Progressive One

‘Sanctuary cities’ warned to cooperate
Trump administration tells 9 jurisdictions to help with immigration crackdown or risk losing federal grants.
By Joseph Tanfani and Patrick McGreevy
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration fired an opening salvo in its promised crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities Friday, asking nine jurisdictions for proof that they are cooperating with immigration enforcement and warning that they are at risk of losing federal grants.
The Justice Department sent the letters to the California Board of State and Community Corrections, as well as officials in Cook County, Ill., Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.
More than 150 communities have laws or policies that restrict the ability of police and jails to hand over people who are in the country illegally to federal immigration officers; the nine were chosen because they were named in a Justice Department review last year.
California officials reacted with defiance Friday, promising to double efforts to guard the state’s policies in the face of the implied threat to cut the funds.
“It has become abundantly clear” that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration “are basing their law enforcement policies on principles of white supremacy — not American values,” state Senate leader Kevin de León said in a statement.
“Their constant and systematic targeting of diverse cities and states goes beyond constitutional norms and will be challenged at every level,” he added.
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said the state would defend its policies against “fearmongering” by the Trump administration.
“Federal threats to take away resources from law enforcement or our people in an attempt to bully states and localities into carrying out the new administration’s unsound deportation plan are reckless and jeopardize public safety,” he said in a statement.
The emerging dispute between communities and the Trump administration is already in the courts, and the letters may bolster the administration’s case.
President Trump repeatedly vowed to cut all federal funds to sanctuary cities during last year’s campaign, but it’s doubtful Congress would permit that. Thus far the administration has only threatened to cut off grants administered by the Justice Department.
The actual amount at risk is relatively small — a total of $4.1 billion in federal grants to governments and law enforcement agencies across the country, and far less to the nine jurisdictions named Friday.
The California Board of State and Community Corrections, for example, received $20 million last year from the Justice Department program identified in the letter. The state then distributed the money to 32 counties and the state prison agency.
Los Angeles County received $3.59 million, the largest county grant, for a program that coordinates law enforcement, prosecution and treatment for illicit drug abuse and narcotics-related crime and gang culture. Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has opposed a so-called “sanctuary state” bill from De León that would limit cooperation with immigration officials.
De León also released a letter to Sessions on Friday written by a private attorney hired by the Legislature, who said the state and its cities are in compliance with the law.
“It is our understanding that these [state] laws do not violate federal law and would not be subject to an enforcement action by the federal government,” attorney Daniel Shallman wrote.
Shallman’s law firm, Covington & Burling, has been hired by California legislators to assist the state in communicating with the Trump administration. The legal strategy is being guided by former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.
Shallman asked that federal officials confirm that they won’t take action against the state to enforce an executive order threatening to withhold money from sanctuary cities.
Officials in San Francisco County, which received $3 million last year for a program aimed at reducing recidivism in young people, have also said they will limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
An additional $1 million from the federal grant program went to San Bernardino County to cover costs following the 2015 terrorist shooting that killed 14 people, and $396,310 went to a state prison program to reduce rapes of convicts.
The Justice Department warned that the grants could be jeopardized unless authorities can verify in writing that the state, counties and cities are not restricting sharing of information with federal immigration authorities on the citizenship status of people in prison and jail cells.
Trump and Sessions contend that sanctuary cities are defying federal law and are promoting crime by sheltering people who have violated immigration statutes, including gang members and other violent criminals.
Supporters of the sanctuary policies argue that immigrants here illegally would go underground and refuse to report crimes or cooperate with police if they feared doing so could lead to deportation.
In a statement, the Justice Department said many cities are “crumbling under the weight of illegal immigration and violent crime,” citing Chicago’s alarming murder rate and gang killings in New York City.
“And just several weeks ago in California’s Bay Area, after a raid captured 11 MS-13 members on charges including murder, extortion and drug trafficking, city officials seemed more concerned with reassuring illegal immigrants that the raid was unrelated to immigration than with warning other MS-13 members that they were next,” the release said.
The letters follow one of Trump’s executive orders and a speech by Sessions at the White House in which he said “countless Americans would be alive today — and countless loved ones would not be grieving today — if the policies of these sanctuary jurisdictions were ended.”
The nine jurisdictions chosen were the focus of a study last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
They were among 155 cities, counties and jails that the Obama administration said were not fully cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for identifying, detaining and deporting people who are in the country illegally.
Under President Obama, immigration officials tried a diplomatic approach to solve the dispute, sending Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to statehouses and city halls across the country to try to broker deals for some level of cooperation.
Obama administration officials didn’t press hard on the grants issue. Of places singled out by the inspector general’s report, only Connecticut has responded — and it was not named Friday.
The Trump team is taking a much blunter approach, with Sessions railing against uncooperative jurisdictions at nearly every opportunity. Briefly, ICE put out reports to shame uncooperative jurisdictions into complying, but the agency suspended the reports after they were found to be riddled with errors .
Speaking in San Diego on Friday, Sessions mentioned the letters and repeated his charge that sanctuary policies are boons for hardcore criminals and gangs such as MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha.
“Forcing local law enforcement to release criminal aliens only helps violent gangs and criminals,” he said. “Sanctuary jurisdictions put criminals back on your streets. They help these gangs to refill their ranks and put innocent life — including the lives of countless law-abiding immigrants — in danger by refusing to share vital information with federal law enforcement.
“I urge California to reconsider [its policies],” he said.
The letters, signed by Alan R. Hanson, an acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Justice Programs, set a June 30 deadline for compliance, including “an official legal opinion from counsel.” Failure, he wrote, “could result in the withholding of grant funds, suspension or termination of the grants … or other action, as appropriate.”
Tracie Cone, a spokeswoman for the California Board of State and Community Corrections, said the agency had received the letter and was reviewing it, but believed the agency was in compliance with the federal law cited by Hanson.
The letters may signal a widespread crackdown on defiant, immigrant-rich cities like Los Angeles or Boston. Pushback already has begun: Seattle has filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to declare that it can refuse to help Trump’s deportation campaign.
Other communities have signaled support for the crackdown.
In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, police and jails cooperate with ICE and are pressing only for reimbursement of costs to keep immigrants here illegally in jail, said Mike Hernandez, a county spokesman. The county received $6.5 million in police grants over the last two years, he said.
“There are some individuals who are undocumented and who have violent histories, and they should not be in our communities,” he said.
joseph.tanfani@latimes.com
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com
Tanfani reported from Washington and McGreevy from Sacramento.

