Long-term inmates — and prison culture — move into county jails

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown's plan approved two years ago to ease crowding in state prisons has left county jails struggling with hard-core felons sentenced to spend years, even decades, in facilities meant to hold criminals for no more than a year.

County sheriffs warn that these long-term inmates are more than they can handle. They say they pose security threats in their already-crowded lockups and invite the same costly class-action lawsuits over medical care and services that now dog state prisons.

"Our facilities were never constructed to manage an inmate for longer than a year," said Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern, president of the state sheriffs association, describing jails statewide.

Before the passage of AB 109 — the 2011 law pushed by the governor to reduce California's prison population — jail sentences in California were limited to one year. Now, California has had more than 1,300 inmates sentenced to five years or more in jails, according to a sheriffs association survey and reports by individual jails.

The situation is most prevalent in Los Angeles County, where jails hold more than 530 inmates who have been sentenced to jail terms of five years or more, 43 of them for more than a decade.

The most extreme of those: a top-level trafficker for a Mexican drug cartel, caught with a shipment of 211 kilos of cocaine. He has been ordered to spend 42 years in the jail.

Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, who now has 11 inmates serving sentences of five years or more, said they have been accompanied by a rise in jail violence, including inmate-on-inmate assaults. "We now have a hierarchy of inmates who have a prison culture," he said.

AB 109 created a list of about 500 felonies that would no longer be punished by time in state prison but in county jail. Counties were told they would be sent only those who have committed nonviolent and nonserious crimes.

But that list failed to account for California's drug sentencing enhancements, which factor in the amount of drugs involved.

As a result, most of the people sentenced to the longest jail terms, of a decade or more, committed crimes involving substantial amounts of drugs, the sheriffs survey found.

The governor initially dismissed the complaints. He now acknowledges there is a problem, but efforts to fix it have become mired in the politics of prison crowding.

::

Nicholas Gaona's ties to a Mexican drug cartel so unnerved jurors during his 2011 trial that they sent a note to the judge asking whether their lives were in danger. The day federal agents raided Gaona's stash houses in Los Angeles, they found cocaine worth $21 million on the street.

At sentencing, the judge tallied up the number of conspiracies and the weight of the drugs in each. That led to a 42-year sentence. Still, with no weapon used in the crime, the narcotics trafficker is classified on paper as a nonserious offender.

"He should be in state prison," said John Bur, the federal drug agent in charge of the task force that brought the case.

Los Angeles County officials say they can handle such high-level criminals.

One way jailers keep inmates occupied is by offering classes. The county has 62 education programs, from dog grooming to brick-laying, as well as jobs that inmates can fill. The programs not only provide inmates a skill that can lead to a job on the outside, but also keep them busy and lower the incidence of jail violence.

But those classes were designed for a transient population. Before AB 109, the average stay in the Los Angeles jail was 54 days, and most classes are meant to be finished in 12 weeks.

It is possible for Gaona and other long-term inmates in Los Angeles to just keep repeating classes.

"It would be like a job," said Capt. Mike Bornman, in charge of the Los Angeles jail education curriculum.

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Immigration bill backers keep pressure on Congress during recess

WASHINGTON — With an immigration overhaul stalled in the Republican-controlled House, advocates fanned out across the states during the August recess to appeal to wavering lawmakers, easily overwhelming opponents who mustered few supporters at town halls and other events.

In California, overhaul advocates in caravans from around the state descended on the Bakersfield office of the No. 3 Republican in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. In Colorado, they marched in the streets. Religious leaders told GOP lawmakers stories of families torn apart by deportation. Business executives made the case in economic terms. One group even lobbied Donald Trump.

To a degree, it worked: Several Republican lawmakers have recently tipped to their side, which advocates say is building momentum.

But privately, both backers of revamping the nation's immigration laws and top Republicans say 500 or so events did little to alter internal House GOP dynamics. The prospects for significant action when Congress returns Monday appear increasingly dim.

With just nine legislative days planned in the House in September, GOP lawmakers are expected to focus on whether to authorize a strike against Syria and then turn to the battle over the federal budget, which is likely to consume their schedule.

House Republicans remain deeply divided on immigration, and they see little urgent need to resolve it. Some have even begun to talk about pushing the debate well into next year so the primary elections will be behind them before any vote.

At an immigration forum last month in Arizona, Republican Sen. John McCain, a chief architect of the sweeping Senate-passed immigration bill, urged his party to tackle the issue this fall.

"It will be a very critical time in the life or death of this legislation," McCain said. "It's very important that we try and act before the end of this year, as we move into next year and an election season."

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) may make room for a floor debate on several Republican-backed immigration bills in October or November. But his Republican majority remains torn over the centerpiece of any compromise with Democrats — a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

The lack of interest in immigration legislation was apparent on a recent House GOP conference call. Not a single Republican lawmaker raised the issue; they focused instead on ways to undo President Obama's healthcare law as part of the upcoming fiscal showdown, according to aides familiar with the private talk.

"A lot of these members aren't feeling any pressure on immigration," said one of the top GOP aides in the House, who asked for anonymity to discuss the situation. "Nothing has happened to provide any momentum toward getting something enacted."

