Despite beliefs that the e�ects of second hand smoke are more harmful in an enclosed area, a study by Stanford University in 2007 has shown the e�ects of smoking to be just as damaging in open areas. According to Neil Klepeis, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford who lead the study, being within two feet downwind of a smoker in an outdoor area can lead non-smokers to inhale 50 times more pollutants than normally exist in the air during the average 10 minutes it takes smokers to �nish a cigarette.

Schwarzenegger hopes federal aid will help

with California’s $19.9 million budget crisis.

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SLO City Council approves stricter local smoking ban

Jessica Barbamustang daily

The San Luis Obispo City Coun-cil approved a ban on smoking at public parks and outdoor recreation areas last Friday, expanding the pre-vious ordinance that made the city the first place in the world to outlaw smoking in indoor areas, restaurants and bars in 1990.

The new ordinance that includes Mission Plaza and the creek walk was first discussed during a council meeting in December 2008 when members decided to update smoking regulations in light of new research.

Principle Administrative Analyst Brigitte Elke and a team that re-searched and prepared the current ordinance considered secondhand smoke, fire hazard zones, citizen complaints and the environmental impact of litter caused by the dis-posal of tobacco products in the new study.

“What we did in 1990 was way ahead of its time and since then the state has regulated more areas,” Elke said. “Most cities have taken addi-tional steps and now we have added the ordinance.”

Other local cities like Atascadero and Pismo Beach have passed simi-lar ordinances prohibiting smoking at public parks, state beaches and the Charles Paddock Zoo. State-wide, large population centers such as Santa Monica and Pasadena have banned smoking in all outdoor areas

that includes events like Farmers Market and the Rose Parade.

Some residents like Dottie Smith, 71, who smoked for 50 years but quit a year and a half ago, empathize with those who feel the need to smoke because of their tobacco addictions. The ordinance was a great way to protect the health of residents and she said she is interested to see how the new ordinance will be enforced.

Secondhand smoke has caused an estimated 46,000 deaths from heart disease in non-smoking adults and up to 300,000 lung infections in children annually, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report in 2006.

“Just the smell of the second-hand smoke is offensive to me. It stinks,” Bernita Meyers, 87, Elke said.

According to a survey con-ducted last year by the California Department of Health Services, 86 percent of San Luis Obispo residents said they did not smoke which is 2 two percent lower that average California cities. On average businesses pay $111,585 for loss of productivity and health care expenditures caused by smoking.

Cal Poly political science se-nior Natalie Lewis said she often feels uncomfortable on smoke

Students share weekly dinners with local homeless Leticia Rodriguezmustang daily

For some San Luis Obispo col-lege students, Thursday nights are spent downtown at Farmers’ mar-ket shopping for fresh vegetables and participating in Bike Night. But for the members of Finer Things Thursday, a group of Cuesta and Cal Poly students who get together to feed the homeless, Thursday nights mean potluck dinners with friends at Mitchell Park.

Finer Things Thursday got its start last year when political science

junior Colby Carter wanted to take her friend’s weekly potluck dinners outside, to people who would really appreciate a warm meal. Carter said a goal of Finer Things Thursday is to bring together groups of people who may not otherwise interact and to blur the lines that separate home-less people from the rest of society.

“Finer Things wants to eliminate the division between us and them,” Carter said. “I don’t like seeing my-self or my group of people, and then everybody else.”

Every week a different theme is

Students to plant more than 1,000 trees

leticia rodriguez mustang daily

A group of Cuesta and Cal Poly students called Finer Things Thursday brought its weekly potluck outside to Mitchell Park.

katrina borges mustang daily

The Cal Poly Environmental Council and non-profit organization One Cool Earth teamed with students to pot 550 trees on Saturday.

MUSTANG DAILY

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“Water for Elephants” wins over Mustang Daily’s Sweet Story Scribbler.

Men’s basketball defeats Aggies 72-69 Sunday

afternoon.

Katrina Borgesspecial to the mustang daily

There’s one group of Cal Poly students who like to play in the dirt.

On Saturday, non-profit orga-nization One Cool Earth and the Cal Poly Environmental Council teamed up to pot 50 Madrone trees and 500 Redwood trees that they plan to plant next weekend. The groups also picked acorns to plant Oak trees.

The Environmental Council is one of many programs developed by Cal Poly’s Student Community Services.

“The Environmental Council’s

been around for a while, since like the ‘70s,” program director Barrie Valencia said. “We try to provide volunteers to other non-profits. We have lots of non-profits that we’re partners with.”

Both organizations work on a strictly volunteer basis, so no membership in either is necessary.

“This is just a volunteering organization,” Valencia said. “We provide events, and hopefully peo-ple come. Sometimes it’s not even volunteer stuff. Sometimes it’s like ‘Hey, there’s an Environmental Council film festival (to attend).’”

The group tries to do some-thing every weekend.

“We like to document our

events on our Web site to serve as an inspiration to the community and show how easy it is to just go out and plant trees,” said Greg El-lis, leader of One Cool Earth.

One Cool Earth and the Envi-ronmental Council will be plant-ing the acorns they collected at Whale Rock this Saturday. Ellis said they plan to plant about 500 acorns. Planters will be meeting in the administration parking lot at 9 a.m. and work until about 1 p.m., with a lunch break in between.

“Oaks are one of our special-ties,” Ellis said. “They’re really easy to plant because the acorns drop and you just get them and plant the seeds in pots.”

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chosen and approximately 5 to 15 students bring food to eat while they share stories and talk to any home-less person who shows up for a warm meal and friendly conversation. Ani-mal science sophomore Megan Sex-ton said the group’s decision to have a potluck dinner where the students sit and talk with the homeless is what separates them from other organiza-tions such as the Salvation Army or the Prado Day homeless shelter.

“I think we have more of a re-lational sit-down dinner where we can get to know them,” Sexton said. “Actually talking to them and getting to know their stories and stuff is dif-ferent than if we were just handing out food.”

Even though the students are the ones doing the giving, they feel that they are on the receiving-end as well.

When communications freshman Adrienne McIntyre began participat-ing this year, she was doing it largely based on her faith and because she wanted to be able to help out the homeless population in a way she wouldn’t be able to from the com-forts of home. As the year continued, she began making friends with the homeless people who regularly at-tend the potluck and learned about their lives.

One man McIntyre met was a college graduate who grew up in a rich family. After graduation, the man decided the best way to help

battle homelessness was to be-come homeless himself for almost 10 years. His stories of hitchhiking across America and choosing to be homeless helped shatter her previ-ous conception that all homeless people are dangerous and crazy.

“I feel like I’m seeing what’s really important in life,” McIntyre said. “It’s not the things that I have but that there’s so much more. The way they see life, they have so much hope but they have nothing. They have so much to say and are so grateful and their stories are so in-teresting and I feel like people don’t view them as fully human.”

Even though the few homeless people who attended the potluck declined to speak, Carter wants them to feel comfortable and like the two groups are friends when they show up on Thursday nights. She said this is a big reason why they sit down to eat dinner and why she wanted to get out there and form relationships with the group she serves.

“Meal sharing is a very intimate thing but it’s also a very welcom-ing thing,” Carter said. “They’re my friends, I’m not going to be wearing plastic gloves and a hairnet when I’m serving these people. We want to blur those lines as much as possible. So I think sitting down and doing that, eating dinner with somebody does that. It eliminates the ‘this is my place in society and I’m going to serve you and help you because you need it’ but I need help just as much as they do, like I need help just as much as the next homeless person does.”

Homelesscontinued from page 1

By Anthony Colarossithe orlando sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Impe-rial Wizard of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is guarded about discuss-ing his organization’s membership.

But this much Cole Thornton openly shares: Florida cops belong to his Klan group because he said they like its rigid standards and its adher-ence to a strict moral code.

“They (police officers) like the fact that we support law enforce-ment,” said Thornton, who is based in the Gulf Coast community of En-glewood. “These guys are out there putting their lives on the line, and we back them.”

He would not name those law enforcement officers, but Thornton said he thinks that being a member of a “traditional Klan” group “makes them a better cop.”

