Advice to California's GOP: Leave — or better yet, change

Memo to the California GOP:

Rough couple of weeks, huh?

First you found out that the number of registered Republicans in California has dipped below 30%, which means we are fast approaching the day when the entire state membership can fit into two golf carts.

To make matters worse, of the 1 million people who used a new online voter registration system this election cycle, only 20% registered as Republicans. And 60% of those who registered were under 35, which means your future's not looking great.

Then the dominoes really started to fall.

Gov. Brown's Proposition 30, the first general, statewide tax hike in two decades, passed so easily that the ghost of Howard Jarvis threw himself in front of a truck.

Proposition 32, an all-out attempt to defang public employee unions, got pummeled despite an infusion of last-minute anti-labor cash from Arizona.

What could be worse? I'll tell you what. In the state Legislature, Democrats won supermajorities in both houses. Do you know what that means? It's like handing your teenager a credit card, a checkbook and the car keys so he can drive to an all-night orgy.

Meanwhile, on the national front, two states said yes to recreational marijuana and three states said yes to same-sex marriage. And Mitt Romney proved that when your only loyal supporters are aging white men who still drive Buicks and watch "Matlock" reruns — in a country with an ever more diverse population — you're cooked.

It was a wipeout, a blitz, a disaster.

So now what?

Glad you asked, because as it happens, I've got some advice for the leaders and members of the California's shrinking Grand Old Party.

Your first option is to cut and run. Frankly, I regularly hear from Republicans who so despise California and everything it stands for, I'm surprised they keep subjecting themselves to so much misery. Wouldn't it be better to sell everything, pack up the station wagon and move to Georgia or Kentucky? They think, act and vote red in those states, and they probably hate California at least as much as you do.

But here's another option. You could sit tight here in the Golden State, wait for the Democrats to screw things up in Sacramento even more than they already have, and then raise your hand when the situation cries out for the voice of fiscal prudence.

The first thing you're going to have to do, though, is remake the GOP. And by that I mean that you have to get rid of the Neanderthals who dominate the party. Then you need to start grooming and promoting some common-sense fiscal moderates, provided you can locate any.

What do I mean by that?

If someone believes Barack Obama is a socialist, Communist, Marxist, Muslim, radical, black liberation theologian, non-citizen, illegitimate president or Manchurian Candidate, forget about him. He may have a shot at a career in talk radio, but he's not going to make it in California politics.

And you're not going to breathe new life into the GOP with someone who believes the answer to the state's problems is to deport a couple million Latinos, unless they're working in the garden at extremely low rates.

You should also nix anyone who believes that gay people have chosen a "lifestyle" in the way they might choose toothpaste or a pair of shoes, and can be "converted" with enough hard work and Bible study.

I know, I know. We're really thinning the field here. And I'm not even done.

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War photography exhibit debuts in Houston museum

HOUSTON (AP) — It was a moment Nina Berman did not expect to capture when she entered an Illinois wedding studio in 2006. She knew Tyler Ziegel had been horribly injured, his face mutilated beyond recognition by a suicide bombing in the Iraq War. She knew he was marrying his pretty high school sweetheart, perfect in a white, voluminous dress.

It was their expressions that were surprising.

"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.

"This was even more shocking because we're used to this kind of over-the-top joy that feels a little put on, and then you see this picture where they look like survivors of something really serious," Berman added.

The photograph that won a first place prize in the World Press Photos Award contest will stand out from other battlefield images in an exhibit "WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath" that debuts Sunday — Veterans Day — in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. From there, the exhibit will travel to The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and The Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The exhibit was painstakingly built by co-curators Anne Wilkes Tucker and Will Michels after the museum purchased a print of the famous picture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, taken Feb. 23, 1945, by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. The curators decided the museum didn't have enough conflict photos, Tucker said, and in 2004, the pair began traveling around the country and the world in search of pictures.

Over nearly eight years and after viewing more than 1 million pictures, Tucker and Michels created an exhibit that includes 480 objects, including photo albums, original magazines and old cameras, by 280 photographers from 26 countries.