That suggests how hard it will be to shift the GOP's long-standing opposition to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally. Republican leaders say they believe a course correction is necessary to improve the party's standing with Latino and other minority voters. But many rank-and-file Republicans remain wary.

A number of Republican lawmakers represent primarily conservative, white districts, and are just now learning about the complex and politically charged topic.

"They're finding their voice," said Frank Sharry, a veteran immigration advocate with America's Voice. "Will those Republicans who want to get reform done, who want to change the GOP — can they get to yes?"

A delay poses political problems for Republicans, leaving the party still struggling to achieve its stated goal of attracting Latino voters, many of whom view an overhaul of immigration rules as crucial.

"Time is not their friend," Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said of Republicans. The union has many Latino members and is pushing for immigration law changes.

Medina said Boehner risked taking the GOP in the direction of former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who won reelection in 1994 on a tough anti-illegal-immigration platform but left the state GOP deeply wounded.

"The price of doing nothing is not always nothing," Medina said. "We will be marching to the polls with a report card in hand and a message: If they want us to vote for them, they have to vote for us first."

Boehner has complicated matters by promising to consider only legislation that is supported by a majority of his GOP conference. That high hurdle means it is possible that no bills will come to the floor.

Even a relatively popular bipartisan measure to beef up border security from Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) could run into resistance. Some Republicans have vowed to block any immigration bill in the House.

At the same time, the ability of the unusually broad coalition of advocates to outnumber the scant opposition this summer shows how much attitudes have changed. The last attempt to overhaul immigration laws, in 2007, withered in the face of an intense backlash. But advocates have prepared for the long haul.

"I think it looks better than any time I've seen it for a while," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute.

At a recent town hall meeting in a fire station in Greer, S.C., Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican first elected in 2010, surveyed his constituents and learned they were skeptical of government's ability to fix the problem. Many also do not view it as urgent. But they do think conservatives should offer solutions.

"What I'm hearing people say is, 'Look, Gowdy, we might eventually want to have that conversation with you, but we just don't trust the front part.' And I get that," he said. "So that's where we are."

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

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Pentagon adjusts plans for more intense attacks on Syria

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is preparing for a longer bombardment of Syria than it originally had planned, with a heavy barrage of missile strikes followed soon after by more attacks on targets that the opening salvos missed or failed to destroy, officials said.

The planning for intense attacks over a three-day period reflects the growing belief in the White House and the Pentagon that the United States needs more firepower to inflict even minimal damage on Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, which have been widely dispersed over the last two weeks, the officials said.

Two U.S. officers said the White House asked for an expanded target list in recent days to include many more than the 50 or so targets on the initial list. As a result, Pentagon planners are weighing whether to use Air Force bombers, in addition to five warships now on patrol in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, to launch cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles from hundreds of miles offshore, well out of range of Syrian air defenses.

Syria is also within range of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Red Sea, which includes one cruiser and three destroyers, all capable of firing cruise missiles.

"There will be several volleys and an assessment after each volley, but all within 72 hours and a clear indication when we are done," said one officer familiar with the planning.

The officers requested anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the campaign.

The stepped-up military planning comes as President Obama and his aides prepared to press their own offensive to seek public support, as well as congressional votes for authorization to use military force to punish Assad's government for alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians last month.

Obama plans to blanket the nation's airwaves in coming days to make his case to a skeptical public. Aides say he will tape interviews Monday with the anchors of CBS, NBC and ABC, the three major broadcast networks, as well as with PBS, CNN and Fox News. He also will address the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday, the night before the full Senate is expected to vote.

Obama, who has declined to say whether he would order an attack if Congress votes against it, gave a preview of his argument in his weekly radio address Saturday.

"Failing to respond to this outrageous attack would increase the risk that chemical weapons could be used again, that they would fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us, and it would send a horrible signal to other nations that there would be no consequences for their use of these weapons," he said.

The administration ran into a new diplomatic roadblock Saturday at the European Union.

Foreign ministers of the EU's 28 member nations, meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, said that "the international community cannot remain idle" after reports that poison gas was used Aug. 21 against neighborhoods near Damascus held by rebels trying to topple Assad.

But despite the presence of U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, the EU declined to back a military strike without approval of such intervention by the United Nations. American officials say they see almost no chance of winning a resolution for use of force in the U.N. Security Council because Russia, a permanent member with veto power, is Assad's strongest international backer.

The EU ministers noted that U.N. chemical weapons inspectors were expected to report on their findings in Syria. They also welcomed a decision by French President Francois Hollande, a vocal advocate of a military strike, to wait for the inspectors' report before taking further action.

Obama still favors a limited attack that would not involve sending large numbers of warplanes over Syria to drop bombs, officials said.

But some military officers are doubtful that even a longer air campaign, using cruise missiles fired from offshore, will hurt Assad enough to degrade his forces and to deter future use of chemical weapons. One officer described the planned operation as little more than a multi-day "show of force," not a game-changer in Syria's bitter civil war.

The planned U.S. attack "will not strategically impact the current situation in the war, which the Syrians have well in hand, though fighting could go on for another two years," said another U.S. officer familiar with the latest intelligence estimates.