Thornton’s comments come in the wake of the firing of an Alach-ua County corrections officer who acknowledged he was a member of Thornton’s Klan organization. Wayne Kerschner was fired Dec.29.

A year ago, the Fruitland Park Police Department investigated one of its officers who was linked to Klan groups. James Elkins denied he was associated with a Klan chapter and resigned.

Florida ranks third nation-ally, behind California and Texas, in the overall number of identi-fied hate groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that provides tolerance-education programs, offers legal representation against white supremacists and tracks hate groups. The center defines a hate group as one that states other groups or peo-ple are somehow lesser or inferior.

Mark Potok, director of the center’s Intelligence Project, which investigates such groups, said mem-bership in organizations such as Thornton’s have swelled in recent years.

However, Potok has found no evidence that Klan membership by

police officers in Florida — or any other state — is on the uptick. He knew of one other case, in Nebraska, of an officer being removed because of his Klan affiliation.

“I doubt very much whether he (Thornton) has many police officers at all in his organization,” Potok said. “I’ve not seen anything to suggest any significant influx of law enforcement into the Klan. ... There is an absolutely clear conflict between being a law en-forcement officer and a member of the Klan.”

Thornton praised Kerschner and said he would support him if Kersch-ner challenged the firing.

“He’s one of the finest officers I have,” he said. “If he was violating what it takes to be a (law enforcement) of-ficer, he would have violated what it takes to be a Klansman, and we would have booted him out. We have pretty high standards, as do they.”

Thornton insisted his Klan organi-zation is not a hate or terrorist group, and he said it opposes violence by its members. “You’re not going to do this movement one bit of good sitting in a jail cell,” he said.

He said his group’s membership has grown because of issues such as the government’s handling of illegal immigration and school prayer and a desire to preserve “white heritage.”

The United Northern and South-ern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is listed as one of 56 Florida “hate groups” identified by the law center.

Illegal immigration has helped feed much of the growth within hate and far-right-wing extremist groups, Potok said. More recently, President Barack Obama’s election has caused their numbers to increase as well, he said.

Klan membership is generally kept secret, but local Klan chapters in the past were well-represented by law en-forcement.

Former Orange County Sheriff Dave Starr, who served from 1949 to 1971, was identified as a Klansman in sworn statements to the FBI. So was former Apopka police Chief William Dunnaway and other powerful coun-ty and city officials who ran local gov-

ernment agencies decades ago.Those affiliations were docu-

mented when the Orlando Sentinel obtained decades-old FBI records in 1991.

“Southern police departments were filled with Klansmen and Klan sympathizers in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Po-tok said.

Orlando police Sgt. Barbara Jones said any officer suspected of being a Klan member today would be writ-ten up for violating department regu-lations. If the suspicion were sustained, the officer would be disciplined “to include termination,” Jones said.

Department policy prohibits membership or connection “with any subversive organization except when necessary in the performance of duty and then only under the direction of the Chief of Police.” A U.S. attorney general’s list of subversive organiza-tions includes the KKK.

In the Lake County Sheriff ’s Of-fice, employees must behave in a way that does not discredit themselves, the department or the community. If a deputy were suspected of being a KKK member, the claim would be investigated immediately, officials said.

“If the allegations were proven to be true, the employee’s services would no longer be of value to the Sheriff ’s Office or the community,” Lake sher-iff ’s Lt. John Herrell explained.

“It would be a tremendous conflict of interest to task someone affiliated with a hate group with the responsi-bility of serving our community and enforcing the laws.”

Last January, Fruitland Park police Chief J.M. Isom began an investigation of James Elkins after Sumter County officials notified him that a Bushnell post office box in Elkins’ name was listed as a mail point on a recruit-ment flier for the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Then photos of Elkins in a Klan gown and hood — and a police badge — emerged. And the Lake County Sheriff ’s Office provided documents showing Elkins became a Klansman in 2006 and later a “district Kleagle” — or recruiter — of the National Aryan Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Elkins resigned before Isom’s in-vestigation was completed. Isom said the findings showed that he lied about his KKK membership when he ap-plied for the job as a Fruitland Park officer.

Thornton knows both former of-ficers well. He said Kerschner had a long history with the Alachua Sher-iff ’s Office and no racial complaints.

Elkins, he said, had family prob-lems that bothered his Klan group and was “on the verge of being ban-ished.” “Jim was an embarrassment to the Police Department — and to us,” he said.

Isom still considers the Elkins epi-sode to be an embarrassment. He said he thinks his department would be on solid legal ground firing Elkins or anyone else with such a dubious af-filiation.

As for Thornton’s insistence that law enforcement officers have joined his organization because of common goals and interests, Isom said: “They’re going to say anything to make them-selves look good. ... They don’t believe in the law. They take the law into their own hands _ at least they did back in the old days.”

KKK wizard: If police are in Klan, it ‘makes them a better cop’

breaks when she receives harsh stares and has been yelled at, “Butts kill!” by people driving by.

“I understand their concerns but sometimes smokers are treated as second-class citizens and are being forced to smoke in dark corners,” Lewis said.

The council hopes to later ex-pand the ordinance to include ban-ning smoking outside businesses and in lines at theaters and ATMs during the March council meeting. Howev-

er, some residents like The Sanctu-ary Tobacco Shop owner Douglas Shaw, fear that by furthering the ban will infringe on citizens’ per-sonal rights.

“I have mixed emotions about it. I am grateful I can go to a bar and restaurant (and not breathe smoke),” Shaw said. “But if you have your own business or store you should have the right to do what you want even if that means lighting up a cigar or cigarette.”

The council will make its de-cision on the future ordinance in March when the staff submits a more detailed proposal.

Smokingcontinued from page 1

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One day after 6.5 Northern California earthquake, shaky residents sweep upAri B. Bloomekatz and Garrett Therolflos angeles times

LOS ANGELES AND EURE-KA, Calif. — The day after a power-ful earthquake rocked the Northern California city of Eureka, residents woke Sunday to a mess; toppled chimneys, downed traffic signals and shattered nerves as minor after-shocks continued to rattle windows.

About 30 people visited hos-pitals for minor injuries, but there were no reports of major injuries caused by the magnitude-6.5 tem-blor, which struck offshore at 4:27 p.m. PST, about 33 miles southwest of the coastal city of 26,000.

More than 25,000 people were initially without power, but electric-ity was restored to everyone shortly after 6 a.m. PST, according to David Eisenhauer, spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

“We’re checking all the bridges and buildings and hope to have a complete damage assessment soon,” said Leslie Lollich, spokeswoman for the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services.

Already, officials had declared an apartment building and several commercial structures unsafe, refer-ring the residents to Red Cross of-ficials for temporary shelter.

At the 124-year-old St. Bernard’s Roman Catholic Church in Eureka, parishioners were busy picking up pieces of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and climbing ladders to adjust paintings that had tilted in the shaking. The church’s tall steeple was intact after the quake.

Pastor H. Loren Allen said he had delivered a homily to church mem-bers that gave thanks for the rela-tively minor damage. “I didn’t want to make light of it,” he said, “but I didn’t want to sound like the grim reaper either.”

Centered about 13 miles deep, the quake was felt as far north as central Oregon, as far south as Santa Cruz and as far east as Reno, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

“It was a monstrous one,” said Phil Burns, owner of Mity Nice Bakery Cafe Restaurant in Eureka, which is about 80 miles south of the Oregon border. “Usually, they’re sharp, but this one was very wiggly.

It was rolling in all directions.”In the south Eureka fishing vil-

lage of King Salmon, the 10 seconds of shaking broke power lines and knocked out electricity throughout the isolated seaside community of about 750 people.

When it stopped, people gath-ered in the street. Some were visibly distraught. Shouts of “You all right?” were heard. Then car engines be-gan revving up as residents raced to the only access road to the closest higher ground, the 150-foot-high Bell Hill, in case of a tsunami, said William Bowman, a resident. None materialized, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Residents of Northern Califor-nia coastal communities have reason to worry about tsunamis. In 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake off the Alaskan coast sent a catastrophic tsunami to Crescent City, north of Eureka, killing 11 people.

