Some donors are rethinking Dorner reward pledges

As the manhunt for Christopher Dorner gripped Southern California last month, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a $1-million reward for the capture of the fired LAPD officer.

Two claims have been made on the money since Dorner's death Feb. 12 — by a couple near Big Bear who were tied up and whose car was stolen and by a man whose pickup truck Dorner later hijacked.

Now, however, some groups that pledged money are reconsidering. They said they offered the reward for information that would have led to the capture and conviction of Dorner, neither of which occurred. Dorner committed suicide when cornered in a burning cabin near Big Bear.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Underlying their objections is a moral argument that donors will not make publicly. Some find the claims for the money unseemly. They believe reward seekers had called police to report they were victims of crimes by Dorner and now seek to profit from their brief encounters, which left them unharmed, during a rampage that devastated the families of police officers and of others he killed.

Police believe Dorner went on a 10-day killing rampage of revenge against law enforcement officials whom he blamed for his 2009 firing from the force. Dorner is thought to have killed Riverside Police Officer Michael Crain; San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Jeremiah MacKay; Monica Quan, the daughter of a retired LAPD captain; and Quan's fiance, Keith Lawrence.

More than 25 donors pledged reward money, including state and local police unions, civic organizations and individuals. But now, many are hesitating to follow through.

"I've spoken with some groups — including a few that are substantial — that have already decided to withdraw their pledges," said Ron Cottingham, president of the 64,000-member union Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which has placed its own pledge on hold pending additional information. "They said the reward doesn't fit their criteria."

The LAPD, responding to the arguments donors make publicly, says the money should be paid. LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said that to deny someone the reward because Dorner died before he could be put on trial "would be disingenuous" and would undermine future attempts by police to get information about unsolved crimes by offering rewards.

Much of the confusion surrounding the conditions of the reward began with the language Villaraigosa used in his announcement. Donors specified that the money they pledged was for Dorner's arrest and conviction. But Villaragoisa broadened it to "capture" in his public remarks — and that word could be interpreted to include being surrounded in a cabin before committing suicide.

Later in the news conference announcing the reward, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said pointedly: "For those of you with questions about how the reward works: The reward is for the capture and the conviction."

Further clouding the issue is the language of a written statement the LAPD issued saying the reward was "for information leading to the apprehension and conviction" of Dorner. The department recently proposed replacing that phrase with "identification and capture." State and local law enforcement unions that pledged money rejected the change.

LAPD officials said a group of detectives investigating the Dorner case will make a recommendation to the donors regarding whether certain people were instrumental in catching Dorner and how much money they deserve.

Tyler Izen, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which also had pledged money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Dorner, said his organization "is waiting for additional information from the LAPD about the incident before determining whether to pay the reward."

Vicki Curry, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said money for a reward was solicited before any decisions were made about terms or conditions. "It came together fairly quickly over that weekend in the midst of the chaos, and now we've got to figure it out," Curry said.

Curry, who said she was unaware of any turmoil among the donor group, said that even if some donors do back away from their commitments to contribute to the reward, the $1-million total will not be lowered. She reiterated a contention that Beck made when the reward was announced — that additional donors had pushed the amount collected to more than $1 million — and said the extra money would be used to cover funds promised by donors that back out. "There will be a $1-million reward," Curry said.

Rewards have been a fixture of the American system of justice since the 1800s. When detectives hit dead ends, a cash incentive may be the only way to solve crimes.

In the Dorner case, information was delivered Feb. 12 in a 911 call made by Karen Reynolds, who, along with her husband, Jim, had been taken captive briefly at their Mountain View Resort before Dorner stole their car.

Before leaving, Dorner warned the couple not to call police. Reynolds did it anyway.

Shortly afterward, Dorner crashed their car, and Rick Heltebrake, a Boy Scout camp ranger, called a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy to report that his pickup had been hijacked.

The Reynoldses' claim, filed by their attorney, Kirk M. Hallam, says their information was immediately radioed to law enforcement officers in the Big Bear Lake area. State Fish and Wildlife wardens soon identified the Reynoldses' purple Nissan being driven by Dorner on California Highway 38, about 20 miles away, according to the claim.

The Reynoldses support their argument with a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department press release, which says, in part, that after Reynolds' call, "deputies immediately began a search on ground and from the air for the vehicle [the purple Nissan]. The vehicle was located at Highway 38 and Glass Road."

In an interview, Hallam added, "When the mayor announced the reward offer, he just said, 'captured.' So, in terms of the $1-million reward, the offer did not include conviction." In addition, state law allows a reward to be paid if an arrest or conviction is rendered impossible by the death of a suspect during a pursuit by law enforcement.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Heltebrake's claim, filed on his behalf by attorney Allen L. Thomas, says that shortly after his client called, Dorner was cornered by authorities at the cabin where he died.