The Obama administration hopes that by denying Assad the option of resorting to chemical weapons and by providing some additional weapons and training to rebel fighters, it will boost the now remote chances of negotiations that might lead to Assad's exit.

The administration has struggled over the last week with the competing demands of hitting Syria hard enough to undermine Assad's resolve but not hard enough to undermine support by members of Congress who are leery of being drawn into another Middle East war. A smaller contingent has urged Obama to provide more muscular support for the rebels seeking to oust Assad.

Facing such cross-currents, administration officials and top Pentagon officers have veered between describing the planned attack as a limited operation that will not significantly tilt the balance of power in Syria and a punishing attack that will degrade the Syrian military's equipment and forces capable of delivering chemical weapons and deter Assad from using them.

The current planning tries to thread the needle. After the initial round of strikes, the Pentagon will assess the damage inflicted on Syrian forces using satellite imagery and other surveillance systems. The U.S. military then can either hit targets that weren't destroyed or choose new ones to ensure that Assad suffers significant losses, current and former military officers said.

"It's got to lead to something or we're going to be back in the same situation a year from now," said Mark Kimmitt, a retired Army brigadier general and former top Middle East planner who served as a Pentagon and State Department official during the George W. Bush administration. "So we've got to have a larger target set."

Pentagon planners also are offering options to hit Assad again if he or his regional proxies retaliate against the United States or its allies, the two officers said.

Administration officials have signaled that they intend to move ahead with their plans to provide arms to some Syrian rebel factions, a demand by Sen. John McCain of Arizona and other Republicans who have called for aiding the rebels in return for their supporting any resolution to authorize force.

In closed-door briefings with lawmakers last week, the administration said Assad's conventional forces were concentrated around Damascus, the capital, and in the north of Syria. But many installations and pieces of equipment, including rocket launchers, tanks and other hardware, have been moved in the last two weeks to avoid as much as possible the expected U.S. attack.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged during two days of congressional testimony the possibility of follow-up strikes. He said the Syrian military was moving forces, making more difficult the task of striking units and equipment capable of delivering chemical agents.

"At this point our intelligence is keeping up with that movement," Dempsey said. He also noted reports that prisoners and other noncombatants had been moved to potential military targets where the U.S. might strike.

david.cloud@latimes.com

Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.

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Grocery stores adding tech features to stay competitive

Like many grocery shoppers, Michele Ricketts dreads long checkout lines.

But lately, she's been breezing by the cash register at her neighborhood Ralphs even with the usual crowds at the store.

"In the last month, I have noticed it was faster," said Ricketts, 27, an actress from the Miracle Mile. "I thought I was dreaming."

She wasn't. To shave precious minutes off wait times, Ralphs has been installing technology to measure foot traffic in nearly all of its supermarkets.

Known as QueVision, the system uses hidden infrared cameras with body heat trackers to figure out how many customers are shopping at any given time. Managers use that information to redeploy workers to the cash registers when things get busy.

It's already paying off. QueVision has trimmed the average time it takes to get to the front of the line to roughly 30 seconds from the national average of four minutes, a Ralphs spokeswoman said.

The checkout system is part of a long-overdue effort by traditional grocery chains to evolve and stay competitive through the use of technology.

The $518-billion grocery store industry hasn't made a major leap forward since the bar code scanner was introduced in the 1970s. Thin profit margins have kept the shopping experience pretty much the same for decades: squeaky shopping carts, long checkout lines and aggravating scavenger hunts to find products.

"You have an industry that's been kind of stuck in time," said Scott Mushkin, a grocery retail analyst at Wolfe Research. "Grocers have to invest. Their business models have been under so much pressure, they're fighting for their lives."

Technologies that have recently made their way into supermarkets include digital signs that update prices and locations of products and offer promotions by time of day, such as coffee and granola bar specials for morning commuters. To speed up the checkout process, customers can pay via fingerprint scanners or use smartphone apps to scan bar codes themselves. A self-propelled "smart" shopping cart that can follow customers and lead them to items is being tested.

Grocery chains are finally spending the time and money to modernize because they are nervous about losing out to rivals. Big-box retailers such as Target are beefing up their grocery sections and Amazon.com has been aggressively rolling out its Amazon Fresh same-day grocery delivery service.

Grocery industry revenue shrank an average of 0.4% in each of the last five years, according to research firm IBISWorld. Companies were hit hard by the recession as high unemployment and low disposable income forced consumers to cut back on premium products and rely instead on cheaper generic brands and discounts.

U.S. grocery stores are trailing behind their international counterparts when it comes to embracing technology.

British grocery giant Tesco, a pioneer of supermarket innovation, has more than 5,000 technologists in its Bangalore, India, development center working on new ideas to improve the company's stores. At a conference in March, Chief Executive Philip Clarke said "a new wave of creativity has been unleashed."

"Digital is now intrinsic to retail," he said. "That's why, in 2013, we will invest three-quarters of a billion U.S. dollars in technology, up threefold in three years."