Loki Loc: Georgia

No faggot ass man-love spats, correct? That is all you do. Your entire contribution (if you can call it that) to this forum consists of racist slurs, unproven claims about your academic accomplishments and the same old insults over and over and over and over and over again. I spend time with grammar because our fake professor (that would be YOU) doesn't have time to be bothered with it. I suppose that spelling, punctuation and grammar are for people who don't have fake PhD's. You provide nothing except amusement to those who read your maunderings and amazement that you still believe anyone thinks you are more than a chicken kacky wannabe.

Progressive One

State unemployment is lowest since 2006
Jobless rate drops to 4.9% in March as California payrolls grow by 19,300. Construction shows growth but the information sector falters.
CONSTRUCTION WORKERS weld together shipping containers being converted into housing for homeless veterans in Midway City in September. The construction sector increased payrolls by 18,900 in March. (Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times)
By Natalie Kitroeff
California piled on 19,300 jobs in March and its unemployment rate dropped to 4.9%, according to figures released Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department. That’s the first time since December 2006 that the jobless rate has fallen below 5%.
It was another month of solid but not breathtaking job gains in a state that has slowed a bit after years of unbridled growth.
Still, California grew faster than the rest of the country in March, expanding at a rate of 2.1% year over year, compared with 1.5% nationwide. Californians were still slightly more likely to be unemployed; the U.S. jobless rate hit 4.5% in March.
The standout sector in March was construction, which increased payrolls by 18,900. The information sector — which includes tech businesses in Silicon Valley and moviemakers in Hollywood — faltered last month, cutting head count by 9,400.
Los Angeles County gained a net 16,000 jobs in March. The county’s unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, down from a revised 4.8% in February.
Here are some key insights into the latest labor-market report from the world’s sixth-largest economy:
California powered the nation
In March, California produced about 20% of the job growth in the entire country, which added 98,000 jobs last month. The state is huge, but it only accounts for about 11.5% of the country’s employees, which means that it is punching above its weight.
“We get beaten up for being a high-cost and high-tax state … but we have been outperforming many states,” said Robert Kleinhenz, an economist at Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles consulting firm.
California alone was responsible for 16% of the country’s growth from 2014 to 2016, according to Kleinhenz’s analysis.
Blame Hollywood, not Silicon Valley
The information sector can be hard to analyze, because the state defines it as a mash-up of businesses involved in entertainment, news, data and software.
The seasonally adjusted figures show the industry lost jobs last month, but has performed well in general over the last 12 months, adding 8,700 jobs since last March.
But that good news is mostly a function of an unstoppable tech industry. Software publishers, data processing companies and other information service providers added a combined 16,100 jobs year over year.
The movie business hasn’t been as good to job seekers; motion picture and sound recording industries have cut payrolls by 6,000 people since last March. (Those figures are not adjusted for seasonality.)
Farmers are caught in a labor shortage
California usually has a higher share of people unemployed than the rest of the country.
Now the state’s jobless rate is just four-tenths of a percentage point higher than the nation’s, and Los Angeles is only one-tenth of a percentage point above.
What gives? Chalk it up to strapped farmers.
In California’s large, seasonal agriculture economy, farmworkers may be left without work at various points throughout the year.
But the farm-labor market in California has been tightening, as fewer and fewer people cross the southern border, thanks to Obama’s strict border enforcement and Trump’s promise to ratchet it up even more.
Growers are giving their laborers huge raises, and their farmworkers are finding it easier to stay employed throughout the year. In 2014, people who cultivate crops worked 205 days in the year, up from 178 days in 1990.
Get ready for more tepid growth
California and the rest of the country have reached the point where it isn’t possible to heap on tons of new jobs because there aren’t tons of people left who want to be hired.
The labor force — meaning everyone who has a job or is looking for one — is growing more slowly than it has in recent years. Joblessness is near historic lows.
The only way to continue to grow, assuming demand for workers stays high, is to widen the pool of people who can work. Trump’s promise to kick out everyone living here illegally and seal the border will do the opposite, experts say.
“Here in California people aren’t coming over the border, and that’s the Trump effect; the rhetoric has caused people to shy away from making that dangerous trek,” said Chris Thornberg, the founder of consulting firm Beacon Economics.
“Our ability to grow faster than the nation is going to depend on our ability to attract people to move here,” he added.
But California can’t get people to cross state lines. Housing is too scarce and expensive to get Arizonans or Texans to relocate, Thornberg said.
The upshot is that workers become more valuable and should be able to command higher wages.
Pay has been rising more quickly across the state. Over the last 12 months, hourly pay went up by $1 in California, about 4%, according to federal data. Over the previous 12-month period, it only rose by 45 cents, or nearly 2%.
natalie.kitroeff@latimes.com