Heltebrake said in his claim that he was driving along a mountain road when Dorner jumped out of a snow bank and pointed a firearm at him. He says Dorner ordered him out of the white pickup and used it to continue fleeing.

Heltebrake's call "notified law enforcement of Mr. Dorner's location, provided a description of the vehicle he was fleeing in and was the substantial factor in the capture of Mr. Dorner at the cabin location," according to his claim.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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Bearing up in Glendale: Another bruin takes to the city

Just as the memory of "Meatball," Glendale's favorite bear, may be fading, it appears a new bruin has taken to the city.

And this black bear — described as 3 to 4 feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds — has a fondness for hummingbird sugar water and a taste for honey. This dietary insight is based on its snacking habits during multiple visits over the course of at least six months to the Chevy Chase Canyon neighborhood.

In some cases, the bear has knocked down hummingbird feeders hanging as high as 8 feet off the ground.

"I was kind of surprised another bear is back," said resident Suzanne Whitman, whose bird feeder was knocked down about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday at her home on Chevy Chase Drive. The bear, she said, visited her home twice last year.

The bear may also be responsible for destroying Herbert Harder's small backyard apiary, which contained seven beehives that he had maintained for 30 years. Harder hasn't replaced the hives and isn't entirely sure he wants to take the risk.

It took only three visits for the bear to decimate Harder's honey crop and population of bees, he said. But the bear's fourth visit was the most devastating, since it tore apart several hives and sent others rolling down a steep hillside.

Harder's hummingbird feeders also found themselves on the bear's menu.

According to residents, the bear visited the Chevy Chase Canyon neighborhood at least seven times last year, including a foray into a trash bin for chicken, rice and baklava.

Other trash runs, door-pawing and sunbathing sightings have prompted police responses, including a helicopter search and the use of air horns and floodlights.

After spending winter in their dens, bears typically leave their hide-outs around spring and begin foraging for food, said Kevin Brennan, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A bear usually starts feeding on grass, but an urban bear may yearn for something a little tastier — and fattier.

Human garbage, Brennan said, is higher in protein fat than a bear's natural diet, making the human food irresistible.

"Bears are smart animals and they go back to those sources," Brennan said.

With a very acute sense of smell, bears will go virtually anywhere and put up with almost anything to reach a source of tasty food, he said.

Though state wildlife officials were aware of a bear's past visits to the Chevy Chase Canyon area, they had not received any recent reports, Brennan said. Still, he added, "they are creatures of habit."

Harder said he wants the bear to be trapped and relocated just like Meatball, who was moved earlier this year to an animal sanctuary in San Diego County after twice being relocated deep within Angeles National Forest.

"He is going to stay here until he destroys everything or hurts someone," Harder said.

The gender of the bear has yet to be verified.

But trapping and relocating doesn't work, Brennan said, noting Meatball's persistence.

"The issue is not the bears. The issue is improper storage of garbage," he said.

Whitman, a neighborhood watch block captain, has urged neighbors to cover their trash bins and to keep small children and animals inside at night.

In her 25 years of living in the canyon, she said she has never before had visits from a bear.

"It's a little too much nature," Whitman said.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

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Email tax may slice spam and scams out of inboxes

SACRAMENTO — The most courageous politician in California — probably the nation — is a Berkeley city councilman, Gordon Wozniak. His gutsy act: proposing that the government tax email.

Yes, sacrosanct, time-gobbling, out-of-control email.

"I got a lot of nasty emails nationally," he says.

"You are making Berkeley look really silly," one person wrote. Another called him "the epitome of a communist — you and all your commy liberal idiots."

Wozniak, however, is certified brainy — a retired nuclear scientist, a futurist who, he admits, may be ahead of his time about taxing email. "It's a real uphill battle."

But a battle worth waging.

Wozniak, 59, suggested taxing email during a recent council meeting as the city went on record opposing the sale of the Berkeley main post office and urging the Postal Service to maintain all its services there.

Postal officials have announced plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays starting in August. Email and online billing have reduced the feasibility of — and need for — six-day snail mail delivery, they say.

An email tax — as part of a broader Internet tax — could raise money to help keep the Postal Service afloat, Wozniak told the council.

"There should be something like a bit tax," he said. "I mean, a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would make, probably, billions of dollars a year.... And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email."

I don't know about taxing gigabits. I'm not even sure what they are.