In 2011, Tesco launched its futuristic Homeplus market at a Seoul subway stop. There's no food in this virtual grocery store, only interactive walls around the station that display photos of fruit, vegetables, milk and other grocery staples. Using their smartphones, commuters can buy these products by photographing QR codes printed on the images and paying through their phones. Tesco delivers the purchases to customers' homes the same day.

ASDA, another British grocery chain, recently introduced a checkout scanner tunnel. Consumers place their items on a conveyor belt, which whisks them through a 360-degree laser scanner. The tunnel reads the bar codes, which ASDA said is "so fast it can increase the speed of scanning your shopping by up to 300%." (Ralphs parent Kroger is experimenting with similar technology.)

Grocery stores especially want to appeal to younger shoppers, many of whom tend to avoid traditional supermarkets because they consider them the place their parents shop. One way to woo smartphone-toting millennials is to make grocery shopping more tech-friendly, analysts said.

Midwest supermarket chain Hy-Vee and AT&T, for instance, teamed up to launch a mobile app with a voice-activated product locater.

Last year, Whole Foods loaned one of its shopping carts to Austin, Texas, tech firm Chaotic Moon, which used it to develop the SmarterCart, a grocery cart equipped with a tablet and Microsoft's Kinect device.

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Lawmakers to weigh about 400 bills in session's last week

SACRAMENTO — The fate of tighter gun control measures and restrictions on oil fracking could hang on a mad dash of political maneuvering and deal-cutting in the Legislature this week, when lawmakers have just four days left to act on about 400 bills.

But the thorniest issue may be Gov. Jerry Brown's $315-million plan for meeting a federal court order to relieve prison crowding, a proposal that has the support of the Assembly speaker but drew criticism from the Senate leader, who offered his own plan instead.

Lawmakers also are expected to decide whether the state should require permits and background checks for people buying ammunition and whether California should outlaw the sale of rifles with detachable magazines. The two proposals were among a raft of gun control bills filed after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

The Legislature adjourns for the year Friday, but because the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur begins that evening, lawmakers have agreed to wind up their votes Thursday night.

"We need to get about 100 bills done a day on average," Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) told his colleagues last week.

That doesn't count the "gut and amend" bills that typically show up in the waning hours of the session. Such measures, which are stripped of their contents and replaced with legislation that may be controversial, often sidestep the normal committee hearing process.

Lawmakers face intense pressure to address prison overcrowding because of a federal court order to reduce inmate numbers by more than 9,600 by the end of the year. Failure to reach a compromise could result in a court's ordering the early release of some felons.

The governor and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) have proposed spending $315 million to place thousands of inmates in county jails and privately owned prisons. Democrats in the Senate prefer to increase spending on rehabilitation, arguing that it is the most effective way to reduce the prison population in the long term, and to try to obtain a three-year extension on the court's order.

With an election looming in 2014, the stakes are high.

"If you are either a governor or a legislator, letting criminals out of prison and being held in contempt by a federal court are not going to be your two favorite ways to head into your reelection campaign," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. "The pressure to come up with a short-term fix is very intense."

It remains to be seen whether the prison dispute between Steinberg and Pérez, who already had a tense relationship, will affect other issues.

Steinberg's house has a package of gun control measures awaiting action in the Assembly, including one to require a permit to buy bullets and an expansion of the crimes that disqualify Californians from owning guns.

Also in the Assembly is a Steinberg proposal to streamline environmental laws for housing projects in densely developed neighborhoods.

Other measures awaiting the Legislature's action involve immigration. A bill by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), for example, would expand the number of people in the country illegally who would be eligible to apply for California driver's licenses.

A measure by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) would bar state and local police from detaining someone on immigration grounds if the person was originally arrested for a minor offense. Brown vetoed a similar proposal last year, saying it would have required law enforcement officials to release dangerous criminals.

This year's version would let police hold someone for federal immigration officials if that person has been convicted of a felony.

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed," Ammiano said.

A final push is also under way on a fracking measure by Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills). The bill would establish regulations on controversial hydraulic fracturing, in which water, sand and chemicals are injected underground to release oil and natural gas.

Ammiano intends to revive a bill that would impose statewide regulations on medical marijuana businesses. The proposal faltered in the Assembly in the spring, but Ammiano said he's been working with Pérez and Steinberg to bring it back to life.

Other bills would:

•Repeal the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups, including the Boy Scouts, if they do not allow openly gay members.

•Allow misdemeanor rather than felony charges in cases of simple possession of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs.

•Increase the minimum wage by $2 an hour over five years.

•Require domestic workers, including nannies, to be given benefits, including overtime and rest breaks.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

melanie.mason@latimes.com

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U.S. opens civil rights probe of L.A. County Sheriff's Department

Federal authorities have opened a civil rights probe into whether Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have engaged in a pattern of abuse of inmates, according to a letter sent to county officials this week.

The so-called pattern or practice investigation marks a new level of scrutiny for the nation's largest jail system, which is the subject of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation into allegations of excessive force and other misconduct.

The letter, sent from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to the county on Thursday, said federal authorities opened the civil probe after becoming "increasingly concerned about use of force and alleged abuse by jail deputies and staff." The investigation will be conducted separately from the FBI's criminal probe, the letter said.

County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called the new probe "a very significant concern."