Cool Breeze

V-Whore aka "Rotten Apple" has a worm that dieth not!

Loki Loc: Georgia

The LA Times is not known as being a bastion of unbiased reporting. Their characterization of Obama's border policies as "strict" is an example, as they parrot the previous administration's claims of being number one in deportations after they changed the definition of deportation. Had they kept score the way every other administration has, they would be dead last.
The Times also conveniently forgets to mention California's budgetary woes, and the fact that small businesses are leaving the state by the scores.

Progressive One

Resisting Trump, and status quo
Progressives present a challenge to Democrats like the tea party did to the GOP
A FEW DOZEN protesters, part of a nationwide movement, gather weekly outside Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s office in Oshkosh, Wis. (Lisa Mascaro Los Angeles Times)
By Lisa Mascaro
OSHKOSH, Wis. — She knew to hold her tongue during a business trip to Chicago the night Donald Trump was elected, and endured a long evening of schmoozing with the other sales reps and executives.
Back in her hotel room the next morning, Lisa drew a hot bath and sobbed.
Then her sadness turned to an anger that startled even her. The 55-year-old mom, never particularly active in politics, went outside, looked up at the nearby Trump Tower office building and flipped the icon of the new president the double bird.
From that point, there was no turning back. Within days she had organized a Trump resistance group, donned a pink pussyhat and drove 14 hours with a carload of like-minded crusaders to the Women’s March in Washington.
“We’re all terrified at what’s going on — that our country is going to be somehow ruined,” said Lisa, who kick-started early retirement to focus almost full time on civic activism. Even so, she’s reluctant to allow her full name to be used, worried about how her efforts could affect her life and her family.
President Trump’s election has mobilized thousands of first-time activists in a do-it-yourself movement like nothing seen on the political left in years. With bountiful energy and some impressive early successes, the grass-roots movement has stunned even Democratic Party officials, drawing comparisons to the tea party movement that transformed the GOP with its unyielding opposition after President Obama’s election.
Women nationwide — and much of the movement is being fueled by women — are organizing via Facebook, email and often tearful support meetings around kitchen tables.
The Indivisible Project, launched after Trump’s election, has already sprouted nearly 6,000 chapters nationwide, at least two in each of the 435 congressional districts.
More established activist groups like MoveOn.org — which holds weekly “Resist Trump Tuesdays” protests — are enjoying a surge in membership, particularly in blue states, but most surprisingly in some deep-red pockets, where liberals had largely kept quieter. One Colorado activist said that in past years, event turnout rarely matched the number of advance sign-ups; now it routinely surpasses it.
These newly minted activists — along with other long-standing protest groups on the left — flooded the U.S. Capitol switchboard during Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet, pushed Democrats to filibuster Neil M. Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination and helped tank the president’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — often by noisily protesting at lawmakers’ town hall meetings.
With old-school organizing and modern-day social media they have formed instant communities that can mobilize hundreds — even thousands — as a group of stay-at-home moms in Kenosha, Wis., did recently to protest Trump’s visit there.
“We always told our kids there’s a lot of really smart people in our country, and we all want to make it better,” said Julia Kozel, one of the women who organized the Kenosha rally. “But I don’t feel like I could say that anymore.”
Like the tea party activists before them, many of the resisters — as they call themselves — are newcomers to the political process. And much in the same way tea party activists grieved for the country they no longer recognized under Obama, these women recount being devastated that fellow Americans elected Trump and say they are fighting to restore their own vision of the country.
Publicly, Democratic officials embrace the newfound energy on the left. Party strategists even marvel at the large turnouts that they had been unable to achieve in recent years.
But privately, many Democrats also worry the movement is whipping up a deep-rooted emotional and ideological fervor, much like the tea party did in blocking Obama’s agenda. Unpredictable and with no clear leadership, the liberal uprising could prove difficult to contain and may turn its anger — currently focused on Trump — toward the Democratic Party itself, just as the tea party fractured the GOP.
Wounds from the 2016 primary battle between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont still run deep among Democrats, and the protest movement could split the party further between moderates and progressives.
Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a favorite among progressives, found herself under fire after voting to confirm Housing Secretary Ben Carson. Some progressives threatened to challenge the Massachusetts liberal in the next primary.