But email I'm as familiar with as a nagging toothache. I spend way too much of my day, as do many workers who depend on computers, hitting the delete key or — even more time-consuming — routing spam into the junk file and trying to block out the arrogant sender forever.

Often the email is in a foreign language that's all Greek to me. Or it's spinning me on some Atlantic Coast congressional race that is of no interest whatsoever. I'm also not in the market for awnings or pet food or a "tactical robot." And, no, I really don't care about the "Amway Boycott" or that "the National Farmers Union Endorses Raw Milk."

So leave me alone. And stop clogging my inbox.

There also are the scam scum. No, I wasn't aware that I had just won the $25-million online lottery and the check would be sent as soon as I turn over my personal info. Nor am I interested in the woman who wants to "share her love."

You get the idea. I'm not nearly as concerned about keeping snail mail afloat as fending off these spammers and scammers and denying them free access to my work station. Make them pay. Maybe it'll be a deterrent.

If the Postal Service were to receive the tax money, fine.

Or it could be used to place a laptop on every school kid's desk. Or blanket the country with Wi-Fi. Or combat Chinese hackers. Maybe chase after scammers.

Or just to help replace the tax revenue lost by technology putting people out of work. That was the idea of the Canadian economist — Wozniak's inspiration — who first raised the notion of a bit tax back in 1997 in a speech at Harvard Law School.

"Needed: new taxes for a new economy," asserted Arthur J. Cordell, then an information technology advisor for the Canadian government. "The new wealth of nations is to be found in the trillions of digital bits of information pulsing through global networks….

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Excavating a future in Afghanistan

TAGHAR, Afghanistan — In a rugged valley outside Kabul, where mud-walled villages blend into bare scrubland, a team of international mining experts and Afghan trainees set up camp over the winter to probe the region's mineral resources.

Protected by armed guards, they spent three months drilling test holes into the snowcapped peaks, as curious goat- and sheepherders looked on.

"We hit copper damn near everywhere," said Robert Miller, a Colorado-based mining executive recruited by the Pentagon to help advise Afghan authorities on how to develop the country's natural resources. "It's a very encouraging finding."

Studies have found that Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest and most war-torn countries, sits atop hydrocarbon and mineral deposits that could be worth more than a trillion dollars. The Afghan government and its U.S. backers are counting on this largely untapped wealth — including oil, gas, copper, iron, gold and lithium — to bring in cash and create jobs as international assistance begins to wind down.

"Afghanistan needs to develop its geology," said Najibullah Rochi, a 24-year-old geophysicist with the Afghanistan Geological Survey who was getting his first field experience at the Taghar deposit in what is known as the North Aynak mineral zone. "We need jobs and salaries. This is the way."

But industry experts caution that it will take many years and billions of dollars to build the power plants, railway lines and other infrastructure needed to extract and transport commodities from the country's mountainous terrain. Moreover, many of the mineral deposits are in the south and east of Afghanistan, where the Islamist insurgency is strongest.

Afghanistan's first attempts to develop a modern mining industry have been plagued by security threats and rumors of corruption, underscoring the difficulty the country is likely to face in unlocking its mineral riches.

Miller said he had no doubt about the country's potential.

"In my opinion, Afghanistan could replace Chile as the largest exporter of copper," he said. "Can they put it together? That's the trillion-dollar question."

Managed poorly, Afghanistan's mineral riches could instead become a source of more conflict and graft, another example of the "resource curse" that has afflicted countries such as Angola, Cambodia and Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Bank estimates that 97% of Afghanistan's economy is tied to international military and donor spending. Although the United States and other major donors have pledged not to abandon the country, they are tired of government corruption and have economic difficulties of their own. Support for Afghanistan could fall sharply after most foreign forces leave by the end of next year.

Afghanistan's natural resources appear to represent the country's best hope for self-sufficiency. A report prepared by the Pentagon in 2010, based on research by the U.S. Geological Survey, identified mineral and oil reserves worth nearly $1 trillion. Afghan authorities called that estimate conservative and put the figure at $3 trillion.

They hope to sell the development rights to many of the deposits to international mining companies.

A $3-billion agreement was reached in 2008 with a Chinese consortium to develop a copper deposit in Logar province, south of Taghar. Negotiations are underway with companies in India and Canada for rights to one of the world's largest iron ore deposits, in Bamian province. The government is also completing contracts for major copper, gold and oil concessions.

Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan's minister of mines, said the mining and petroleum sectors could bring in as much as $1.5 billion in annual government revenue, create 150,000 jobs and contribute $5 billion to the economy annually by 2016.

"Not in your wildest dreams," Miller said; it could take 10 to 15 years for major projects to be readied.