Frayed nerves were evident throughout the Humboldt County region as dusk fell. Rooms at Mad River Community Hospital in Ar-cata, 15 miles north of Eureka, were in the dark, and patients in robes

were sitting in the hallway. Genera-tors provided only enough power to keep vital machinery working, said nursing supervisor Annie Conkler.

“Everyone’s shaken, but fine,” she said, adding there were no patients with quake-related injuries coming into the emergency room.

At Myrtle Avenue Pet Center on Hubbard Lane in Eureka, own-er Melanie Noe spent the evening picking up shampoo bottles and shattered dog bowls. The only other casualties were the cats’ nerves, she said.

On the other side of town, lamps and dishes crashed down at Antiques and Goodies, causing a couple to run out of the store, while two women took cover under a table. “We’ve been through a lot of earth-quakes, but I can’t recall there ever being any this bad,” said store owner Sandra Hall.

To the south, floodlights fell at the Humboldt County Fairgrounds, and windows shattered in Ferndale. Farther south, in Redway, shoppers abandoned their carts in a grocery store and raced to their cars.

State officials said authorities in

the county have not asked for addi-tional assistance from Sacramento.

“It looks like they will be able to handle it on their own,” said Kelly Huston, a spokesman for the California Emergency Management Agency. “Our big concern now is aftershocks.”

At least 10 aftershocks were re-ported in the hours after the tem-blor, the strongest of them register-ing 4.2.

Richard Allen, a UC Berkeley seismologist, said the area where the earthquake occurred was in the Mendocino Triple Junction, where three tectonic plates collide: the Pa-cific, North American and Juan de Fuca. It is one of the most seismi-cally active parts of the San Andreas fault system that runs through the state.

“Although 6.5 is a large event, it is not uncommon there by any means,” said Richard Buckmaster, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysi-cist.

The last major quakes in the off-shore region, Buckmaster said, were magnitude 7.2 and 6.6 temblors in June 2005.

Publix to remove calendar that omitted Pearl HarborJuan Ortegasun sentinel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Responding to customers’ com-plaints, supermarket chain Pub-lix has stopped distributing a free 2010 calendar that marked Dec. 7 as the start of the Islamic New Year but excluded the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Joyce Kaufman, whose radio talk show broadcast in Florida’s Miami-Dade to Palm Beach coun-ties, criticized the supermarket chain on her show Wednesday, say-ing the company failed to include Pearl Harbor in a calendar it had widely provided at supermarkets in recent weeks.

Kaufman said omitting the Pearl Harbor anniversary would disap-point World War II veterans. She told the South-Florida Sun Senti-nel she also considers some Mus-lims — only those who are “radi-cal and want to destroy Western civilization” — as enemies of the United States.

She urged listeners to call Pub-lix if the calendar offended them. The supermarket company re-ceived several complaints, mostly about the Pearl Harbor anniversary missing from the calendar, Publix officials said.

“We regret that the day of re-membrance, Pearl Harbor, is not noted and as a result of customer feedback, we will add Pearl Harbor to next year’s calendar,” said Kim-berly Jaeger, a Publix spokeswoman in Miami.

Since 2005, Publix has provided the free calendar, which has only marked holidays, including Inde-

pendence Day and Veterans Day, Jaeger said.

The calendar also features holi-days celebrated overseas, such as Puerto Rico Commonwealth Constitution Day and Haitian Flag Day.

Still, the calendar always has ex-cluded days of observance and re-membrance, including Pearl Har-bor, “due to the number of holidays in a calendar year,” Jaeger said.

Meanwhile, the date of the Is-lamic New Year varies each year, she said. In 2010, it “happens to fall on Dec. 7,” Jaeger said.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islam Relations, a Washington-based

Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, charged the calendar’s pro-testers focused on the exclusion of the Pearl Harbor anniversary to exploit “the natural patriotism” of Americans and to “marginalize Muslims and demonize Islam.”

Several Muslims phoned Publix, thanking the company for observ-ing the Islamic New Year, Hooper said.

The calendar, filled with cou-pons, is no longer available at super-markets. As of now, Publix doesn’t plan to reissue it this year, officials said. The company plans to include in next year’s calendar both the Is-lamic New Year and Pearl Harbor anniversary.

mcclatchy-tribune

The Arizona Memorial and the Battleship Missouri mark the begin-ning and the end of WWII in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After receiving complaints for omitting Dec. 7 as a day of rememberance, Publix said it would add it to next year’s calendar.

Job growth could begin by spring, Obama adviser saysAndria Chengmarketwatch

NEW YORK — Even after a December report showed losses re-sumed after more jobs were added in November, the U.S. could see still job growth begin by spring, Christi-na Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Sunday.

We are still “part of this overall trend towards greatly moderating job losses,” Romer said on ABC’s “This week” with George Stephanopoulos. As an example, she said the U.S. was losing an average of 691,000 jobs per month in the first quarter of 2009 and that number slowed to an av-erage of 69,000 jobs in the fourth quarter.

“It’s still terrible,” she said. “We absolutely have to go from losing any jobs at all to — to adding them at a — at a robust rate.”

She said the country is on a path of “steady progress” and said that Gross Domestic Product, which grew in the third quarter, is expected to have grown “even more strongly” in the fourth quarter. She said most forecasts are pointing to “steady GDP growth over 2010.”

“The real question is going to be, is it going to be strong enough to really add a lot of people back into employment?” she said. “That is what we are focusing on.”

She said “the big variable” in the economic recovery and job growth is the private sector. “The government has been doing a lot to — to hold up

demand,” she said. “The whole ques-tion is: when does the private sector get to see its legs again?”

Separately, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told David Grego-ry on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “economically the worst is over,” as there’s been a comeback in terms of job creation and home sales.

“The economy has bottomed out and has a chance to come back, the governor said, adding to hit the state with more taxes would be “the wrong thing” to do.

Still, he said “when it comes to

mcclatchy-tribune

Monthly economic indicator: Trend in U.S. unemployment rate.

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Monday, January 11, 20104 Mustang Daily

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Music Mondays

compiled and photographed by jennifer titcombb

“End of the Road” by Boyz II Men

-Eric Kim, business administra-tion sophomore

“Badfish” by Sublime

-Katelyn Lynch, psychology se-nior

“Jump” from the Glee sound-track

-Kelly Cordeiro, business ad-ministration senior

“Coasten” by Zion-I

-Brandon Magnus, environ-mental management junior

“Si tu te vas” by Alejandro Fer-nandez

-Lizbeth Hernandez, civil engi-neering junior

“Stella” by All Time Low

-Michelle Palaima, industrial engineering junior

TOKYO (MCT) — The Japa-nese and U.S. governments decided Saturday to issue a joint statement about deepening their bilateral al-liance on Jan. 19, the 50th anniver-sary of the revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, government sources said.

Final arrangements for issuing the statement will be made at a meeting on Tuesday.

The two governments aim to demonstrate the importance and strength of the Japan-U.S. alliance at home and abroad, and help mend bilateral ties strained by disagree-ments over the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture.

• • •ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

(MCT) — Pakistani officials fear that a video that appears to link the suicide bomber who struck a CIA base in Afghanistan just over a week ago to the Pakistani Taliban will prompt the Obama administra-tion to step up pressure on them to take more aggressive action against extremists and intensify U.S. drone attacks on targets in Pakistan.

In the video, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Meh-sud, is sitting alongside the attacker, Jordanian Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, with automatic weapons on their laps, against a dark backdrop and an Islamic verse.

InternationalFort Lauderdale, Fla. (MCT)

— Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will receive $15 million in federal economic stimulus money to build the largest coral reef research center in the United States, a major boost for a university that has already established a reputation in marine biology.

The Department of Commerce on Friday announced grants to 11 universities and one independent research organization to build re-search centers as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to fire up the economy.

• • •WASHINGTON (MCT) —

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., apologized Saturday for newly revealed racial remarks he made about Barack Obama dur-ing the 2008 presidential campaign, comments that could hurt his re-election hopes.

Reid referred to Obama, then a fellow senator, in private talks as “light-skinned” and speaking “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” according to a new book on the campaign by journal-ists Mark Halperin and John Heile-mann.

“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” Reid said in a statement. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans, for my improper comments.”