Some are well-known — such as the Rosenthal's picture and another AP photograph, of a naked girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War taken in 1972 by Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut. Others, such as the Incinerated Iraqi, of a man's burned body seen through the shattered windshield of his car, will be new to most viewers.

"The point of all the photographs is that when a conflict occurs, it lingers," Tucker said.

The pictures hang on stark gray walls, and some are in small rooms with warning signs at the entrance designed to allow visitors to decide whether they want to view images that can be brutal in their honesty.

"It's something that we did to that man. Americans did it, we did it intentionally and it's a haunting picture," Michels said of the image of the burned Iraqi that hangs inside one of the rooms.

In some images, such as Don McCullin's picture of a U.S. Marine throwing a grenade at a North Vietnamese soldier in Hue, it is clear the photographer was in danger when immortalizing the moment. Looking at his image, McCullin recalled deciding to travel to Hue instead of Khe Sahn, as he had initially planned.

"It was the best decision I ever made," he said, smiling slightly as he looked at the picture, explaining that he took a risk by standing behind the Marine.

"This hand took a bullet, shattered it. It looked like a cauliflower," he said, pointing to the still-upraised hand that threw the grenade. "So the people he was trying to kill were trying to kill him."

McCullin, who worked at that time for The Sunday Times in London, has covered conflicts all over the world, from Lebanon and Israel to Biafra. Now 77, McCullin says he wonders, still, whether the hundreds of photos he's taken have been worthwhile. At times, he said, he lost faith in what he was doing because when one war ends, another begins.

Yet he believes journalists and photographers must never stop telling about the "waste of man in war."

"After seeing so much of it, I'm tired of thinking, 'Why aren't the people who rule our lives ... getting it?' " McCullin said, adding that he'd like to drag them all into the exhibit for an hour.

Berman didn't see the conflicts unfold. Instead, she waited for the wounded to come home, seeking to tell a story about war's aftermath.

Her project on the wounded developed in 2003. The Iraq War was at its height, and there was still no database, she said, to find names of wounded warriors returning home. So she scoured local newspapers on the Internet.

In 2004 she published a book called "Purple Hearts" that includes photographs taken over nine months of 20 different people. All were photographed at home, not in hospitals where, she said, "there's this expectation that this will all work out fine."

The curators, meanwhile, chose to tell the story objectively — refusing through the images they chose or the exhibit they prepared to take a pro- or anti-war stance, a decision that has invited criticism and sparked debate.

And maybe, that is the point.

___

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP

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Slipstream: Biometric Data-Gathering Sets Off a Privacy Debate

“PLEASE put your hand on the scanner,” a receptionist at a doctor’s office at New York University Langone Medical Center said to me recently, pointing to a small plastic device on the counter between us. “I need to take a palm scan for your file.”

I balked.

As a reporter who has been covering the growing business of data collection, I know the potential drawbacks — like customer profiling — of giving out my personal details. But the idea of submitting to an infrared scan at a medical center that would take a copy of the unique vein patterns in my palm seemed fraught.

The receptionist said it was for my own good. The medical center, she said, had recently instituted a biometric patient identification system to protect against identity theft.

I reluctantly stuck my hand on the machine. If I demurred, I thought, perhaps I’d be denied medical care.

Next, the receptionist said she needed to take my photo. After the palm scan, that seemed like data-collection overkill. Then an office manager appeared and explained that the scans and pictures were optional. Alas, my palm was already in the system.

No longer the province of security services and science-fiction films, biometric technology is on the march. Facebook uses facial-recognition software so its members can automatically put name tags on friends when they upload their photos. Apple uses voice recognition to power Siri. Some theme parks take digital fingerprints to help recognize season pass holders. Now some hospitals and school districts are using palm vein pattern recognition to identify and efficiently manage their patients or students — in effect, turning your palm into an E-ZPass.

But consumer advocates say that enterprises are increasingly employing biometric data to improve convenience — and that members of the public are paying for that convenience with their privacy.

Fingerprints, facial dimensions and vein patterns are unique, consumer advocates say, and should be treated as carefully as genetic samples. So collecting such information for expediency, they say, could increase the risks of serious identity theft. Yet companies and institutions that compile such data often fail to adequately explain the risks to consumers, they say.