Afghans have engaged in small-scale "artisanal" mining for centuries, but the country does not have large commercial operations.

Major construction has not started at the Mes Aynak deposit south of Taghar, a joint venture by the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corp., or MCC, and Jiangxi Copper Co. The site holds ancient Buddhist ruins and artifacts. Archaeologists were given until the end of last year to salvage what they could. But in an interview with The Times, Shahrani said mining would not be allowed to begin until he received clearance from the Ministry of Information and Culture, which he expects by May.

Another reason for the delay is that several villages must be relocated, MCC said in its latest earnings report.

Last month, the government celebrated the completion of a mosque, schools and other infrastructure at a planned relocation site for displaced villagers. But Mullah Sharbat Ahmadzai, a local elder who sits on a community advisory council for the project, said residents who vacated their homes years ago were still waiting for jobs and for land to rebuild on. Now others don't want to cooperate.

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Olen Burrage dies at 82; suspect in slayings of Mississippi civil rights workers

Olen Burrage, a farmer and Ku Klux Klan member who owned the Mississippi land where the bullet-riddled bodies of three civil rights workers were found buried in the 1960s, has died. He was 82.

Burrage, who was acquitted on civil rights charges related to the murders, died March 15 at a medical center in Meridian, Miss., the McClain-Hays Funeral Home announced. The cause was not released.

The Ku Klux Klan slaying became one of the most infamous episodes of the civil rights era and led to the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices that kept African Americans from voting.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013

When the state refused to bring murder charges, the federal government stepped in. The FBI dubbed the investigation "Mississippi Burning," which was later used as the title of a 1988 movie loosely based on the crime.

The murdered men — Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner — all in their early 20s, were freshly trained in voter-registration techniques when they drove into Philadelphia, Miss., on June 20, 1964.

When they were arrested the next day by the sheriff and released after dark, their station wagon was overtaken by a group of men on a rural road. The three workers were severely beaten before they died.

When their bodies were found under an earthen dam on his property, Burrage said he had no idea who would have wanted to kill the young men or how the bodies got there, according to a 1964 article in The Times.

But a 1964 confession to the FBI by Klansman Horace Doyle Barnette, who was convicted in the killings, contradicted that account.

Barnette said Klansmen drove the bodies to a remote location in a 1963 Ford station wagon and met up with Burrage, who directed them to the dam on his farmland.

"Burrage got a glass gallon jug and filled it with gasoline to be used to burn the 1963 Ford" used to transport the bodies, according to Barnette. He also said Burrage proposed using one of his trucking company's diesel trucks to pick up the men who would carry out the burning because "no one will suspect a truck on the road" so late at night.

An FBI agent read Barnette's confession to the jury during the 1967 trial of Burrage and 17 other men on charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the three dead men. Burrage was one of eight men acquitted.

The jury deadlocked on charges against a local minister, Edgar Ray Killen, accused of orchestrating the killings. He was charged again in 2005 with killing the three men and convicted on three counts of manslaughter by a state court. Killen is serving a 60-year prison sentence.

Civil rights groups, family members of the victims and other groups have continued to push Mississippi to pursue criminal charges against the original suspects in state court. But they are running out of time. Among the original 18 indicted, only Pete Harris — identified in testimony as a Klan leader — is still alive.

An informant had told the FBI that Burrage had bragged in the days before the killings that his dam would hold plenty of "invading" civil rights workers — a piece of information that caused observers to speculate that retrying Burrage provided the best chance of another conviction in the case.

Norma Bourdeaux, who was on the federal grand jury that indicted Burrage in the 1960s, told the Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss., that she believed he was guilty.

"A man who has a piece of property doesn't generally have people come in, take a bulldozer and bury three bodies under a dam," she said, "unless he knows about it."

Olen Lavelle Burrage was born March 16, 1930, in Neshoba County, Miss., and lived most of his life there.

In the 1950s, he served in the Marines as a truck mechanic and later began a successful trucking business, which he sold in 1990.

Burrage is survived by his wife of 62 years, Ruth; three children; four siblings; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

news.obits@latimes.com

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Excavating a future in Afghanistan

TAGHAR, Afghanistan — In a rugged valley outside Kabul, where mud-walled villages blend into bare scrubland, a team of international mining experts and Afghan trainees set up camp over the winter to probe the region's mineral resources.

Protected by armed guards, they spent three months drilling test holes into the snowcapped peaks, as curious goat- and sheepherders looked on.

"We hit copper damn near everywhere," said Robert Miller, a Colorado-based mining executive recruited by the Pentagon to help advise Afghan authorities on how to develop the country's natural resources. "It's a very encouraging finding."