NationalSAN LUIS OBISPO (MCT)

— Sufficient evidence was present-ed Friday in the preliminary hearing of a man and woman accused of at-tacking a 26-year-old near Cal Poly in December.

Judge Teresa Estrada-Mullaney ruled that prosecutor Lee Cunning-ham presented sufficient evidence for charges of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon against Jeffery Miles Berrett, 25, and Meghan Brit-nie Gross, 23.

Their alleged attack of Philip Hauser took place in the early morning hours of Dec. 13.

Berrett and Gross were held at County Jail on Friday in lieu of $75,000 bail. They have pleaded not guilty.

Hauser testified that he had at-tended a friend’s birthday party on Stenner Street near Cal Poly and was walking home about 4 a.m. when he had a discussion with Ber-rett and Gross.

• • •SAN MATEO (MCT) —

Owners of businesses, apartment complexes and other commercial properties would be required to re-cycle or face fines under a new city proposal.

San Mateo officials are con-sidering a mandatory commercial recycling ordinance, which could make the city the first in San Mateo County to adopt one.

State

Briefs

the financial crisis that California is in, we aren’t out of the woods yet.

We still have a tough road ahead of us.”

He also said the government should rethink its health care reform.

“There’s no reason to beat up on California and ask for more money

Jobscontinued from page 3

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Man arrested, released after Newark airport security breachDavid B. Wilkersonmarketwatch

CHICAGO — A New Jersey man was released from custody early Saturday after being arrested for an alleged security breach at Newark Liberty International Air-port, published reports said.

The incident rattled nerves just

over a week after a Nigerian man tried to cause an explosion on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit. Airports around the U.S. and the world are scrambling to put tighter security measures into place since the Christmas Day bombing attempt.

Haisong Jiang, 28, was arrested Friday night at his Piscataway, N.J.,

home and charged with defiant trespass. He was released just after midnight.

Last Sunday, Jiang allegedly ducked under a security ribbon at the airport’s Terminal C, enter-ing an area where passengers had already been screened — while a guard left his post — to say good-bye to a woman heading for a flight, the Associated Press said.

The terminal was shut down for six hours while security personnel rescreened thousands of people.

Jiang is not suspected of being a terrorist, the Newark Star-Ledger reported. But Sen. Frank Lauten-berg, D-N.J., said he wants to im-pose harsher penalties for people who commit such offenses.

“When you looked at the tape, you could see that this was pre-meditated, that he looked for a chance to break the system,” the Star-Ledger quoted Lautenberg as saying.

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Schwarzenegger relies on federal aid with new budgetKevin Yamamuramcclatchy newspapers

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — One thing is clear in California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fi-nal January budget proposal: Cali-fornia’s finances are about as des-perate as desperate gets.

Facing a $19.9 billion deficit, the Republican governor placed a big bet on a federal infusion of $6.9 billion. Should that fail to materialize, he proposes eliminat-ing welfare-to-work, suspending business tax benefits and cutting state worker pay more deeply than the 10 percent reduction already in play.

Schwarzenegger searched high and low for cash that can’t be called taxes. He wants to install overhead enforcement cameras at intersections around the state to raise $338 million from speeding drivers. He also wants oil drill-ing off the Santa Barbara Coast to generate over $100 million yearly for state parks.

And Schwarzenegger won’t take “no” for an answer. He again wants voters to shift mental health and childhood development money to the general state bud-get — even though they rejected the same idea last year by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.

In one questionable assump-tion, Schwarzenegger’s plan banks on $880 million from the federal government for undocumented immigrant prison costs. Congress doesn’t plan to spend even half that amount for all 50 states.

Schwarzenegger declared a fis-cal emergency and called a special session, asking for immediate ac-tion on $8.9 billion in solutions in the next 45 days. Even if the governor’s optimistic revenue as-sumptions come to pass, he will have a difficult time winning sup-port for the cuts he proposes in the Legislature.

A year ago, both parties split the middle with taxes and cuts. This time, Republicans were gen-erally supportive of the plan, save for corrections cuts and suspend-ing business tax benefits.

“Republicans are glad to see the governor’s commitment to not raising taxes, controlling spend-ing and making sure that we start redoing the jobs picture in Cali-fornia,” said Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth, a Republican.

But winning more support from Republicans meant further angering Democrats. The major-ity party opposes widespread cuts in social service programs and believes schools are getting less than they deserve. In front of cam-eras, Democratic leaders spouted quick-hit rebukes as if they were gearing up for a prize fight.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Karen Bass called the governor’s plan “a big pile of denial.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat.

Schwarzenegger wasn’t.The current deficit total is

smaller than the $40 billion gap a year ago, but state leaders back then relied on onetime solutions they cannot use again. They can’t shift June 30 paychecks to July 1, an accounting gimmick that will go down in state budgeting lore.

Schwarzenegger ruled out the possibility of any further tax in-creases after lawmakers approved $12 billion worth of temporary annual tax hikes last year. It would be difficult, anyway, to get a two-thirds vote for taxes after some Republicans suffered political re-percussions last year for support-ing the budget.

“It’s probably the most dire in a long series of terrible budget years,” said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Stud-ies at California State University Sacramento. “Despite the rhetoric of gubernatorial candidates, there

is not billions in waste, fraud and abuse. We’re into the muscle and bone now of many programs.”

Schwarzenegger blamed Cali-fornia’s woes on a flawed budget and taxation system, one he has been unable to fix over the past six years.

“If you compare it to an in-tersection, it’s like seeing people crashing into each other and nev-er building a stop sign and never building a traffic light and see them over and over hurting them-selves and killing themselves,” Schwarzenegger said. “That’s what’s going on in California right

now. Year after year, we know that our budget system doesn’t work.”

As if passing the budget isn’t hard enough, the governor still hopes to use the deficit one final time to win long-term changes that have been rejected throughout his time in office. All are opposed by Democrats and labor unions.

Schwarzenegger is again ad-vocating for a stronger rainy-day fund, which voters opposed last year. He wants to weaken teacher tenure protections based on se-niority, which voters rejected in 2005. He hopes to cut pension benefits for new state employees, a

plan he couldn’t get off the ground in 2005 and 2006.

Robert Huckfeldt, a University of California Davis political sci-ence professor, said Schwarzeneg-ger has long pursued ideas that ig-nored the political realities of the moment. This budget is no differ-ent, he said.

“He’s kind of a whimsical guy,” Huckfeldt said. “I don’t mean he’s being irresponsible. He’s caught in a corner, and there’s noth-ing he can figure out to do. The problems are bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger, and there are no ready remedies.”

Running away to join the circus is a dream that has enthralled countless children and children-at-heart for decades. The idea of escaping to a world filled with sensational performances, outlandish freaks and delicious treats seems a charming solution to life’s toughest situations. For the characters of Sara Gru-en’s “Water for Elephants,” life in the circus is both the promised escape from seemingly insurmountable problems and the source of equally difficult, though more bizarre, predicaments.

The novel is told from the viewpoint of Jacob Jankowski, a 90 or 93-year-old (he has ceased to re-member his exact age) man who recounts the story of his days in the circus in a series of memories interwo-ven with his present-day life in a nursing home.

In his first memory, Jacob is a young man whose devastating life circumstances lead him to stumble into The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth as he jumps onto the first train he sees in an effort to run away. Set during the Great Depression, work is hard to come by, especially for someone as emotionally shell-shocked as young Jacob. So, when he happens upon the circus and passes the suspicious scrutiny of the workmen inhabiting the train car, he has few options but to use his incomplete veterinary training to join the circus as an animal care-taker and learn to embrace the unconventional lifestyle of cir-cus folk.

The performers and workers of the Benzini Broth-ers exemplify just how unpredictable, dangerous and mesmerizing life at the circus can be. Three of the most pivotal and intriguing characters are Uncle Al, the alternatingly cruel and benevolent circus master; August, the charming but treacherous horse trainer; and his wife Marlena, a stunning and completely be-guiling chief performer. The ties between these char-acters and the ways their lives affect and alter Jacob’s own are surprising and fascinating in a way that could only be found at the circus.