“Let’s say someone makes a fake ID and goes in and has their photo and their palm print taken as you. What are you going to do when you go in?” said Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum, an advocacy group in San Diego. “Hospitals that are doing this are leaping over profound security issues that they are actually introducing into their systems.”

THE N.Y.U. medical center started researching biometric systems a few years ago in an effort to address several problems, said Kathryn McClellan, its vice president who is in charge of implementing its new electronic health records system. More than a million people in the New York area have the same or similar names, she said, creating a risk that medical personnel might pull up the wrong health record for a patient. Another issue, she said, was that some patients had multiple records from being treated at different affiliates; N.Y.U. wanted an efficient way to consolidate them.

Last year, the medical center adopted photography and palm-scan technology so that each patient would have two unique identifying features. Now, Ms. McClellan said, each arriving patient has his or her palm scanned, allowing the system to automatically pull up the correct file.

“It’s a patient safety initiative,” Ms. McClellan said. “We felt like the value to the patient was huge.”

N.Y.U.’s system, called PatientSecure and marketed by HT Systems of Tampa, has already scanned more than 250,000 patients. In the United States, over five million patients have had the scans, said Charles Yanak, a spokesman for Fujitsu Frontech North America, a division of Fujitsu, the Japanese company that developed the vein palm identification technology.

Yet, unless patients at N.Y.U. seem uncomfortable with the process, Ms. McClellan said, medical registration staff members don’t inform them that they can opt out of photos and scans.

“We don’t have formal consent,” Ms. McClellan said in a phone interview last Tuesday.

That raises red flags for privacy advocates. “If they are not informing patients it is optional,” said Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University Law School with an expertise in data privacy, “then effectively it is coerced consent.”

He noted that N.Y.U. medical center has had recent incidents in which computers or USB drives containing unencrypted patient data have been lost or stolen, suggesting that the center’s collection of biometric data might increase patients’ risk of identity theft.

Ms. McClellan responded that there was little chance of identity theft because the palm scan system turned the vein measurements into encrypted strings of binary numbers and stored them on an N.Y.U. server that is separate from the one with patients’ health records. Even if there were a breach, she added, the data would be useless to hackers because a unique key is needed to decode the number strings. As for patients’ photos, she said, they are attached to their medical records.

Still, Arthur Caplan, the director of the division of medical ethics at the N.Y.U. center, recommended that hospitals do a better job of explaining biometric ID systems to patients. He himself recently had an appointment at the N.Y.U. center, he recounted, and didn’t learn that the palm scan was optional until he hesitated and asked questions.

“It gave me pause,” Dr. Caplan said. “It would be useful to put up a sign saying ‘We are going to take biometric information which will help us track you through the system. If you don’t want to do this, please see’ ” an office manager.

Other institutions that use PatientSecure, however, have instituted opt-in programs for patients.

At the Duke University Health System, patients receive brochures explaining their options, said Eliana Owens, the health system’s director of patient revenue. The center also trains staff members at registration desks to read patients a script about the opt-in process for the palm scans, she said. (Duke does not take patients’ photos.)

“They say: ‘The enrollment is optional. If you choose not to participate, we will continue to ask you for your photo ID on subsequent visits,’ ” Ms. Owens said.

Consent or not, some leading identity experts see little value in palm scans for patients right now. If medical centers are going to use patients’ biometric data for their own institutional convenience, they argue, the centers should also enhance patient privacy — by, say, permitting lower-echelon medical personnel to look at a person’s medical record only if that patient is present and approves access by having a palm scanned.

Otherwise, “you are enabling another level of danger,” said Joseph Atick, a pioneer in biometric identity systems who consults for governments, “instead of using the technology to enable another level of privacy.”

At my request, N.Y.U. medical center has deleted my palm print.

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.

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Canada looks to lure energy workers from the U.S.

EDMONTON, Canada — With a daughter to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit pipe fitter Scott Zarembski boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to this industrial capital city.

He'd heard there was work in western Canada. Turns out he'd heard right. Within days he was wearing a hard hat at a Shell oil refinery 15 miles away in Fort Saskatchewan. Within six months he had earned almost $50,000. That was 2009. And he's still there.