Studies have found that Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest and most war-torn countries, sits atop hydrocarbon and mineral deposits that could be worth more than a trillion dollars. The Afghan government and its U.S. backers are counting on this largely untapped wealth — including oil, gas, copper, iron, gold and lithium — to bring in cash and create jobs as international assistance begins to wind down.

"Afghanistan needs to develop its geology," said Najibullah Rochi, a 24-year-old geophysicist with the Afghanistan Geological Survey who was getting his first field experience at the Taghar deposit in what is known as the North Aynak mineral zone. "We need jobs and salaries. This is the way."

But industry experts caution that it will take many years and billions of dollars to build the power plants, railway lines and other infrastructure needed to extract and transport commodities from the country's mountainous terrain. Moreover, many of the mineral deposits are in the south and east of Afghanistan, where the Islamist insurgency is strongest.

Afghanistan's first attempts to develop a modern mining industry have been plagued by security threats and rumors of corruption, underscoring the difficulty the country is likely to face in unlocking its mineral riches.

Miller said he had no doubt about the country's potential.

"In my opinion, Afghanistan could replace Chile as the largest exporter of copper," he said. "Can they put it together? That's the trillion-dollar question."

Managed poorly, Afghanistan's mineral riches could instead become a source of more conflict and graft, another example of the "resource curse" that has afflicted countries such as Angola, Cambodia and Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Bank estimates that 97% of Afghanistan's economy is tied to international military and donor spending. Although the United States and other major donors have pledged not to abandon the country, they are tired of government corruption and have economic difficulties of their own. Support for Afghanistan could fall sharply after most foreign forces leave by the end of next year.

Afghanistan's natural resources appear to represent the country's best hope for self-sufficiency. A report prepared by the Pentagon in 2010, based on research by the U.S. Geological Survey, identified mineral and oil reserves worth nearly $1 trillion. Afghan authorities called that estimate conservative and put the figure at $3 trillion.

They hope to sell the development rights to many of the deposits to international mining companies.

A $3-billion agreement was reached in 2008 with a Chinese consortium to develop a copper deposit in Logar province, south of Taghar. Negotiations are underway with companies in India and Canada for rights to one of the world's largest iron ore deposits, in Bamian province. The government is also completing contracts for major copper, gold and oil concessions.

Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan's minister of mines, said the mining and petroleum sectors could bring in as much as $1.5 billion in annual government revenue, create 150,000 jobs and contribute $5 billion to the economy annually by 2016.

"Not in your wildest dreams," Miller said; it could take 10 to 15 years for major projects to be readied.

Afghans have engaged in small-scale "artisanal" mining for centuries, but the country does not have large commercial operations.

Major construction has not started at the Mes Aynak deposit south of Taghar, a joint venture by the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corp., or MCC, and Jiangxi Copper Co. The site holds ancient Buddhist ruins and artifacts. Archaeologists were given until the end of last year to salvage what they could. But in an interview with The Times, Shahrani said mining would not be allowed to begin until he received clearance from the Ministry of Information and Culture, which he expects by May.

Another reason for the delay is that several villages must be relocated, MCC said in its latest earnings report.

Last month, the government celebrated the completion of a mosque, schools and other infrastructure at a planned relocation site for displaced villagers. But Mullah Sharbat Ahmadzai, a local elder who sits on a community advisory council for the project, said residents who vacated their homes years ago were still waiting for jobs and for land to rebuild on. Now others don't want to cooperate.

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In Baghdad, Kerry urges a halt to Iran-Syria flights

BAGHDAD – Secretary of State John Kerry began an unannounced trip to Iraq on Sunday to urge the government to halt the Iranian supply of arms and fighters through its airspace to Syria, and to implore it to share more power with its alienated Sunni population.

Kerry, in the first trip as top diplomat to the Arab state, met with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Parliament Speaker Osama Nujayfyi, and was scheduled to speak by telephone to Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government.

Ten years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the country is teetering between prosperity and a possible explosive new confrontation between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. U.S. officials see the country as key to the fortunes of the broader Middle East, but their influence on it has ebbed as U.S. troops have departed and aid has declined.

Topping Kerry's agenda is the flow of Iranian arms and fighters, which is helping Syrian President Bashar Assad remain in power. A senior administration official said before the meeting that Kerry would be "very direct" with Maliki about the need to stop the overflights, or at a minimum to begin inspecting the cargoes.

While Iraqi officials have maintained that the flights carry humanitarian supplies, the volume of flights suggests that "they can't possible be only humanitarian flights," the official told reporters.