The moniker “Most Spectacular Show on Earth” is something of a misnomer that serves primarily to indicate Uncle Al’s greatest wish of achieving the sta-tus of the Ringling Brothers Circus. It is this deep-set desire that leads the entire cast and crew of the Ben-zini Brothers to criss-cross the country to pick up the most unusual freaks of nature and talented performers from failed circuses to add to the show.

The most notable addition that springs from Uncle Al’s obsessive eagerness to match the Ringling Broth-ers is Rosie, an elephant who becomes just as inex-tricable a part of Jacob’s life as August and Marlena are. The love triangle between August, Marlena, and Jacob comes to almost include Rosie in a strikingly sincere and poignant way.

Rosie, an elephant whose price costs the work-men (including Jacob) their wages, is initially revealed to have no performing talents and no will to learn. It is Jacob’s eventual discovery of how to train her, coupled with his inner struggle with standing up to August’s heart-rending abuse of the animal that forms one of the most touching segments of the story. His love for this elephant is palpable and creates in the

reader a similar protective feeling towards the surpris-ingly vulnerable and tender beast.

Beyond the complicated love story between Jacob and Marlena, the workings of the circus itself are fas-cinating in the intricacies of a culture that is built on the bizarre. Gruen writes of the relationships Jacob builds with the workers and the performers, as well as the bonds already existing between circus members, with a heartwarmingly realistic voice that observes the ordinary tension between workers and perform-ers, and the way it can be overcome when people are united through similar circumstances.

The stark contrasts between Jacob’s memories of the circus with his present-day life in a nursing home are both heartbreaking and enlightening. He speaks of his feelings of irrelevancy to the modern-day world in such an unsparing way that the reader is forced to consider his or her own place in the world, both current and future.

There are certain plot aspects that keep the reader guessing till the end of the novel, but in the end ev-erything is resolved in way that does justice to Jacob’s inspiringly-full life. As a whole, “Water for Elephants” is a truly enchanting tale that extols the magic of the circus while exposing the gritty behind-the-scenes element of this Americana staple. Above all, Gruen has written a deeply personal tale of life and love in unusual circumstances in a remarkable and captivat-ing voice. “Water for Elephants” is a triumph.

Virginia Fay is an English sophomore and a Mustang Daily book columnist. Her column, “Sweet Story Scribbler,” runs every week online and bi-monthly in print.

Arts

monday, january 11, 2010 arts & EntErtainmEnt Editor: cassandra kEysE

“African sunset from Yosemite Hall”

“Water for Elephants” is an enchanting adventure

book column

by Brett “ocho” Edwards

courtesy photo

Sara Gruen’s “Water for Elephants,” was named to the New York Times Best Seller list for 12 weeks in that same year. The novel follows Jacob Jankowski as he recounts his experiences as an elephant trainer in a circus during the Great Depression.

Arts

Arts editor: Cassandra Keyse

www.mustangdaily.net

Monday, January 11, 2010 7Mustang Daily

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“Youth in Revolt” director is particular about his filmsRobert W. Butlermcclatchy newspapers

In his 13-year directing career, Miguel Arteta has made only four features.

He says he has to be in love with the material before he’ll get involved. And the stories he’s drawn to aren’t exactly guaran-teed to warm the heart of a bean-counting studio exec.

His debut, “Star Maps” (1997), was about a male prostitute trying to break into Hollywood.

“Chuck and Buck” (2000), an uneasy comedy about a guy being stalked by a distant acquaintance from high school, became some-thing of a cult fave but had no impact on the box office.

“The Good Girl” (2002) gave Jennifer Aniston her best role as a working-class wife yearning for romantic adventure. However in the minds of mainstream audienc-es, its laughs couldn’t overcome its bleak vision of small-town life.

“I was so happy with ‘The Good Girl’ that I didn’t want to do something that would be a step back,” the director said. “So it took eight years for my next movie.”

That would be “Youth in Re-

volt,” which opened Friday and might just do the trick for the 44-year-old, Puerto Rico-born director.

It’s a funny tale of a high school dweeb desperate to hook up with the girl of his dreams — a setup young audiences could go for.

It stars Michael Cera of “Juno” and “Superbad” fame, Holly-wood’s current go-to guy for teen geekiness.

On top of that, it’s a smart movie, filled with literary and vi-sual allusions that make it enjoy-able even for grown-ups .

“We screened it last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, and the re-ception was awesome,” Arteta said recently from the L.A. airport, where he was boarding a plane for the movie’s premiere in New York. “We had more than 1,000 people there, and to hear that many voices laughing — that’s re-ally great.”

Based on C.D. Payne’s novel, the film features Cera as Nick Twisp, who lives with his boozy, floozy mother (Jean Smart) and her assorted loser boyfriends (Zach Galifianakis, Ray Liotta). Nick falls for the perky daughter

see Director, page 8

Leno regains his old late-night slot on NBCJoe Flintlos angeles times

LOS ANGELES — For the past several years, NBC executives have been promising to revolutionize broadcast television. On Sunday, the network sent a different message: Never mind.

In a remarkable session with re-porters at the Television Critics Asso-ciation press tour in Pasadena, Calif., Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Uni-versal Television Entertainment, con-firmed that next month the network would end its heavily publicized ex-periment to replace costly scripted dramas with Jay Leno’s much cheaper 10 p.m. talk show, which by deliv-ering low ratings sparked a mutiny among NBC-affiliated stations. “The Jay Leno Show” will end its run Feb. 12, Gaspin said, with Leno returning to his old late-night berth at 11:35.

That leaves the fate of Conan O’Brien and “The Tonight Show” up in the air, although Gaspin said the network has proposed pushing that program — a staple of the network’s schedule since 1954 — to 12:05 a.m. and that talks are continuing.

“As much as I’d like to tell you we have a done deal, the talks are still go-ing on,” said Gaspin, a veteran NBC executive who appeared relaxed and at times was even humorous despite

the heated speculation that has sur-rounded the network in recent days. Gaspin turned aside questions about a deadline, calling it a “fluid situation,” but made it clear he expected a deal in place well before NBC unveils its Winter Olympics telecasts next month.

But Gaspin, sharing the stage with NBC’s prime-time entertainment president, Angela Bromstad, went be-yond simply confirming the network’s determination to return Leno to late night. His comments amounted to a

mcclatchy-tribune

“The Jay Leno Show” struggled to compete with others in its time slot and due to complaints from NBC-afiliated stations, the network is mov-ing Leno back to his 11:35 p.m. time slot.

see Leno, page 8

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Monday, January 11, 20108 Mustang Daily

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near-total retreat from the net-work’s recent business and program planning, which had emphasized profit margins and innovative adver-tising deals over the traditional broad-caster concerns of ratings and finding hit shows.

Two years ago, Gaspin’s boss, Jeff Zucker, turned heads at a TV pro-gramming convention in Las Vegas by saying that changing technology and a scattering audience called for “a reengineering of our businesses from top to bottom.” NBC ambitiously an-nounced it was abandoning the tradi-tional “upfront,” where much of the networks’ advertising is usually sold in bulk, and that it would make far

fewer pilots than in the past. Zucker had also hired Ben Silverman, a brash agent-turned-producer, to oversee programming and shake down product p l a c emen t s and uncon-ventional ad-vertising deals.

But now, with its sched-ule in tatters and affiliates in revolt, a chas-tened NBC seems to have been cured of its desire to remake the industry.

“For us right now, instead of try-ing to reinvent, going back to basics is probably the smartest play,” Gaspin

told reporters.He said the network would re-

turn to the customary upfront pro-

cess — a line that drew applause from the otherwise quiet NBC executives seated in the back of the ballroom, suggesting a high degree of internal relief. Bromstad, meanwhile, assured reporters NBC was leaping back into scripted program development.

Its new Jerry Seinfeld series, “The Marriage Ref,” will preview after the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. The network also touted “Parent-hood,” a star-studded pilot based on the hit movie from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, as well as another pilot directed by J.J. Abrams.

NBC has forged deals with other noted (and expensive) producers in-cluding Jerry Bruckheimer and Da-vid E. Kelley, boldface names whose invocation seems intended to send an all-clear signal to program suppliers who have looked on the network’s recent program plans with a mixture of fear and disgust.