"If you want to work, you can work," said Zarembski, 45. "And it's just getting started."

U.S. workers, Canada wants you.

Here in the western province of Alberta, energy companies are racing to tap the region's vast deposits of oil sands. Canada is looking to double production by the end of the decade. To do so it will have to lure more workers — tens of thousands of them — to this cold and sparsely populated place. The weak U.S. recovery is giving them a big assist.

Canadian employers are swarming U.S. job fairs, advertising on radio and YouTube and using headhunters to lure out-of-work Americans north. California, with its 10.2% unemployment rate, has become a prime target. Canadian recruiters are headed to a job fair in the Coachella Valley next month to woo construction workers idled by the housing meltdown.

The Great White North might seem a tough sell with winter coming on. But the Canadians have honed their sales pitch: free universal healthcare, good pay, quality schools, retention bonuses and steady work.

"California has a lot of workers and we hope they come up," said Mike Wo, executive director of the Edmonton Economic Development Corp.

The U.S. isn't the only place Canada is looking for labor. In Alberta, which is expecting a shortage of 114,000 skilled workers by 2021, provincial officials have been courting English-speaking tradespeople from Ireland, Scotland and other European nations. Immigrants from the Philippines, India and Africa have found work in services. But some employers prefer Americans because they adapt quickly, come from a similar culture and can visit their homes more easily.

Since 2010, about 35,000 U.S. workers a year have been issued work permits, according to Canadian immigration statistics. That's up 13% from earlier in the decade. And that figure is expected to grow as provinces continue to loosen requirements for temporary foreign workers.

Rudolf Kischer, a Vancouver-based immigration attorney, said his firm can hardly keep up with the processing of work permits for employers hiring U.S. help.

"We're the busiest we've ever been," he said.

Many of those workers are heading to where the labor market is hottest: Edmonton.

One of the fastest growing cities in Canada, this capital city owes its prosperity to the oil sands. Lying a few hours to the north, the sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen — a heavy, black, viscous petroleum — that must be mined and processed to extract the oil. Alberta's massive deposits, which rival the conventional crude oil reserves of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, are being developed at breakneck speed to meet the growing global demand for energy.

Edmonton has become a staging ground for oil companies that include Canada's Suncor Energy Inc., Shell Canada Ltd. and Chevron Canada Ltd. The energy sector has in turn boosted industries such as manufacturing, home building and retailing.

With a population of about 812,000, Edmonton looks a lot like many American cities. There are large strip malls anchored by U.S. retailers such as Costco and Home Depot, and ubiquitous coffee shops — except here Tim Horton's doughnut shops outnumber Starbucks 3 to 1.

The biggest difference: The unemployment rate here is 4.5%, and "We're Hiring" signs are posted in almost every window.

Moving to a city where the economy is firing on all cylinders was a sharp turn from struggling Motor City, Zarembski said.

Fat paychecks allowed him to ditch his battered Pontiac Grand Am for a late-model Dodge pickup truck. He has vacationed in the Dominican Republic and taken his 14-year-old daughter to Universal Studios in Florida. He's planning to buy a house in Edmonton's western suburbs soon.

With so much work available, Zarembski said, trade workers can afford to pick and choose. Jobs near Fort McMurray, a remote town six hours north, are the best-paid; a welder can make up $37 an hour. (At present Canadian and U.S. dollars are almost equivalent in value.) But laborers must stay in barracks-style camps, which energy companies have upgraded to woo them. The best ones offer private rooms with flat-screen TVs, gyms, prime dining and wireless Internet access.

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Bargains disappearing for distressed properties, Zillow says

Bargains on bank-owned homes are quickly vanishing in the country's most competitive markets.

Since the start of the mortgage meltdown, repossessed homes have been considered the discount aisles of real estate. Now competition among investors and first-time home buyers for affordable digs is making those distressed properties less affordable, a new analysis by Zillow.com shows.

"They will get somewhat of a deal, depending on the market," Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries said. "But, just generally, you are going to get less of a deal today than you would have gotten in late 2009 or early 2010."