The administration is facing congressional pressure to punish the Iraqi government for its unwillingness to halt the arms flow. During a hearing last week, U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford heard a call from House members for the United States to impose "consequences" on the Iraqi government.

But the administration official said that it is not trying to sway Maliki with threats but with promises that Iraq will be better able to influence events in Syria if it joins world powers in trying to negotiate creation of a new order in Syria.

Iraqi officials, however, fear that if Sunni fighters are able to topple Assad, the next target may be their regime. They have resisted calls from a lengthening list of U.S. officials on the overflight issue.

Kerry and Maliki shared a joke before their meeting about the influence of American leaders.

Kerry joked that his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, had told him "you're going to do everything I say."

Maliki shot back though the translator: "We won't do it."

Following the meeting, Kerry told reporters that he had had a "spirited" discussion with Maliki on the issue.

He said he planned to provide the Iraqis more information to bolster the U.S. position. But he gave no sign that Maliki relented.

Kerry warned that Congress and ordinary Americans are struggling to understand how Iraq, a recipient of billions in U.S. aid, would work against it on Syria.

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Most Californians favor citizenship path for illegal immigrants

In a dramatic reversal, California voters now see undocumented workers as a positive economic force in the state — and they overwhelmingly favor allowing a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants in the country.

Only 19% of California voters in a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll said those in the country illegally should be required to leave the United States. About two-thirds of survey respondents said illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay with eventual citizenship rights. An additional 10% said they should be permitted to remain in this country to work but should not be allowed to apply for citizenship.

At a time when the push for immigration reform has gained momentum in Washington, more than two-thirds of California voters say the current immigration system isn't working and nearly three-quarters favor President Obama's plan to change it, the poll found.

RELATED: Is the border secure?

Across different ages and ethnic groups, voters were largely supportive of the measures outlined by Obama and a bipartisan group of senators, including enhancing border security, requiring employers to verify the legal status of their employees and permitting certain undocumented workers to become citizens as long as they pay taxes and fines and are processed behind those who come legally.

Though Obama's association with the proposal made it less palatable to some Republicans, a slender majority of GOP voters in the state said they backed the president's plan — a finding that, along with the drubbing their party took from Latino voters last fall, helps to illustrate why Republicans have grown more comfortable aligning themselves with citizenship for illegal immigrants.

"There's really not much of a debate in California about immigration anymore, and there may not even be a national debate," said Drew Lieberman of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic firm that conducted the poll with the Republican firm American Viewpoint. "It's no longer a partisan or racial issue for Californians."

The state's voters have long held more moderate views on immigration than voters in other parts of the country, in part because of California's burgeoning Latino population. But the poll results illustrated that, even here, views about illegal immigrants have changed notably.

In 2010, when pollsters asked about the effect of illegal immigrants on the California economy, 48% of respondents said their effect was negative and 40% said it was positive. In the latest survey, only 36% said their impact was negative, and 53% said it was positive — a "huge shift," Lieberman said, that spanned all age groups and could not be explained simply by the surging population of Latinos in the state.

Part of what appears to be driving that change are the personal connections that many California voters have formed with illegal immigrants. Latinos were more likely than whites to know one — a majority of Latinos described that person as either a friend or family member — and among all voters who knew any, only 8% said illegal immigrants should be forced to leave the country.

"That tells me that immigration reform is really about la familia, especially for Hispanics, but even white voters can kind of understand that," said Dave Kanevsky, the research director at American Viewpoint.

And that familiarity has affected views across political lines. Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, noted that California Republicans live in a much more multicultural society than party members elsewhere, "so the lives they live every day and the people they see are probably the main reason that their feelings are different than their national counterparts'."

That has been the case for 33-year-old Fresno Republican Chris Leake, who said the friendships he developed with undocumented workers in the U.S. and while doing volunteer work in Mexico have made him more inclined to support a path to citizenship.

"I understand why they come up here illegally — I don't agree with it, per se, but I understand why," said Leake, who works in Internet marketing. For many workers, he said, "it was extremely expensive and they ran great personal risk to do it, but they did it because they felt like they needed the income."

Leake, along with 73% of poll respondents, said he would favor the inclusion of a guest worker program in any new immigration package, which he said "would start to solve the problem."

"There's a significant percentage that want nothing more than to come up here, earn money for a time and then go back to Mexico," Leake said. "Instead they stay for years at a time, because it's so hard to get up here in the first place. And that's having devastating effects on their families."

Julie Rapoza, a 54-year-old Democrat from Manteca, said her brushes with illegal immigrants have had the opposite effect. The number of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, she said, has hardened her view that most undocumented workers should be required to return home — a view that puts her at odds with most in her party.