NBC’s prime-time schedule af-ter Leno returns to late night is be-

ing worked out, Gaspin said, but the comic’s current weeknight show will probably be replaced by two scripted

dramas, a reality series and possibly an expanded ver-sion of “Dateline.”

Gaspin also offered the full-est account yet of the timeline behind the Leno-O’Brien fiasco. In November, big-city affiliates be-gan complaining to NBC that their

late local newscasts, the key driver of station profits, were affected more than they expected by Leno’s low ratings. Some station managers saw newscasts plummet from first place to No. 3 in their markets. Smaller stations chimed in once they realized their numbers were trending in the same direction, Gaspin said.

“Towards the middle of Decem-ber, they made it very clear they were going to start being more vocal about their displeasure,” Gaspin said. “They started to talk about the possibility of preemption. It was then that I realized that this was not going to go well if we kept things in place.”

Gaspin made it clear, though, it was the stations, not NBC bosses, who had the problem with Leno’s show. “It was working at acceptable levels financially” for the network, he said.

And as for the 10 p.m. slot? Well, stay tuned.

“We still think it’s a tough time

Lenocontinued from page 7

(Portia Doubleday) of religious conservatives. So strong is his lust/love that he follows her to an ex-clusive boarding school where she has been sent by her concerned parents.

Also, Nick develops an alter ego, a French lothario named Francois who has a little mus-tache, smokes unfiltered cigarettes and does all the things Nick wish-es he was brave/crazy enough to attempt.

“I love the book. But what made this movie possible was Mi-chael Cera,” Arteta said. “I had a lot of faith in him. This was one of his favorite novels, and he was very passionate about getting it right.”

Up to now Cera’s resume has been limited to insecure adoles-cents. Arteta says that’s about to change.

“For starters there’s his per-formance in this film as Francois. It’s a side of Michael we’ve never seen. The guys you’ve seen him play so far — that’s pretty much who he really is. It’s not like he goes through life trying to put on a different persona to the world.

“But within that there’s a lot going on. Michael is very funny and really enjoys laughing — something he rarely does on screen. And behind that shy smile there’s a lot of naughtiness. He’s so intelligent, so cheeky. It was really fun just to let him loose.

“When he starts getting more varied roles people will realize he’s a great actor. We’ve only seen the very tip of what he can do. I think he’s as talented as Peter Sellers.”

So how does a film director earn a living when he’s not mak-ing a film?

For one thing, Arteta teaches at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, a hands-on filmmak-ing school. That explains why so many independent films give him a special thanks in their credits.

And he directs for TV. Not just any TV, but the most prestigious shows: “Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Freaks and Geeks,” “Six Feet Under,” “The Office,” “Ugly Betty.”

“It’s all about the writing,” Arteta said. “On these shows you’ve often got great writers, and when that happens the work can be amazing. Very satisfying. Mov-ies are a director’s medium, but TV is all about writers. They’re the ones with the vision, the hu-mor, the big picture.”

Arteta said that being a Puerto Rican gave him an unusual win-dow on American life. Like all Puerto Ricans, he’s a U.S. citi-zen. But because Puerto Rico is a territory, not a state, and because most of its residents speak Span-ish, he has always felt more like an observer of America than a par-ticipant.

“In a way, that’s been a bless-ing. Being an outsider allows you to see the absurdities of American life with a clarity denied people who grow up in the middle of it. And there are plenty of absurdi-ties.

“Plus I’ve found the language barrier was less a hindrance than a plus. When you don’t speak the language — or don’t speak it as well as the natives — you have to become an expert on appearances, watching people’s eyes and body language. And that’s a lot of what moviemaking is all about.

“A great film is more about images than words, and if you can recognize and capture on film the physical culture of a place, you’re way ahead.”

Directorcontinued from page 7

“Beautiful” people dating site ousts “hippos and warthogs”Colin Stewartthe orange county register

BeautifulPeople.com, a dating and social-networking site that only ac-cepts members who are attractive to the opposite sex, has ousted about 5,000 members for allegedly gaining weight during the holidays.

“Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business mod-el and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded,” site founder Robert Hintze said in a press release.

The site benefits from the fact that laws against discrimination typically cover personal characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, religion and sometimes sexual orientation, but not weight or appearance.

Members from the United States topped the list of excluded former members, according to the site’s breakdown of the location of ousted “fatties:”

1. USA: 1,5202. UK: 8323. Canada: 5334. Poland 5105. Germany: 4256. Italy: 4027. France: 3238. Denmark: 2209. Turkey: 17610. Russia: 88“The USA has been grossly over-

indulging since Thanksgiving — it’s no wonder that so many members have been expelled from the net-work,” said Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople.com.

“After the recent cull, over 550,000 members remain on the site, repre-senting 190 countries and almost ev-ery ethnic and cultural background,”

the site said.“The drastic measures took place

after many members posted photos of themselves celebrating Christmas and the New Year — revealing that they have let themselves go. Vigilant mem-bers, who take pride in the standards demanded by the site, called for ac-tion,” BeautifulPeople.com said.

Members who were identified as “newly chubby” were subjected to a rating system that prospective new

members undergo.Only a “few hundred” were voted

back in. About 5,000 fell short of the acceptance that they had achieved when they first applied, so they were booted out, but with an invitation to reapply after losing weight.

Denmark-based BeautifulPeople.com was founded in 2002. The latest publicity barrage about “culling” its “fatties” comes after it expanded its coverage area worldwide in October.

This isn’t the first time the site has benefited from impolite publicity.

In November, its news was that

“British people among world’s ugliest, according to BeautifulPeople.com,” as reported by London’s Daily Tele-graph.

Overall, about 20 percent of appli-cants are accepted as members, Hintze says.

In the fall, Hodge said: “Swe-den and Brazil are proving to be the most aesthetically blessed nations in the world. German men and women aren’t faring well, but they are submit-ting stern images, they need to soften up. The same is true of Russian men, although the fact remains that many are just extremely unattractive.”

The most successful applicants — with success rates of 40 percent or higher — are from Sweden and Bra-zil (both sexes), Denmark (men only), Norway, Iceland and Russia (women only).

American women have a 35 per-cent success rate; American men, only 24 percent.

The least successful applicants — at 15 percent or lower — are from Ger-many and the United Kingdom (both sexes), China, Korean and Lithuania (women only), Poland, India, Japan and Russia (men only).

Hintze said the site is growing be-cause attractive people want to associ-ate with each other without having to filter out the ugly people who popu-late other dating sites.

“Other sites are jungles of hip-pos and warthogs. BeautifulPeople is a wonderful game reserve of leopards and gazelles,” he said.

“Despite considerable backlash against us, the numbers don’t lie — we are catering to a very clear demand. BeautifulPeople.com may be morally ugly to our critics, but our growing success is a very beautiful truth.”

Other sites are jungles of hip-

pos and warthogs. BeautifulPeople is a wonderful game reserve of leopards

and gazelles.—Robert Hintze

Founder, Beautifulpeople.com,

For us right now, instead of trying to reinvent, going back to basics is

probably the smartest play.

— Jeff GaspinChairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment

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Opinion/editorialMonday, January 11, 2010

Editor in chief: Emilie EggerManaging Editor: Alex Kacik

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This year, the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley library will be closed Saturdays and won’t be open 24 hours during finals week as it was previously. University of California, Los Angeles will offer approximately 165 fewer classes across the university.

Yet. while the state’s public higher education system continues to deal with cuts, the state hasn’t stopped pouring funding into prisons. Over the past two decades California has built 20 prisons and currently hous-es more inmates than France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined. The connection between these two facts is in the financing of these separate, but heavily linked, institutional systems.

California can expect a $20.7 bil-lion deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The budget plan legislature passed calls for $12.4 billion in ad-ditional funding for the prison ex-pansion program, AB900, but slashes $9.5 billion from an already struggling K-12 public education system and $2 billion from the higher-education system. This $12.4 billion is set to fi-nance 53,000 more prison and jail cells, while temporarily ignoring the need for the annual $1.5 billion the already-broke state will need to oper-ate them.