California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein felt pressured enough to hold her first town hall in years early this month. There she was heckled as a “sellout” from an occasionally rowdy crowd of liberals.
When airport protests erupted over Trump’s first travel ban, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) raced to Dulles International Airport to demonstrate his solidarity.
“No party is safe,” said Jeanne Peters, a jewelry designer in West Virginia, whose Indivisible chapter has started calling its House member and both its Republican and Democratic senator every weekday with a coordinated message, such as demanding a congressional vote on Syrian airstrikes or opposing the GOP healthcare plan.
If the threat from the left wasn’t evident enough, a new political action committee, #WeWillRreplaceYou, is raising money to back primary campaigns against Democrats they view as insufficiently progressive — much the way outside conservative groups targeted “RINOs,” politicians they considered Republicans in Name Only.
Voters who are “fed up with the Democratic Party at every level want to see their Democratic representatives stand up and fight Trump,” said Claire Sandberg, a former Sanders organizer who is a cofounder of the PAC.
Another group run by former Sanders allies, Brand New Congress, is recruiting challengers for every single House district — Democrats and Republicans alike — in 2018.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a progressive from Torrance known even in Oshkosh for his pointed tweets about the president, acknowledged the risk for Democrats as passions run like nothing he has ever seen.
“People call my office all the time, and they want President Trump impeached two months ago,” he said. “We just have to tamp down expectations.”
The groups make it no secret that they are using the tea party playbook to fight Trump.
“The tea party had a method of organizing that works,” said Hillary Shields, 32, a paralegal whose Indivisible group drew nearly 150 to a Saturday spring training for activists in Kansas City, Mo. “Why reinvent the wheel?”
Ezra Levin, a former Capitol Hill staffer who is president of the Indivisible Project, helped fuel the movement by posting online a how-to organizing guide that borrows heavily from the tea party. “The goal of this tactic isn’t just to target Republicans. It’s to stiffen the spines of Democrats,” he said.
But while the resistance groups share many similarities with the tea party, it remains to be seen how far they are willing to go to block Trump’s agenda. Would they be willing to shut down the government, as the tea party did over Obamacare, for their own priorities — say, to save Planned Parenthood or stop Trump’s travel ban?
The moms sitting around the dining room table at Kozel’s house the day after the Kenosha protest shake their heads no, saying they wouldn’t want to disrupt government operations or break laws with civil disobedience.
“Our endgame is getting people elected,” said Kozel, as three of her school-age kids munched doughnuts and played nearby.
But others know playing nicely may only go so far. Many women said that the Democratic Party needs to be more progressive — and they are trying to push the party in that direction.
Among the new activists is Lisa E. Hansen, 51, a former graphic artist who had never been politically active much beyond casting her vote.
“And then the election happened,” said Hansen, after she and others wrote postcards to lawmakers at her Oshkosh home.
She said she sunk into a depression, spending her days scouring the news to make sense of it all. Only when protesters turned out for the Women’s March did she think to herself: “I can do that.”
Now every Tuesday, Hansen, who is partly disabled by Lyme disease, puts her walker in the trunk of her family’s car and heads to downtown Oshkosh to Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s office, where a few dozen resisters have been protesting every week since the inauguration.
She dials up the senator’s office on Mondays to say that her group is coming and would like a meeting.
The senator has not agreed to meet with them. But his staff comes out to hear their concerns, and sometimes Hansen brings them snacks.
On a recent Tuesday, more than two dozen protesters quietly formed a neat line outside the office with homemade signs reading, “Not paying for Trump’s wall!” and “Don’t let Wisconsin values be Trump’d.”
The Tuesday protests were supposed to last only for the first 100 days of the new administration. But as that date approaches, no one wants to quit, so they agreed to extend it for another 100 days.
“It’s given me a sense of purpose,” Hansen said. “Maybe we should send Donald Trump a thank-you note. He brought all of us together.”
lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Ve'hoe

"Self hate????" I wish there were a whole tribe of JUST ME!!! Think of the IQ warp factor,,, and we wouldnt allow your kind in, even as slaves. No,,, this time, we would do things right,,, and shoot you on the border fence,,,, no slave labor even,,, considering how that nightmare ended,,, and absolutely ZERO democrats,,, wouldnt that be heaven on earth..

