment lawyer and former radio talk-show host, James, who is gay, is counting on news coverage of the race to amplify his vows to clean up what he portrays as a corrupt City Hall.

James' hope of squeezing into a two-way runoff also rests heavily on the help of an independent committee formed by Republican ad man Fred Davis. So far, the committee, bankrolled largely by a Texas billionaire, has collected $700,000, well short of Greuel's $3.5 million and Garcetti's $3.6 million.

Now that voters can begin casting ballots, the top contenders face mounting pressure to draw sharper contrasts with their rivals. For Perry, Garcetti and Greuel, the similar records they built while serving together on the City Council make that task paramount.

"They need to be differentiating themselves in some fashion," said Parke Skelton, who was a top campaign strategist for Villaraigosa. "The risk is that you don't give anyone a reason to vote for you."

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Read More..