With such a large shortage, the state has strongly turned to the pub-lic education system, as well as health care, public works projects and social services, to fund the growing prison business. As the proposed budget in-tends to add 1,200 prison staff this year, school districts are obligated to lay off teachers. The University of California, one of the nation’s lead-ing public university systems, is being forced to reduce its budget by $812 million. UCs have seen a 600 percent fee increase between 1980 and 2004, with the California State University system seeing a staggering 1,188 per-cent increase. In dollar amounts, the CSU fees have gone from approxi-mately $231 to $2,976. While unpaid furloughs lessen the blow in the short term, they will only cover about a quarter of the shortfall.

On a larger scale than just this cur-rent budget, the trend has been head-ed this way for a while. The National Association of State Budget Officers shows that between 1987 and 2007, the corrections expenditures per state more than doubled, while spending on higher education hasn’t risen by a quarter. While graduation rates be-tween 1984 and 2004 fell by 2.7 per-cent, the prison population increased by 400 percent. In the 1990s, more prisons were built in California than

between the opening of the first prison in 1852 through 1980.

The Prison Industrial Complex is a set of bu-reaucratic, political and economic interests that have fueled this develop-ment in pursuit of profit. It is to the point of hav-ing expanded the prison population by about 50 percent while, in the same 18 years, seeing a decrease of violent crime by about 20 percent. The prison budget now com-prises over 10 percent of the overall budget, having grown by 52 percent in the last five years, making it the fastest growing state expense. An-gela Davis, a highly respected profes-sor, activist and author, expresses that mass imprisonment generates profit as it devours social wealth, including, probably most importantly, education. These interest groups corrupt the criminal justice system in pursuit of capital, while, as the Sacramento Bee put it, “sucking the life out of higher education” in California.

Critical funding cuts to the UC, CSU and California Community College systems are presumed to hit the citizens of California where it

hurts more than ever — their wal-lets — thereby affecting their access to education and the door out of the vicious cycle of poverty. With data to support the correlation between low educational attainment and ending up in prison, it is not only a short sight-ed decision, but it is a crime against the underprivileged to continue wasting money enforcing draconian laws and overcrowding corporately-backed prisons rather than providing all Americans, and Californians, the chance to obtain a decent and afford-able education.

Britney Huelbig is a social sciences ju-nior and Mustang Daily guest columnist.

I cannot think of a more important document when it comes to politics, our rights, and what the United States stands for than the U.S. Constitution. For the past year or two I’ve tried to commit to reading through the Con-stitution on Independence Day. It’s not a particularly long document and yet it covers so many topics. Article 1, Section 4 requires that “the Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year” which is a requirement I don’t think Congress has had a hard time meeting; I can hardly imagine our Congress meeting once a year these days as legislating has seemingly be-come a year-round task. Other parts show the basic rights we as Americans stand for: “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, pa-pers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be vio-lated…” (4th amendment). Overall, the Constitution is an amazing docu-ment in many ways.

What is said in the Constitution takes precedence over any other laws

passed in the United States. There are ways to modify the Constitution if need be, but otherwise there are strict rules imposed on our legislatures as for what they can and cannot dictate about our lives. Nowadays it seems the Congress thinks it can pass what-ever laws it likes; representatives regu-larly ignore the Constitution or cite the “general welfare” clause, but often times in citing the general welfare clause they ignore other parts of the Constitution and even in some cases huge concepts behind the Constitu-tion (in particular, a limited federal government).

The rule of law is a very important thing. Rule of law allows for a judi-cial system to deal with crimes and is the vehicle for a just society. I think oftentimes people underestimate the importance of living under the rule of law but it’s a huge mechanism that helps society function efficiently and I think without it that life wouldn’t be as pleasant as it is. With that hav-ing been said, it’s very disturbing

when branches of the federal gov-ernment break the laws set forth in the Constitution. The Constitution, I would argue, is more important than any other body of laws in the United States, and so for a representative to disregard those laws is a huge threat to the rule of law. Once the most impor-tant laws in a society are regularly and inconsequentially broken, it’s easy for the whole system to come crumbling down.

There are many reasons people reference the Constitution during political discussions (perhaps they are referring to the legality of an action, or are citing the Constitution as a his-torical piece) but I think more often than not they are referencing the prin-ciples outlined in the Constitution as well as highlighting the need for a Constitution-like, central document that helps outline what our country does and does not stand for.

First let me discuss the principles outlined in the Constitution. I see them as two-fold: restrictions on the federal government and universal hu-man rights. Much of the Constitution outlines how our federal government should be set up and run. It allows for the House, Senate, executive branch and the judicial branch. It describes the powers they have, how they should operate, etc. The Constitution also clearly outlines what the pow-ers of the federal government are, in the 18 enumerated powers found in Article 1, Section 8. On the flip side of the powers of the federal govern-

ment, are the rights of the people that are outlined in the bill of rights. The rights outlined in the bill of rights are basic rights that are not given from the government, but rather natural rights that we have as human beings. These are generally the more com-monly known parts of the Consti-tution: freedom of speech, the right to assemble, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, right to due process, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, etc.

In addition to the principles out-lined in the Constitution, is the prin-ciple of having a binding document that outlines our rules of law in our society. The Constitution serves as a framework for the rules govern-ing the country in which we live. It is important to have a document that encapsulates what the United States is supposed to be: a republic with a limited federal government and ba-sic rights of people that are not to be violated.

We fought the Revolutionary War for the principles outlined in the Constitution. It is our history and it helps define the way we wish to live our lives. I find the lack of under-standing by many of our officials of the Constitution as a great threat to all the things that help make the United States the great place that it has been.

Aaron Berk is a computer engineering junior and Mustang Daily political colum-nist.

Constitution still most important guidebook

California higher education suffers as prisons grow

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Sports

Monday, January 11, 2010 Mustang Daily

Sports11

www.mustangdaily.net

on the clock. UC Davis tried one last full-court desperation heave within the final second, but the shot attempt missed wide to send the Aggies home with their second conference loss of the season.

Callero was happy with his team’s performance in its second conference win of the season.

“The fact that we have grinded it out and kept on improving, our whole theme is that there is not limit to improvement, we improved tonight,” Callero said. “Our energy and our enthusiasm and our belief that we can come back and win any game was key today.”

Keeler, the leading scorer for the Mustangs, finished with 22 points on the night. He came out 7-12 from the field and 2-4 from behind the three-point line.

“Every night I come out and try to leave it all out on the court,” Keeler said. “It’s all mental with me. I know I can shoot the ball ex-tremely well, I just got stay confi-dent, come out aggressive and I’ll be alright.”

Junior Shaun Lewis finished with seven points and only one missed shot in the contest. He fin-ished 3-4 from the field and 1-1 from long range.

The Mustangs look to keep their momentum going as they travel to Cal State Fullerton Thursday night.

“Getting a W is the most impor-tant part of (conference play)” Cal-lero said. “The bottom line is win the game right now, then go back to film and learn a little bit more.”

Basketballcontinued from page 12

Women’s basketball falls to UC Davismustang daily staff report

Junior forward Kristina San-tiago’s 29-point effort wasn’t enough to overcome UC Davis’ trapping zone defense in the Cal Poly women’s basketball team 77-72 loss Saturday at The Pa-vilion.

The Mustangs (9-5, 2-1) led 50-45 in the second half, but an unanswered 13-point run by the Aggies put the game out of reach with nine minutes left.

Although Santiago’s layup a minute later cut the lead to three, that’s as close as the Mustangs would get.

Santiago said it wasn’t the team’s overall effort that was lack-ing, the little things just weren’t going the Mustangs’ way.

“We battled so hard; it was just one of those games,” Santi-ago explained. “We needed more of a post presence, a couple more shots to fall. It was back and forth the whole game, everyone played their hearts out.”

Santiago, the Big West’s lead-ing scorer with a 19.6 points per game, also grabbed a game-high eight rebounds, produced five steals and established new career highs for field goals (13).

The Mustangs need to take better care of the ball, especially in conference play, she added. Cal Poly turned the ball over 25 times, translating to 22 points for the Aggies (10-6, 3-1).

Cal Poly snapped its four-game winning streak despite

shooting nearly 50 percent from the floor compared to UC Davis’ 43.5 percent.