I dont hate ME!!!! Hell,,,,, they sure f-ed your brain cell, up in college,,, teaching you all that psych-babble bullshit...


Nah,, its you leftist leaches,,,, I hate,, you know, the other parasites next to you in the colon of america,,, you just happen to be a black parasite,,,,,

And for the disease of liberalism and YOU,,, TRUMP is the chemo.

I was sooooo elated to see this weekend that odumbass was considered, even by the slimy media, to be in the top 4 worst presidents ever,,,,,,,,,

And there is some moron posting here still bragging,, "Still my president"

AHHHAHHAHHHAHAHHHAAAHAAAA Talk about self hate,,, you blacks are WORSE off after a BLACK president!!! HAAHHHHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA

I dont even have to sh-t on you,,,, you find sh-t and roll in it!!!

Ve'hoe

yawn,,,,,, what white-as-hole wrote this for you??

Ve'hoe

Come on man-slut,,,, is AIDS eating away ,,,oops I was gonna say, "brain",, but then you dont have one...

Hey, man-slut,,, know why you and kkkzero,, (alias: sid-viscus, progressive-zero, doltus africanus) brains are so valuable????

Answer" They are completely unused...

I just wonder why they will ruin a decent baboon by tranplanting you brain into it...

I saw your picture here, on an article about chicago ho's.... "Dis be U?"

And I dont think you researched your streetname very well,,, but I guess where you come from,, and sell your "whares",,,, the name "Syphlitica" be sounded purty...

Ve'hoe

Is it not amazing to you, that these dolts,,, feign intelligence, and then write an article about fear,,,,,
of an election??? And they all get it!!

It isnt fear of the election, its fear of not getting their way,,,, this is a serious problem that will lead to civil war. I have seen other uneducated societies,,, who feel this way,, eventually they resort to war....

And of course lose, because war takes MUCH more brain power than the moronic liberals think,,,,,

Progressive One

Mindless Consumerism-To Each His or Her Own:

