In 2018, Katie Porter flipped a Republican safe seat -- it had literally never been held by a Democrat-- in California's 45th District, and since then, she has been a delightful, brilliant terror of a lawmaker, using her deep background in finance law (she's a tenured finance law prof at UC Irvine who literally wrote the textbook on consumer finance law in the wake of Dodd-Frank and Elizabeth Warren's establishment of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau).
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Propublica's latest longread is ostensibly a profile of two kids who attended Orange County's Sage Hill School, where tuition runs $40,000/year and where an estimated 25% of students get into elite colleges thanks to their parents shelling out for "independent counsellors" who run the gamut from people who help with admissions essays and strategic donations to the schools of their choice all the way up to William "Rick" Singer, who pleaded guilty to collecting millions to grease the path for mediocre rich kids to attend elite colleges by bribing coaches.
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Dana Rohrabacher was an oddity: a Republican lawmaker sent from Democratic stronghold to the California legislature he's now out of a job).
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After a man called Connor Zion experienced several seizures, he became disoriented and attacked some of his family members, who called the police. Orange County, California Deputy Michael Higgins arrived, shot Zion nine times, approached Zion's motionless body, fired nine more shots into him at point-blank range, then, after a running start, stomped on Zion's head three times.
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If you're convicted of a crime in Orange County, you can shell out thousands of dollars to be housed in Seal Beach's fancy "pay to stay" jail, which made $365,000 in the last fiscal year by aggressively marketing its "work release, flat screen TVs, computer/media room, clean facility, new beds" to deep-pocketed criminals, who pay $100 a night to stay there rather than one of Orange County's notoriously violent, dirty jails. Read the rest
Orange County has many claims to fame: Richard Nixon, the S&L scandal, subprime boiler-rooms, Disneyland, an airport honoring a cowboy named Marion, and now, the revelation that its police force secretly uses low-flying surveillance aircraft to break the encryption of thousands of cellphone users, track their movements, and intercept their communications. Read the rest
A five-hour Irvine, Orange County, CA city council meeting ended with the council unanimously agreeing that the Occupy tents on the town hall's lawn were a form of free speech and vowing to "add the needs of 'The 99%' to their official agenda." Afterwards, the mayor asked the protesters if they needed any more blankets.
The council members each spoke in turn to the civility, articulateness and
peaceful process represented by the Irvine Occupation at contrast with the
several other Occupational Villages in California, which were, at that
very moment being tear-gassed. The general sentiment being: 'This is quite
clearly the model. And the occupation most in tune with city needs.'
One councilman stated clearly, 'I disagree with most of what you're
saying. But you've clearly shown that this is an issue of free speech. So
if you need to sleep on our lawn, by all means, sleep on our lawn.'
Shortly after, a motion was brought to the council to grant license to the
occupiers to occupy the public space overnight citing the unusual form of
the movement. (Another first in council history.)
TEARS STREAM AS CITY COUNCIL UNANIMOUSLY AGREES ‘OCCUPY TENTS ARE A FORM OF SPEECH’
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