Cal Poly trailed at intermission 43-36 after a seesaw half. A 9-0 Mustangs run to open the third quarter gave them a two-point lead. But the tail end of fourth quarter was an entirely different story. Cal Poly failed to score in a near five-minute stretch as the Aggies pulled away.

A depleted roster has hindered the team all season, especially in the post. Half of the team has been “liv-ing in the training room,” Santiago said. But injuries aside, Cal Poly has the consistent team play to win games.

“When we move the ball its like magic on our team,” Santiago said. “When I look at our stats, (assists are) something I look for.”

Crashing the boards and making the extra pass are characteristics that will translate to Cal Poly head coach Faith Minmaugh’s second-consecu-tive winning season.

“Everytime we win she’s the first person we look at,” Saintiago said. “We work our butts off for her. She’s always shooting in the gym early with us and going the extra mile.”

Cal Poly’s Ashlee Burns finished with 13 points, and Rachel Clancy added 12 points and six rebounds.

Santiago can be the ninth player in Cal Poly history to eclipse the 1,000 point mark with 23 points in Cal Poly’s conference game against Cal State Fullerton 7 p.m. Thursday at Mott Gym.

ryan sidarto mustang daily file photoJunior Kristina Santiago finished the game with 29 points against the Ag-gies. Santiago is the Big West leading scorer, scoring 19.6 points per game.

Sports

MUSTANG DAILYSPORTSmustangdaily.net

Monday, January 11, 2010

sports editor: Brian De Los Santosmustangdailysports@gmail.com

Men’s basketball records second conference win

nick camacho mustang dailySenior Ryan Darling (52) scored 10 points against the Aggies, that point total is equal to as many points as he has scored all season.

Brian De Los Santosmustang daily

Senior guard Lorenzo Keeler hit forward Ryan Darling under the bas-ket with a no-look pass. With numer-ous UC Davis defenders around him, the senior emphatically finished with a two-handed slam. Those two points matched Darling’s point total for the 2008-09 season. Today he scored just as many points as he had all of this season.

Recording a double-double, a ca-reer-high 10 points and 12 rebounds, the walk-on helped propel the Mus-tangs (5-9, 2-1 Big West) to a 72 - 69 win against the Aggies (6-10, 2-2) Sunday afternoon in Mott Gym.

At one point in his Mustang ca-reer Darling was cut from the team, but this season he took back his ros-ter spot. And with the loss of center Will Donahue, Darling has found some playing time in the Mustangs line-up.

“He is as good of an example to perseverance in sports as I have seen in 23 years of coaching,” Cal Poly head coach Joe Callero said. “That’s a great story and what a great ending, I hope he realizes he can contribute on a regular basis.”

Darling shot 71 percent from the field, going 5 - 7 in the game.

“I am just very fortunate that (Callero) has kept me on the team and given me this opportunity to

continue my dreams,” Darling said. “I couldn’t ask for anything else.”

Darling also recorded an aggres-sive block in Sunday’s contest, where he sent a shot attempt from the paint to the backcourt.

“None of it would have been possible without my teammates. I think every point that I scored came from an assist from a teammate. Ev-ery rebound even was coming from somebody boxing out, giving me am opportunity to grab (a rebound),” Darling said. “It feels great to be get-ting minutes and actually being a real contributor on the court during games, but whether if it’s in prac-tice or I am sitting on the bench the whole game I am glad to add some-thing, add value to this team.”

Keeler said that the performance from Darling was no surprise.

“What people don’t know is that at practice he does that every day,” Keeler said. “He hustles, he’s jumping, he’s blocking shot, he’s dunking it, we know what he can do. He earned it. He earned every bit of it.”

Darling was not the only bench player to contribute with an impres-sive performance; guard Justin Brown and forward David Hanson also re-coded double-figure point totals off the bench along as well.

“It’s a team,” Callero said. “Loren-zo Keeler is scoring for us, Shawn Lewis is rebounding, defending and being a steady force for us out there,

the point guards are interchanging whichever one is playing their best and we are getting bench contribu-tions … that’s what makes basket-ball fun, it’s a team. You have to have someone step up and help you out.”

Brown finished the game with 12 points and Hanson added 16.

Compared to UC Davis, Cal Poly came out of the gates cold. The Mus-tangs had a 40 field goal percentage, while Davis shot a red-hot 74. But the game became a tale of two halves, as the Mustangs shot 64 percent from the field compared to UC Davis who shot 37 percent from the floor in the second half.

Callero said there was no new scheme implemented at halftime.

“We just decided we wanted to stick with the game plan,” Callero said. “The game plan was kind of a defensive-oriented game plan; it was keeping our press on them, so that we could be aggressive. When you play aggressive defensively it allows you to flow and be more aggressive offensively.”

Heading out of halftime, the Mus-tangs trailed 35 – 28 and started the second half with back-to-back turn-overs to watch the deficit grow to nine. Cal Poly rallied back to gain a lead of as much as seven, but the Ag-gies did not give up, as they cut the lead to three with 0.9 seconds left

see Basketball, page 11

Raquel Reddingmustang daily

Cal Poly’s wrestling team defeat-ed North Dakota State 29-9 Satur-day night in a non-conference dual meet in Mott Gym.

This was the first of six home meets of the season for the wrestling team.

“We were putting on a show for the fans; a lot of energy was used,” said Coach John Azevedo.

Cal Poly lost the first match 6-3, but Filip Novachkov, the third-ranked wrestler in the nation, turned the meet around with a win of 9-6 against North Dakota States top wrestler Ryan Adams. Adams a was taken by a three-point fall after the first minute and had another take-down in the second round.

“I was great at the beginning, but the end got shaky, I knew I had to suck it up and win,” said Filip No-vachkov, who has a record of 16-4.

The wins kept coming as Cal

Poly’s Eric Maldonado took down his opponent Audrey Patselov with an 11-4 win. Eric Maldonado is ranked third in the Pac-10 in the 149 pound weight class.

Team captain and two-time Pac-10 champion Chase Pami, ranked 9th nationally, came in strong as he tackled his opponent winning 18-4.

North Dakota won two more matches but Cal Poly was still in the lead when sophomore Ryan Smith almost pinned Drew Ross within the first 10 seconds. The match end-ed with a score of 14-3, the pin tak-ing place at the 2:30 mark; bringing the score to 26-9, with only one more match to go.

There were a total of nine match-es, with North Dakota forfeiting the weight 133-match gaining Cal Poly six points.

“We could have won them all,” Azevedo said with a smile. “It went well though.”

Cal Poly’s wrestling team looks forward to the upcoming match-es that will take them to Pac-10 Championship in February.

“I’m going to keep building on stuff, figure out what I need to do to get where I want to be,” said Filip Novachkov, thinking about the fu-ture meets.

There will be two home meets in two weeks in Mott Gym, Friday against Stanford and Sunday against Boise State, who are No. 8 in the country.

“We might have taken this team for granted, we are a better team than what was showed today. The biggest lesson is to be more con-

sistent against judging the other teams,” assistant coach Mark Perry said.

Cal Poly started off the season with wins; Cal State Fullerton, Mis-souri, and Cal State Bakersfield, but Oklahoma State and Oklahoma brought losses.

“We have really improved this season, the brothers (Novachkov)have really stepped up,” Perry said.

Cal Poly wrestling team was in-vited to the Las Vegas Invitational and came back with a 7th place fin-ish, with Chase Pami placing fifth, Boris Novachkov first, and Filip Novachkov second.

“Were trying to build a program here, which doesn’t happen over-night, but right now no one is un-defeated; we always want to do bet-ter,” Azevedo said.

The Mustangs are competing against teams with half the salary, a feat Cal Poly is not hindering the Mustangs on the mat.

“Cal Poly is the highest ranked non fully funded team in the coun-try,” Azevedo said. “We’re doing great things for not being fully funded.”

The contest leaves the team at 4-2 in dual meets this season.

Wrestling notches home victory against North Dakota State

ryan sidarto mustang dailyCal Poly’s wrestling team defeated North Dakota State 29-9 Saturday night. The win adds to the list of defeated opponents that include teams like Cal State Bakersfield, Missouri and Cal State Fullerton.