"This makes it clear that there is more work to be done and it is our responsibility to do it," Ridley-Thomas said.

At the same time, the Justice Department will also assess whether the Sheriff's Department has failed to adequately house and care for mentally ill inmates — an issue federal authorities first identified as a problem in 1997.

"A growing number of prisoners with serious mental illness continue to be housed in obsolete and dilapidated conditions at Men's Central Jail," the letter stated.

The letter was signed by Acting Assistant Atty. Gen. Jocelyn Samuels and U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr., who heads the department's Los Angeles-area office and is also overseeing the criminal investigation into the jails.

L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca's spokesman, Steve Whitmore, said the Sheriff's Department would fully cooperate with the federal civil rights probe. He said the department has made significant reforms recently in an effort to deal with excessive force by jailers and is continuing to do so.

"We question the allegations of use of force," he said. "It is being tracked now like it's never been tracked before. Use of force is down by more than half."

Whitmore also noted that the letter acknowledged that the department had made "critical improvements in the delivery of mental health care at the jail" during the last decade.

He said Baca has long held that the mentally ill should not be housed in the jails but in other settings where they can be given proper care and the necessary psychotropic medication administered by specially trained mental health professionals.

Despite the improvements, federal authorities also said "significant problems remain." The Justice Department, for example, cited an increase in inmate suicides, including at least five this year.

The launch of the new probe comes just two months after federal authorities wrapped up another civil rights investigation into the Sheriff's Department —finding that deputies in the Antelope Valley harassed and intimidated blacks, Latinos and other residents. In that probe, federal officials did find a pattern of sheriff's deputies using unreasonable force, intimidation and "widespread" unlawful detentions and searches. Many of the findings involved residents who received low-income subsidized housing.

In their new civil rights probe, federal authorities could take a number of actions if they were to find a pattern of constitutional violations in the jails.

They could seek a consent decree in which the Justice Department and the county would agree to a set of reforms that a federal judge would approve and a court-appointed official would monitor. The Los Angeles Police Department operated under such a decree for about a decade after the Rampart corruption scandal. Law enforcement agencies typically bristle under that kind of burdensome, and sometimes prolonged, federal scrutiny.

Other, less burdensome settlements could involve formal legal arrangements in which the two sides agree on a set of reforms but could do so without a formal court-appointed monitor.

The county and federal authorities entered into such an agreement in 2002 after a Justice Department investigation found that conditions relating to mental health care in the county's jails violated the federal rights of prisoners, and jail staff abused mentally ill prisoners. Justice officials will be examining if sheriff's officials have complied with that agreement.

The FBI's criminal probe of jailhouse misconduct has been ongoing since at least 2011 and is expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year. Even before the federal scrutiny, internal sheriff's memos showed that top supervisors were raising alarms about excessive force as far back as 2009. One audit of more than 100 violent encounters with inmates found that deputies crafted narratives "dramatized to justify" force. In some cases, jailers purposely delayed using weapons that could end fights, like pepper spray and stun guns, "to dispense appropriate jailhouse 'justice,'" the report said.

Last year, a blue-ribbon county commission concluded that Baca and his top assistants had fostered a culture in which deputies were permitted to beat and humiliate inmates, cover up misconduct and form aggressive deputy cliques.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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Conservatives sweep to Australia election victory

CANBERRA, Australia  — Australia's conservative opposition swept to power Saturday, ending six years of Labor Party rule and winning over a disenchanted public by promising to end a hated tax on carbon emissions, boost a flagging economy and bring about political stability after years of Labor infighting.

"I know that Labor hearts are heavy across the nation tonight, and as your prime minister and as your parliamentary leader of the great Australian Labor Party, I accept responsibility," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a speech to supporters, after calling opposition leader Tony Abbott to concede defeat. "I gave it my all, but it was not enough for us to win."

A victory for the conservative Liberal Party-led coalition comes despite the relative unpopularity of Abbott, a 55-year-old former Roman Catholic seminarian and Rhodes scholar who has struggled to connect with women voters and was once dubbed "unelectable" by opponents and even some supporters.

But voters were largely fed up with Labor and Rudd, after a years-long power struggle between him and his former deputy, Julia Gillard. Gillard, who became the nation's first female prime minister after ousting Rudd in a party vote in 2010, ended up losing her job to Rudd three years later in a similar internal party coup.

The drama, combined with Labor reneging on an election promise by imposing a deeply unpopular tax on the nation's biggest carbon polluters, proved deadly for Labor's re-election chances.

"This is an election lost by the government rather than won by Tony Abbott," Former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke told Sky News.

Abbott, who becomes Australia's third prime minister in three months, will aim to end a period of extraordinary political instability in Australia.

The swing away from Labor was a resounding rejection of Australia's first minority government since World War II. Voters disliked the deals and compromises struck between Labor, the minor Greens party and independent lawmakers to keep their fragile, disparate and sometime chaotic coalition together for the past three years, including the carbon tax.

Abbott has vowed to scrap the carbon from July 2014 — two years after it was implemented — and instead introduce taxpayer-funded incentives for polluters to operate cleaner.