Car sales boom, fears of bust grow
Longer terms, looser lending keep market rolling, but more loans are going south
HEATHER MILNE BARGER with her family’s new Subaru Outback at their La Mesa, Calif., home. The dealership took $2,300 off the list price and offered a no-interest loan. With her are her husband, Kelly, and children Tabitha and William. (Hayne Palmour IV San Diego Union-Tribune)
By James Rufus Koren
H eather Milne Barger and her husband knew it was about time to replace their 12-year-old Honda Civic hybrid this year — not only because it was showing its age, but because they knew there were bargains to be had.
“There were a lot of deals that dealerships were having, and cheap financing,” said Milne Barger, 44.
Sure enough, when the La Mesa, Calif., couple bought their new Subaru Outback in February, the dealership knocked $2,300 off the $29,400 list price — and offered them a no-interest loan.
Indeed, there’s rarely been a better time to buy a car or truck.
New-vehicle sales have set records in each of the last two years — juiced by continuing low interest rates, incentives and generous lending practices.
Now, America is awash in cars and trucks, and sales are on track to decline this year for the first time since the recession.
That means manufacturers and lenders will have to make sales and loan terms even more attractive than they have been if they want to maintain volume.
Carlos Badosa has sold cars at Toyota dealerships for almost 40 years, through boom times and lean years, but he’s never seen deals quite like he has lately.
Over the last few months, the Japanese carmaker has begun offering rebates of at least $2,000 on every model — and twice that amount for some slower selling sedans.
“That’s unheard of,” said Badosa, 62, finance director at Toyota of Downtown L.A., who expects the deals might get even sweeter.
“I think inventories are very, very high. They have a whole lot of cars,” he said. “They need to get somebody to buy them. ”
The Bargers have excellent credit, but car dealers and lenders have also been luring buyers with spottier credit records. And the results have been predictable.
A growing number of loans have been issued to subprime borrowers over the last few years and they’ve started to go bad at rates not seen since the Great Recession.
“It raises the question: How does this end?” said Moody’s rating analyst Jason Grohotolski. “I feel like we’re at an inflection point, and it’s hard to tell at the moment whether discipline will prevail or loosening will continue.”
At his downtown Toyota dealership, Badosa has noticed not only sweeter incentives but also plenty of easy credit offered by lenders, including Toyota’s in-house financing arm, as well as credit unions and specialty finance companies.
Lenders increasingly have been willing to make loans to customers who have limited credit histories. They’re also more willing to offer longer terms.
At the beginning of 2010, the average auto loan in the U.S. lasted 62 months. By the end of last year, the average had risen to 68, or more than 5½ years, according to Moody’s research.
And 32% of loans had terms of longer than six years — up from 29% just a year earlier. Longer terms allow buyers to lower monthly payments or to buy more expensive vehicles.
Badosa has even seen an uptick in seven-year loans that carry higher rates of interest.
“It’s still a small percentage, but it’s getting more common,” he said. “I don’t like it. It doesn’t do the customer any good, but when people want a car bad enough ... we’ll find a way to get it for you.”
The last several years have already seen a big increase in auto lending, including subprime lending.
At the end of last year, Americans owed about $1.2 trillion in auto loan debt, a record amount, and car loans now represent more of total household debt — 9.2% — than they have since the end of 2002.
Roughly a quarter of that debt is owed by borrowers with subprime credit scores, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and credit bureau Equifax. Although that’s a smaller percentage of overall auto debt than during the run-up to the recession, it’s a record amount. And a growing number are falling behind on their loans.
Two percent of subprime auto loan borrowers were more than 90 days behind — considered seriously delinquent — in the third quarter, up from 1.4% at the end of 2012, according to the New York Fed.
As those borrowers drive up delinquency rates overall, some lenders, especially banks, have tightened their credit standards, requiring higher scores and larger down payments. But others, particularly finance companies that specialize in loans to subprime borrowers, are moving in the opposite direction.
Paul Kerwin, chief financial officer of Westlake Financial Services, a Mid-Wilshire auto lender that specializes in high-interest loans to customers with weak credit, said many of Westlake’s competitors have been too willing to offer risky loans.
Instead of Westlake’s typical loans for $10,000 or $12,000 that are paid off in four years or so, some lenders are offering much larger loans and longer terms.
“When lenders loosen, you get a $20,000 loan and a 72-month term, and now that’s just coming back to bite everyone,” Kerwin said. “A lot of it is putting a customer in too much car.”