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The shrinking discounts underscore how real estate has recovered this year as low interest rates and high affordability have sucked buyers back into the market. The number of for-sale homes has also fallen to levels not seen since the housing boom as foreclosures ease and homeowners — many who still owe more on their properties than they are worth — hold off on listing their houses for sale.

Zillow looked at sale prices of bank-owned homes and used a model to determine what that property would have brought if it had not been sold by a bank. In Las Vegas and Phoenix, for instance, a foreclosed home in September sold for the same price as a regular property.

Discounts were also marginal on bank-owned homes in the Inland Empire and the Sacramento region, 1.8% and 0.7%, respectively, according to the analysis. Both of these areas have grown increasingly competitive after being savaged by the housing bust. In the Los Angeles area, the foreclosure discount was 4.2% in September, Zillow said.

Certain Midwest and East Coast cities appeared to have the biggest foreclosure discounts. The Pittsburgh area had a discount of 27.4%, with Cleveland at 25.8%, Cincinnati 20.2% and Baltimore 20%.

Analysts figured the national foreclosure discount at just 7.7%. That's a big difference from the dog days of the housing bust, when people snapping up foreclosures could expect a discount of 23.7%, Zillow said.

Home shoppers looking for dime-store values now face a frustrating hunt. Gary K. Kruger, a real estate agent in Hemet, has seen buyers consistently bid on homes above the asking price and still struggle to make deals. One of his clients, a first-time buyer looking for a home in Vista, has bid on three properties — one a regular sale, one a bank-owned home and one a short sale — and lost each time.

Properties that are good for rentals or first-time buyers, along with properties priced in the lower-end of the move-up market, are "very, very hot," Kruger said.

"I have not had a successful person purchase a foreclosed home that was not an investor for months," he said. "Things are selling so quickly."

The story is similar in the Las Vegas region, said Keith Lynam, a real estate agent and chairman of the Nevada Assn. of Realtors' legislative committee. The number of foreclosed homes on the market in the Las Vegas area has dwindled to less than 300, compared with about 7,000 at its peak, Lynam said.

One of his clients, a potential buyer with a sizable down payment, has made half a dozen unsuccessful offers in the last six months.

"There is just zero inventory," Lynam said.

Experts are also revisiting the notion that foreclosed homes really drag down property values. A working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta published in August found that although the homes of troubled borrowers did drag down values of surrounding homes, the effects were small.

That paper also found that the worst declines occurred before the home was repossessed, indicating that the declines stemmed from people abandoning their homes or letting them fall into disrepair.

Sean O'Toole, a real estate investor and founder of the website ForeclosureRadar.com, agreed with the Zillow analysis. Previous studies failed to take into account the nature of most foreclosures and their geography, he said. Typically, and particularly during the last five years, foreclosures have been concentrated in more traditionally affordable areas. So comparing the median home price of all foreclosed homes during the bust with the median home price of non-foreclosed homes results in an apple-to-oranges comparison, he said.

"The results that Zillow got make perfect sense to me, because there is actually more demand for REO and foreclosures, because people believe they are a deal," O'Toole said, using shorthand for the term "real estate owned," which is how banks refer to the properties on their books. "There is more demand for those."

Michael Novak-Smith, a real estate agent in the Riverside area who specializes in listing foreclosures for banks, said the market has reached a frenzy few would have expected so soon after the bust. One bank-owned home he listed about two weeks ago in Fontana for $145,000 attracted 157 offers. The seller took an all-cash offer.

"That is really telling, because a lot of these buyers think they'll just go out and get a repo," Novak-Smith said. "But buyers need to come in strong with their best offers, because you will get beat right out. An entry-level house with 157 offers? That's just mind-boggling to me."

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

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Spotify to raise $100 million at $3 billion valuation – report

(Reuters) – Spotify is in the middle of a $ 100 million financing round that could value the music streaming company at just over $ 3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported citing sources.

The Journal said Spotify would raise the fresh capital from multiple investors including Goldman Sachs. The WSJ report did not name any other investors.