It is unclear whether Abbott will be able to pass the necessary law changes through Parliament, but he has threatened to hold early elections if the Senate thwarts him.

Abbott's popularity seems to have peaked at the right time. Two polls published this past week by Sydney-based market researcher Newspoll are the only ones in which Abbott beat Rudd as preferred prime minister since Newspoll first began comparing the two leaders in 2010.

There is unlikely to be any honeymoon period for Abbott, as he inherits a slowing economy, hurt by the cooling of a mining boom that kept the resource-rich nation out of recession during the global financial crisis.

Australia's new government has promised to slash foreign aid spending as it concentrates on returning the budget to surplus. Labor spent billions of dollars on stimulus projects to avoid recession. But declining corporate tax revenues from the mining slowdown forced Labor to break a promise to return the budget to surplus in the last fiscal year.

Abbott has also promised to repeal a tax on coal and iron ore mining companies, which he blames in part for the downturn in the mining boom. The 30 percent tax on the profits of iron ore and coal miners was designed to cash in on burgeoning profits from a mineral boom fueled by Chinese industrial demand. But the boom was easing before the tax took effect. The tax was initially forecast to earn the government 3 billion Australian dollars ($2.7 billion) in its first year, but collected only AU$126 million after six months.

Abbott was a senior minister in the government of Prime Minister John Howard, who ruled for 11 years until Rudd first took office in 2007.

Under Howard, Australia — one of the world's worst greenhouse gas polluters on a per capita basis — and the United States had been the only wealthy countries to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing global warming.

One of Rudd's first acts as prime minister was to ratify the Protocol, and he became Australia's most popular prime minister of the past three decades with his promise to introduce a carbon emissions trading scheme. His popularity fell after he failed to persuade the Senate to deliver the scheme.

Saturday's election likely brought Australia's first Aboriginal woman to Parliament. Former Olympian Nova Peris is almost certain to win a Senate seat for Labor in the Northern Territory, but the final results will not be known for days. Less likely is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's bid for a Senate seat in Victorian state.

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Immigration bill backers keep pressure on Congress during recess

WASHINGTON — With an immigration overhaul stalled in the Republican-controlled House, advocates fanned out across the states during the August recess to appeal to wavering lawmakers, easily overwhelming opponents who mustered few supporters at town halls and other events.

In California, overhaul advocates in caravans from around the state descended on the Bakersfield office of the No. 3 Republican in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. In Colorado, they marched in the streets. Religious leaders told GOP lawmakers stories of families torn apart by deportation. Business executives made the case in economic terms. One group even lobbied Donald Trump.

To a degree, it worked: Several Republican lawmakers have recently tipped to their side, which advocates say is building momentum.

But privately, both backers of revamping the nation's immigration laws and top Republicans say 500 or so events did little to alter internal House GOP dynamics. The prospects for significant action when Congress returns Monday appear increasingly dim.

With just nine legislative days planned in the House in September, GOP lawmakers are expected to focus on whether to authorize a strike against Syria and then turn to the battle over the federal budget, which is likely to consume their schedule.

House Republicans remain deeply divided on immigration, and they see little urgent need to resolve it. Some have even begun to talk about pushing the debate well into next year so the primary elections will be behind them before any vote.

At an immigration forum last month in Arizona, Republican Sen. John McCain, a chief architect of the sweeping Senate-passed immigration bill, urged his party to tackle the issue this fall.

"It will be a very critical time in the life or death of this legislation," McCain said. "It's very important that we try and act before the end of this year, as we move into next year and an election season."

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) may make room for a floor debate on several Republican-backed immigration bills in October or November. But his Republican majority remains torn over the centerpiece of any compromise with Democrats — a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

The lack of interest in immigration legislation was apparent on a recent House GOP conference call. Not a single Republican lawmaker raised the issue; they focused instead on ways to undo President Obama's healthcare law as part of the upcoming fiscal showdown, according to aides familiar with the private talk.

"A lot of these members aren't feeling any pressure on immigration," said one of the top GOP aides in the House, who asked for anonymity to discuss the situation. "Nothing has happened to provide any momentum toward getting something enacted."

That suggests how hard it will be to shift the GOP's long-standing opposition to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally. Republican leaders say they believe a course correction is necessary to improve the party's standing with Latino and other minority voters. But many rank-and-file Republicans remain wary.

A number of Republican lawmakers represent primarily conservative, white districts, and are just now learning about the complex and politically charged topic.

"They're finding their voice," said Frank Sharry, a veteran immigration advocate with America's Voice. "Will those Republicans who want to get reform done, who want to change the GOP — can they get to yes?"

A delay poses political problems for Republicans, leaving the party still struggling to achieve its stated goal of attracting Latino voters, many of whom view an overhaul of immigration rules as crucial.

"Time is not their friend," Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said of Republicans. The union has many Latino members and is pushing for immigration law changes.

Medina said Boehner risked taking the GOP in the direction of former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who won reelection in 1994 on a tough anti-illegal-immigration platform but left the state GOP deeply wounded.

"The price of doing nothing is not always nothing," Medina said. "We will be marching to the polls with a report card in hand and a message: If they want us to vote for them, they have to vote for us first."