In December, the average new car sold for a record $35,309, an increase of nearly $1,000 over the average paid in December 2014, according to auto information provider Kelley Blue Book. The firm cited a sudden shift toward trucks and sport utility vehicles as the key factor driving up prices.
That has given rise to a worrisome trend: Americans are trading in their cars for less than they still owe on their car loans.
Now they need loans to cover the cost of their new vehicle and the remainder of what they owed.
Ivan Drury, an analyst at Santa Monica car-buying site Edmunds.com, found that in the first two months of this year, about 33% of new-car buyers who made a trade-in were underwater, owing an average of $5,195 more than their old vehicle’s trade-in value. That’s the highest percentage and dollar figure on record.
“People who are trading in these cars, they’ll either have to pay off their last car loan on the spot, or they’re going to tack another $5,000 on to a $34,000 car loan,” said Drury, who suspects these customers are indulging desires rather than filling needs. ”You’re seeing some wild behavior.”
There’s an added wrinkle. All these years of new-car sales have dumped millions of vehicles into the used-car market, leading to a steep decline in used-car values.
According to data compiled by Edmunds.com, 3-year-old compact cars sold in early 2014 fetched an average of $12,194. In the first two months of this year, 3-year-old compacts were selling for an average of $11,173.
That’s part of what’s pushing carmakers to offer generous incentives on new cars, but it could be a problem for buyers hoping to trade in a car. It’s also problematic for lenders: When borrowers default and lenders repossess and resell their vehicles, lenders can expect to take bigger losses.
Despite all that, investors continue to pile in to bonds backed by auto loans, including subprime debt, ensuring a steady supply of capital for more new loans.
Steven Wald, an analyst at downtown L.A. investment firm DoubleLine Capital, said that while delinquencies have risen, bonds backed by auto loans remain attractive because of low yields on other investments.
“The market has taken the recent headlines in stride,” Wald said. “Recent deals have been oversubscribed. There’s no shortage of demand from an investor point of view.”
Wald said DoubleLine, which manages more than $100 billion in assets, has invested only in the most senior types of auto-loan-backed bonds — ones that are repaid first and are therefore less likely to be affected by defaults.
Still, the uptick in delinquencies on subprime auto loans has stoked fears of a bust akin to the subprime mortgage meltdown.
“What is happening in this space today reminds me of what happened in mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the crisis,” Thomas Curry, the nation’s top bank regulator, said in an October 2015 speech. “Although delinquency and losses are currently low, it doesn’t require great foresight to see that this may not last.”
But some investors and analysts say it’s not a good comparison. Even with auto debt at a record high of $1.2 trillion, that still represents less than 10% of overall household debt. Americans owe more in student loans, and both of those types of debt are dwarfed by the $8.5 trillion that Americans owe on their houses.
What’s more, when Americans were taking out risky home loans before the recession, many were assuming that they’d be able to sell for a profit in a few years or refinance once their home gained value. That kind of speculative behavior doesn’t happen with cars and truck loans, which most buyers intend to pay off.
Cars also are necessities for many Americans.
A study by credit bureau TransUnion found that between 2004 and 2013, Americans who had a mortgage, a credit card and an auto loan paid their auto loans most often , with the other two types of debt fighting for second priority.
The lending industry has an oft-repeated and crass explanation for this: “You can sleep in your car, but you can’t drive your house to work.”
Some in the industry, including the National Auto Dealers Assn., expect auto sales to stay strong this year. The association estimates sales of 17.1 million new cars and trucks this year — down from 17.5 million last year, but still a historically high figure.
Others, though, say a more significant slowdown is almost inevitable. Mark Wakefield, an auto industry analyst at consulting firm Alix Partners, expects an annual sales decline of 15% to 20% from last year’s peak by 2019.
“This is a cyclical market. It’s always been a cyclical market,” Wakefield said. “The idea that we’re going to plateau, to us it doesn’t really hold water.”
Auto sales have more or less plateaued before, about a decade ago, but Wakefield said U.S. automakers were only able to make that happen by offering massive incentives that cut into profitability. He doesn’t expect them to accept dramatically lower profits this time around.
A decade ago, the automakers had more overhead, more workers, more pension obligations and factories that were less flexible, making it hard to accept lower sales, said Matthew Stover, an auto industry analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. But after the federal bailouts, bankruptcies and corporate rejiggerings, the automakers aren’t as dependent on keeping up that volume.
“They don’t have these massive, unfunded liabilities that they just have to fund,” Stover said. “In 2004, Ford didn’t have a choice. They couldn’t say ‘ No mas .’ But they can in 2017.”
james.koren@latimes.com