At the same time, however, Rapoza said she believed illegal immigrants had a beneficial effect on California's economy. "A lot of them do jobs that even unemployed citizens won't do," said Rapoza, who favors an expansive guest worker program. Otherwise, employers "would be paying an arm and a leg to get workers to do it and that would make prices go way up."

Other poll respondents said they felt it would be impossible to deport an estimated 11 million immigrants.

"We don't have any choice," said James Scoville, a 67-year-old independent voter, when asked whether he favored giving illegal immigrants a way to become citizens. "Some of them have been here 20, 30, 40 years and have jobs and houses and everything else. Create a path for them, put them at the bottom of the list. I think that's pretty much the only sensible thing to do."

Some demographic differences were evident: White voters were more likely than Latinos to support stricter border security measures and requiring employers to verify, under threat of fines, that all employees are legal. Still, a majority of Latinos backed both those ideas.

But white respondents were nearly as supportive of a path to citizenship as Latino voters — 81% and 86% respectively. Not surprisingly, Democrats were the most supportive of all. In the survey, 88% said they favored creating that path, compared with 76% of Republicans and 83% of decline-to-state voters.

The poll, which interviewed 1,501 registered voters by telephone, was conducted March 11-17 for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times. The survey has an overall margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, with a higher margin of error for subgroups.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

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Generating stunning visual effects, but not enough revenue

This should be a golden age for visual effects in movies. Thanks to the box office success of movies such as "The Avengers" and "Life of Pi," demand for visual effects has never been greater. Studios are spending $100 million or more to put ever more stunning digital images on the big screen.

But the companies that create the computer-generated imagery for those blockbusters are struggling as a rising tide of globalization and runaway production takes a toll on an industry that California pioneered.

In a dramatic sign of the malaise, the preeminent effects house Rhythm & Hues of El Segundo laid off 250 workers and filed for bankruptcy protection last month just days before it received an Oscar for its work on "Life of Pi," which relied heavily on digital effects.

ON LOCATION: Where the cameras roll

Coming on the heels of a bankruptcy filing by Digital Domain, an industry-leading effects house co-founded by "Titanic" and "Avatar" director James Cameron, the travails of Rhythm & Hues have sent shock waves through the industry, sparking protests outside the Academy Awards ceremony.

In all, about a dozen visual effects studios, many in California, have shut down or filed for bankruptcy in the last five years, putting hundreds of skilled high-tech employees out of work.

"We should be celebrating at this moment, but unfortunately it seems like we're in the gutter looking for coins," Scott Squires, a veteran visual effects artist and supervisor, said in a recent online forum on the state of the industry. "The bankruptcy filing by Rhythm & Hues shows something is really out of whack and out of balance with our industry."

Other smaller companies that in the past have relied on small chunks of work that the big effects houses farmed out also are teetering.

"We had the worst year we've ever had last year, and this year is not shaping up to be a whole lot better," said Mark Dornfeld, owner of Custom Film Effects, a small Burbank company founded in 1999, where half of a 12-person staff is on reduced hours because work is so slow.

"It used to be we didn't have to go search for work, it just landed on our door," Dornfeld said. "We've been told by studios, 'We're sorry, we have to bid this offshore.'"

Many local businesses are being outbid for studio projects by foreign rivals who can take advantage of low-cost labor in Asia or tap into film tax subsidies offered in Canada, Britain and New Zealand.

Rhythm & Hues cited film subsidies as key to its mounting losses, which totaled $22.5 million in 2012. Founded in 1987, the venerable studio was one of the first to open offices in India and recently opened a facility in Vancouver, which has a specific credit for visual effects work, as well as Taiwan, where "Life of Pi" was filmed.

But the expansion didn't occur fast enough, said Lee Berger, president of the film division for Rhythm & Hues.

PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments

"We expanded into Vancouver too late and we didn't expand into Asia fast enough," Berger said. "Subsidies are an important piece of the puzzle. If we can't stay competitive with Montreal, Vancouver or London, then we will fall by the wayside."

The Visual Effects Society recently demanded that Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers expand California's film tax credit, which excludes large-budget movies, calling the current credit "woefully inadequate."

"The amazing irony is that while 47 of the top 50 films of all time are visual effects-driven and billions of dollars of profits are generated yearly, the actual people who create the work are becoming an endangered species in California," VES Director Eric Roth wrote in a recent open letter to the industry. "Hollywood, the birthplace of all this art and commerce, is quickly becoming the land where creative dreams die on the vine and pink slips for dispossessed artists are being issued at an alarming rate."