Boehner has complicated matters by promising to consider only legislation that is supported by a majority of his GOP conference. That high hurdle means it is possible that no bills will come to the floor.

Even a relatively popular bipartisan measure to beef up border security from Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) could run into resistance. Some Republicans have vowed to block any immigration bill in the House.

At the same time, the ability of the unusually broad coalition of advocates to outnumber the scant opposition this summer shows how much attitudes have changed. The last attempt to overhaul immigration laws, in 2007, withered in the face of an intense backlash. But advocates have prepared for the long haul.

"I think it looks better than any time I've seen it for a while," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute.

At a recent town hall meeting in a fire station in Greer, S.C., Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican first elected in 2010, surveyed his constituents and learned they were skeptical of government's ability to fix the problem. Many also do not view it as urgent. But they do think conservatives should offer solutions.

"What I'm hearing people say is, 'Look, Gowdy, we might eventually want to have that conversation with you, but we just don't trust the front part.' And I get that," he said. "So that's where we are."

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

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Pentagon adjusts plans for more intense attacks on Syria

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is preparing for a longer bombardment of Syria than it originally had planned, with a heavy barrage of missile strikes followed soon after by more attacks on targets that the opening salvos missed or failed to destroy, officials said.

The planning for intense attacks over a three-day period reflects the growing belief in the White House and the Pentagon that the United States needs more firepower to inflict even minimal damage on Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, which have been widely dispersed over the last two weeks, the officials said.

Two U.S. officers said the White House asked for an expanded target list in recent days to include many more than the 50 or so targets on the initial list. As a result, Pentagon planners are weighing whether to use Air Force bombers, in addition to five warships now on patrol in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, to launch cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles from hundreds of miles offshore, well out of range of Syrian air defenses.

Syria is also within range of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Red Sea, which includes one cruiser and three destroyers, all capable of firing cruise missiles.

"There will be several volleys and an assessment after each volley, but all within 72 hours and a clear indication when we are done," said one officer familiar with the planning.

The officers requested anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the campaign.

The stepped-up military planning comes as President Obama and his aides prepared to press their own offensive to seek public support, as well as congressional votes for authorization to use military force to punish Assad's government for alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians last month.

Obama plans to blanket the nation's airwaves in coming days to make his case to a skeptical public. Aides say he will tape interviews Monday with the anchors of CBS, NBC and ABC, the three major broadcast networks, as well as with PBS, CNN and Fox News. He also will address the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday, the night before the full Senate is expected to vote.

Obama, who has declined to say whether he would order an attack if Congress votes against it, gave a preview of his argument in his weekly radio address Saturday.

"Failing to respond to this outrageous attack would increase the risk that chemical weapons could be used again, that they would fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us, and it would send a horrible signal to other nations that there would be no consequences for their use of these weapons," he said.

The administration ran into a new diplomatic roadblock Saturday at the European Union.

Foreign ministers of the EU's 28 member nations, meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, said that "the international community cannot remain idle" after reports that poison gas was used Aug. 21 against neighborhoods near Damascus held by rebels trying to topple Assad.

But despite the presence of U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, the EU declined to back a military strike without approval of such intervention by the United Nations. American officials say they see almost no chance of winning a resolution for use of force in the U.N. Security Council because Russia, a permanent member with veto power, is Assad's strongest international backer.

The EU ministers noted that U.N. chemical weapons inspectors were expected to report on their findings in Syria. They also welcomed a decision by French President Francois Hollande, a vocal advocate of a military strike, to wait for the inspectors' report before taking further action.

Obama still favors a limited attack that would not involve sending large numbers of warplanes over Syria to drop bombs, officials said.

But some military officers are doubtful that even a longer air campaign, using cruise missiles fired from offshore, will hurt Assad enough to degrade his forces and to deter future use of chemical weapons. One officer described the planned operation as little more than a multi-day "show of force," not a game-changer in Syria's bitter civil war.

The planned U.S. attack "will not strategically impact the current situation in the war, which the Syrians have well in hand, though fighting could go on for another two years," said another U.S. officer familiar with the latest intelligence estimates.

The Obama administration hopes that by denying Assad the option of resorting to chemical weapons and by providing some additional weapons and training to rebel fighters, it will boost the now remote chances of negotiations that might lead to Assad's exit.

The administration has struggled over the last week with the competing demands of hitting Syria hard enough to undermine Assad's resolve but not hard enough to undermine support by members of Congress who are leery of being drawn into another Middle East war. A smaller contingent has urged Obama to provide more muscular support for the rebels seeking to oust Assad.

Facing such cross-currents, administration officials and top Pentagon officers have veered between describing the planned attack as a limited operation that will not significantly tilt the balance of power in Syria and a punishing attack that will degrade the Syrian military's equipment and forces capable of delivering chemical weapons and deter Assad from using them.

The current planning tries to thread the needle. After the initial round of strikes, the Pentagon will assess the damage inflicted on Syrian forces using satellite imagery and other surveillance systems. The U.S. military then can either hit targets that weren't destroyed or choose new ones to ensure that Assad suffers significant losses, current and former military officers said.