Ve'hoe

I actually like Mexicans,, its you I want rid of.

Maybe they would trade,,, albeit,,, 1 Mexican is smarter than 5 of you...so there would have to be an exchange rate established,,,, and this has to be fast, because we dont want them to actually meet you,,, or get a wif of kookbreeze,,,,they would cancel the deal immediately,,,,

Progressive One

Uber Drivers are given a car......

Progressive One

Why we need regulations even if they cost:

As lead paint lawsuit drags on, children suffer
WORKMEN REMOVE lead paint at one of the historic beach cottages at Orange County’s Crystal Cove State Park in April 2004 as part of a renovation project. Lead paint was outlawed for residential use in the U.S. in 1978. (Mark Boster Los Angeles Times)
MICHAEL HILTZIK
No one is willing to swear that the lawsuit by 10 California cities and counties against three lead paint manufacturers is the longest-running litigation in the state courts.
They only know two things: that thousands of children are still being poisoned every year by deteriorating lead paint used in homes before 1980, and that the lawsuit to force the companies to pay for the cleanup has been in court for 17 years, with no end in sight.
That’s frustrating for public health officials, because lead poisoning is a major health threat to children. Even though lead paint was outlawed for residential use in the U.S. in 1978, the residue from its decades of use is today the primary source of child lead poisoning. That’s especially true in rental units in low-income neighborhoods where housing stock is poorly maintained, occupants don’t have the resources for upkeep, and children can ingest paint chips and breathe in lead-contaminated dust.
“Lead is common, the health problems it causes are severe, it affects children, and it’s preventable,” says Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, the interim health officer and medical director for Los Angeles County. “It’s at the top of our list of environmental threats.”
Although the rate of lead poisoning has come down sharply in recent years, more than 2,000 children still test positive for lead in their bloodstream each year in L.A. County. The actual number is almost certainly higher, because children aren’t routinely screened for lead unless they’re seen by a pediatrician. Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 4 million American households have children exposed to high levels of lead.
The California lawsuit, which was originally filed in state court in Santa Clara in 2000, has become a symbol of the inability of the judicial system to meet an urgent social need. In January 2014, Judge James P. Kleinberg held three companies — ConAgra Grocery Products Co., NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams Co. — liable for the costs of inspecting more than 3.5 million California homes and apartments and removing or abating residual lead hazards. That means painting over deteriorating surfaces and removing lead chips and dust, especially in units housing children.
Kleinberg assessed the companies $1.15 billion. Most of the money, $632.5 million, was designated for Los Angeles County, where the vast majority of suspect units are located.
The companies promptly appealed and filed briefs by early 2015, but there the matter has rested. The San Jose court hearing the appeal hasn’t even set a date for oral arguments. In the meantime, not a dime has been paid.
The prospect of a billion-dollar fund to abate a known hazard beckoning just out of reach only heightens the frustration for medical authorities.
“From our point of view, prevention is a simple solution,” Gunzenhauser told me. Children who test positive for lead poisoning can be treated, he says, “but why should we wait till children are sick and their growth is at risk because of lead?” The funding ordered by Kleinberg would “allow us to stop worrying about the treatment part and remove the problem upfront.”
The delay in resolving the lawsuit is partially due to a state law requiring appeals judges to rule on a case within 90 days of oral arguments. The law gives judges an incentive to defer a hearing until they’re almost ready to issue a decision. But the cities and counties have based their lawsuit on an unusual legal argument, which the manufacturers are determined to fight to the bitter end.
Instead of suing the paint manufacturers on product liability grounds, the cities and counties argued that the companies created a “public nuisance.” That’s a centuries-old legal doctrine, but one almost never invoked in a case like this. Often it’s used by municipalities to combat ongoing activities, such as a homeowner operating a crack house or a factory with noxious emissions, “not to something that happened decades ago,” says Sean Hecht, an environmental law expert at the UCLA law school.
Public nuisance law provides recourse against anyone who “obstructs a public right,” Hecht says. “That language has never been construed in a case that looks just like this one. The question is whether it’s ‘obstruction of a public right’ to have put lead paint on all these buildings. Although [this case] is much wider in scope than most public nuisance cases, there’s an argument that it’s exactly the kind of thing that public nuisance law is meant to address.”
Public nuisance claims against lead paint manufacturers have failed in other states. Rhode Island won a trial in 2006 against three manufacturers, including NL and Sherwin-Williams, but the verdict was overturned by the state’s Supreme Csourt.
The basis of the California lawsuit is that the defendant companies’ predecessors understood the health hazard of lead paint but nevertheless energetically promoted its use as a key to improving the durability and water-resistance of house paint. The dangers of lead had been known “since antiquity,” Judge Kleinberg observed, and as early as the 19th century manufacturers were taking steps to warn their own workers against breathing lead dust on the factory floor.
Articles warning about children’s propensity to gnaw on painted surfaces and become poisoned with lead were common in medical journals by the 1920s: “A child lives in a lead world,” advised a 1924 paper. By the 1930s, parents were warned to avoid using lead-based decorative materials in children’s nurseries and bedrooms.
Yet the industry kept advertising residential lead paint — “Lead helps to guard your health,” declared a 1923 magazine ad for Dutch Boy lead paint placed by National Lead Co., the precursor to NL Industries. “Property owners … are using white-lead paint to prolong the lives of their houses.”
Even once they began to acknowledge the dangers, the industry showed “a disdain for the families,” says Nancy Fineman, an attorney for the cities and counties. In a 1956 letter introduced in court, Manfred Bowditch, the director of health and safety for the Lead Industries Assn., complained to an Interior Department official about a Parade Magazine article reporting on lead hazards in the home. While acknowledging that the article was “mainly factual,” he asserted that the problem was concentrated in “the slums.”
“ Aside from the kids that are poisoned,” Bowditch wrote, “it’s a serious problem from the viewpoint of adverse publicity. The basic solution is to get rid of our slums, but even Uncle Sam can’t seem to swing that one. Next in importance is to educate the parents, but most of the cases are in Negro and Puerto Rican families, and how does one tackle that job?”’
Evidence of the danger lead exposure poses for young children has become more alarming over the years. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ceased setting minimum acceptable standards for children’s blood lead levels. That was based on scientific studies that couldn’t identify any concentration that didn’t have “deleterious effects” on children’s health. The only proper approach, the CDC said, is prevention “to ensure that no children in the U.S.” live in buildings with lead paint.
The defendants argue that such hazards weren’t known when residential lead paint was widely marketed. “This is litigation by hindsight,” says Antonio F. Dias, an attorney for Sherwin-Williams. “You’re applying today’s standards as if they existed in the early 1900s.”
He says that the risks to factory workers can’t be equated to those that developed decades later. ConAgra declined to comment on the case and a representative for NL Industries, now a holding company, could not be reached.
“Workers were literally working in clouds of dust,” Dias says. “There is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that anyone knew of the risks associated with old, deteriorating lead-based paint.” The paint industry learned of the dangers at the same time as the rest of the public in the 1940s, and then worked to develop alternatives, he says. “There is not a shred of evidence that these companies ever concealed anything concerning the medical or health risks associated with lead paint.”
Dias argues further that the problems presented by deteriorating lead paint is really one of housing code enforcement, which is a government responsibility. “There’s a question of whether the state and local governments were doing enough to enforce the housing code,” he says. The plaintiffs are going after the wrong targets, he says. “If there’s a public nuisance, shouldn’t the property owners be looked at?”
The scale of childhood lead poisoning remains dire, its victims facing lifetime consequences of stunted intellectual development as well as cardiovascular, immunological and endocrine problems. After 17 years, whether the public nuisance doctrine is adequate to meet their needs remains a question mark. But if not, what then?
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see facebook.com/hiltzik or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com .

Ve'hoe

Southern white???????? "brother"... oh brother!! Not my brother,,,, my brothers are humans,,,, not a subspecies, and they are RED,,,,,,

If you really believe that only southern whites despise you and your worthless progeny,,, you dont give yourself as much credit for being repulsive as you should,,,,

Even Africans,,, dont like american blacks....this is pretty long and uses a lot of big words,,,,, better have a white female grad student read it for you......


http://www.library.yale.edu/~fboateng/akata.htm