Global competition is not just in the form of subsidies. Indian companies, long a source of outsourcing in animation and visual effects, also are planting stakes in Hollywood, using digital pipelines to farm out labor-intensive work to India, where labor costs are as much as 60% cheaper.

Prime Focus, one of India's leading visual effects companies — which acquired New York-based Post Logic Studios and Frantic Films' visual effects offices in L.A., Vancouver and Winnipeg, Canada — has opened a large office in Hollywood and placed a bid for Rhythm & Hues. Prime Focus has done effects and 3-D conversion work on such movies as "Clash of the Titans," "Star Wars" and "Men in Black 3."

Another India conglomerate, Reliance, also has stepped up its presence in Los Angeles. The company's post-production subsidiary joined with China's film and TV company Galloping Horse to acquire Digital Domain's Venice studio. Reliance previously acquired the Burbank digital film restoration company Lowry Digital.

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Musharraf tells supporters he has returned to save Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan — As former military ruler Pervez Musharraf stepped off the plane at Karachi's international airport Sunday, he returned to a very different nation from the one he was forced to leave in 2008 — one that has no interest in bringing back military rule, and has little if any appetite to give a onetime autocrat a major spotlight on the political stage.

His agenda in Pakistan includes leading his All Pakistan Muslim League party in contesting parliamentary elections slated for May 11. Pakistan's history is marred by military coups and political ousters, and the upcoming elections will mark the first time one civilian government has democratically handed over authority to another.

The 69-year-old former president and army chief arrived in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and its commercial capital, in the early afternoon after leaving Dubai. Though he faces criminal charges linked to the assassination of a former prime minister and the slaying of a Baloch nationalist leader, the most immediate peril confronting him is the Pakistani Taliban, which says it has assembled suicide bomb squads to assassinate him.

Greeting him at the airport was a small but vocal crowd of several hundred of supporters, many of them dancing and waving green flags and banners imprinted with his image. Musharraf's aides had expected tens of thousands of backers to show up at the airport. Later in the afternoon, he spoke to the crowd, portraying himself as a savior risking his life for the sake of his homeland.

"People said I wouldn't come back and would be afraid. But I fear only God," Musharraf told the crowd. "Risking my life, I have returned because people wanted me to come back and save Pakistan."

While he does have support from some Pakistanis deeply disillusioned by the lack of progress in the last five years under President Asif Ali Zardari, most analysts believe Musharraf's reputation is too damaged for him to make any kind of serious bid in the upcoming polls.

"I don't think he's going to be an important player in Pakistani politics," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani political analyst. "He's an articulate speaker, so he will always attract media attention. But he will be more visible on Pakistani television than in Pakistani elections."

Musharraf was then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's army chief of staff in 1999 when he ousted Sharif and seized power in a bloodless coup. Two years later, he appointed himself president while maintaining his role as army chief.

Musharraf stepped down from office in 2008 to avoid imminent impeachment proceedings. He had suspended the country's constitution in 2007 and jailed thousands of opponents in a bid to neutralize political adversaries, moves that backfired when opposition leaders won parliamentary elections in early 2008. Ruling coalition leaders later declared their intent to impeach Musharraf, and on Aug. 18, 2008, Musharraf left the presidential palace for the last time, saluted an honor guard, and departed in a black limousine.

Since then, he has split his time between London and Dubai, giving lectures to Western audiences while engineering his political comeback. At times, he has set dates for a return that he abandoned at the last moment.

Musharraf's backers insist the former president has widespread support within a population wearied by the daily power outages, corruption and rampant militancy that has characterized governance under Zardari.

"People see him as a genuine leader who can pull the country out of the prevailing system," said Chaudhry Shafiq, a senior All Pakistan Muslim League party leader. "People are fed up with the current system. They've suffered five years of looting."

The likelihood of his arrest diminished this week with a ruling from a Sindh provincial court granting him protective bail that effectively bars his detention for the next 10 days. Musharraf is wanted in Pakistan on charges that he did not provide enough security to prevent the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He also has been charged by Islamabad authorities in 2009 of illegally detaining 60 judges at their homes. And in the southern province of Balochistan, he faces charges that he ordered the killing of a Baloch nationalist leader in 2006.

While he could be summoned to court on each or all of those cases, analysts doubt that he will be jailed during the campaign season. Though the military has taken care to avoid any appearance of politically backing Musharraf, it also likely would take whatever steps needed to avoid the embarrassment of its former chief being put behind bars.

Staff writer Alex Rodriguez reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and special correspondent Kashif Farooqi reported from Karachi. Special correspondent Nasir Khan contributed from Islamabad, Pakistan.

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