"It's got to lead to something or we're going to be back in the same situation a year from now," said Mark Kimmitt, a retired Army brigadier general and former top Middle East planner who served as a Pentagon and State Department official during the George W. Bush administration. "So we've got to have a larger target set."

Pentagon planners also are offering options to hit Assad again if he or his regional proxies retaliate against the United States or its allies, the two officers said.

Administration officials have signaled that they intend to move ahead with their plans to provide arms to some Syrian rebel factions, a demand by Sen. John McCain of Arizona and other Republicans who have called for aiding the rebels in return for their supporting any resolution to authorize force.

In closed-door briefings with lawmakers last week, the administration said Assad's conventional forces were concentrated around Damascus, the capital, and in the north of Syria. But many installations and pieces of equipment, including rocket launchers, tanks and other hardware, have been moved in the last two weeks to avoid as much as possible the expected U.S. attack.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged during two days of congressional testimony the possibility of follow-up strikes. He said the Syrian military was moving forces, making more difficult the task of striking units and equipment capable of delivering chemical agents.

"At this point our intelligence is keeping up with that movement," Dempsey said. He also noted reports that prisoners and other noncombatants had been moved to potential military targets where the U.S. might strike.

david.cloud@latimes.com

Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.

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Grocery stores adding tech features to stay competitive

Like many grocery shoppers, Michele Ricketts dreads long checkout lines.

But lately, she's been breezing by the cash register at her neighborhood Ralphs even with the usual crowds at the store.

"In the last month, I have noticed it was faster," said Ricketts, 27, an actress from the Miracle Mile. "I thought I was dreaming."

She wasn't. To shave precious minutes off wait times, Ralphs has been installing technology to measure foot traffic in nearly all of its supermarkets.

Known as QueVision, the system uses hidden infrared cameras with body heat trackers to figure out how many customers are shopping at any given time. Managers use that information to redeploy workers to the cash registers when things get busy.

It's already paying off. QueVision has trimmed the average time it takes to get to the front of the line to roughly 30 seconds from the national average of four minutes, a Ralphs spokeswoman said.

The checkout system is part of a long-overdue effort by traditional grocery chains to evolve and stay competitive through the use of technology.

The $518-billion grocery store industry hasn't made a major leap forward since the bar code scanner was introduced in the 1970s. Thin profit margins have kept the shopping experience pretty much the same for decades: squeaky shopping carts, long checkout lines and aggravating scavenger hunts to find products.

"You have an industry that's been kind of stuck in time," said Scott Mushkin, a grocery retail analyst at Wolfe Research. "Grocers have to invest. Their business models have been under so much pressure, they're fighting for their lives."

Technologies that have recently made their way into supermarkets include digital signs that update prices and locations of products and offer promotions by time of day, such as coffee and granola bar specials for morning commuters. To speed up the checkout process, customers can pay via fingerprint scanners or use smartphone apps to scan bar codes themselves. A self-propelled "smart" shopping cart that can follow customers and lead them to items is being tested.

Grocery chains are finally spending the time and money to modernize because they are nervous about losing out to rivals. Big-box retailers such as Target are beefing up their grocery sections and Amazon.com has been aggressively rolling out its Amazon Fresh same-day grocery delivery service.

Grocery industry revenue shrank an average of 0.4% in each of the last five years, according to research firm IBISWorld. Companies were hit hard by the recession as high unemployment and low disposable income forced consumers to cut back on premium products and rely instead on cheaper generic brands and discounts.

U.S. grocery stores are trailing behind their international counterparts when it comes to embracing technology.

British grocery giant Tesco, a pioneer of supermarket innovation, has more than 5,000 technologists in its Bangalore, India, development center working on new ideas to improve the company's stores. At a conference in March, Chief Executive Philip Clarke said "a new wave of creativity has been unleashed."

"Digital is now intrinsic to retail," he said. "That's why, in 2013, we will invest three-quarters of a billion U.S. dollars in technology, up threefold in three years."

In 2011, Tesco launched its futuristic Homeplus market at a Seoul subway stop. There's no food in this virtual grocery store, only interactive walls around the station that display photos of fruit, vegetables, milk and other grocery staples. Using their smartphones, commuters can buy these products by photographing QR codes printed on the images and paying through their phones. Tesco delivers the purchases to customers' homes the same day.

ASDA, another British grocery chain, recently introduced a checkout scanner tunnel. Consumers place their items on a conveyor belt, which whisks them through a 360-degree laser scanner. The tunnel reads the bar codes, which ASDA said is "so fast it can increase the speed of scanning your shopping by up to 300%." (Ralphs parent Kroger is experimenting with similar technology.)

Grocery stores especially want to appeal to younger shoppers, many of whom tend to avoid traditional supermarkets because they consider them the place their parents shop. One way to woo smartphone-toting millennials is to make grocery shopping more tech-friendly, analysts said.

Midwest supermarket chain Hy-Vee and AT&T, for instance, teamed up to launch a mobile app with a voice-activated product locater.

Last year, Whole Foods loaned one of its shopping carts to Austin, Texas, tech firm Chaotic Moon, which used it to develop the SmarterCart, a grocery cart equipped with a tablet and Microsoft's Kinect device.

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