Spotify has raised capital from outside investors several times since it set up shop in 2006, and was earlier reported to have been looking to secure a capital boost of about $ 200 million, at a valuation of about $ 4 billion.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners and others have invested about $ 189 million in the company in its prior financing rounds.

The company has over 15 million active users and 4 million paying subscribers, for its on-demand service, which offers unlimited music streaming of some 18 million tracks.

(Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore)

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Madonna fan guilty in NYC resisting arrest trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A former firefighter with a crush on Madonna has been convicted of resisting arrest outside her former New York City apartment building as he spray-painted poster boards with love notes.

A jury delivered its verdict Friday in Robert Linhart's trial. He could face up to a year in jail.

Defense lawyer Lawrence LaBrew tells the New York Post (http://bit.ly/ZgI4jl) that Linhart will appeal.

Linhart was arrested in September 2010. Police say he parked his SUV outside the singer's Manhattan apartment, laid out a tarp and wrote out such messages as "Madonna, I need you."

Jurors told the Post they felt it was fine for Linhart to express himself to the Material Girl. But they said they believed police testimony that he resisted arrest by flailing his arms.

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Malaria Vaccine Candidate Produces Disappointing Results in Clinical Trial

The latest clinical trial of the world’s leading malaria vaccine candidate produced disappointing results on Friday. The infants it was given to had only about a third fewer infections than a control group.

But researchers said they wanted to press on, assuming they keep getting financial support, because the number of children who die of malaria is so great that even an inefficient vaccine can save thousands of lives.

Three shots of the vaccine, known as RTS, S or Mosquirix and produced by GlaxoSmithKline, gave babies fewer than 12 weeks old 31 percent protection against detectable malaria and 37 percent protection against severe malaria, according to an announcement by the company at a vaccines conference in Cape Town.

Last year, in a trial in children up to 17 months old, the same vaccine gave 55 percent protection against detectable malaria and 47 percent against severe malaria.

The new trial “is less than we’d hoped for,” Moncef Slaoui, chairman of research and development at Glaxo, said in a telephone interview. “But if a million babies were vaccinated, we would prevent 260,000 cases of malaria a year. This is a disease that kills 655,000 babies a year — 31 percent of that is a very large number.”

The company, which has already spent more than $300 million on the vaccine, wants to keep forging ahead, Mr. Slaoui said, “but it is not just our decision.”

It also depends on the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which has put more than $200 million of its Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financing into the vaccine, and on the World Health Organization, which has helped talk seven African countries into allowing the vaccine to be tested on their children.

The Gates Foundation declined to say how much money it was ultimately prepared to spend on an imperfect vaccine; this set of trials is set to go into 2014.

“The efficacy came back lower than we had hoped, but developing a vaccine against a parasite is a very hard thing to do,” Bill Gates said in a prepared statement. “The trial is continuing, and we look forward to getting more data to help determine whether and how to deploy this vaccine.”

All the families in the trial were given insecticide-treated mosquito nets and encouraged to use them; 86 percent did, so the vaccine’s results were achieved on top of other anti-malaria measures.

RTS, S contains a protein found on the parasite’s surface that provokes an immune reaction. It was first identified decades ago by two New York University scientists, Ruth and Victor Nussenzweig. The vaccine was developed by Glaxo in Belgium and initially tested on American volunteers by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

When the Gates Foundation began focusing on global health in the early part of this century, it was one of the first projects the foundation adopted. Different ways to make the vaccine more effective, including adding different boosters and giving more shots, are being experimented with. Other vaccines using different ways to provoke an immune reaction exist, but none are as far along in clinical trials.

Like an H.I.V. vaccine, one against malaria has proved an elusive goal. The parasite morphs several times, exhibiting different surface proteins as it goes from mosquito saliva into blood and then into and out of the liver. Also, even the best natural “vaccine” — catching the disease itself — is not very effective. While one bout of measles immunizes a child for life, it usually takes several bouts of malaria to confer even partial immunity. Pregnancy can cause women to stop being immune, and immunity can fade out if someone moves away from a malarial area — presumably because they no longer get “boosters” from repeated mosquito bites.

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As Black Friday sales drift earlier, some people push back

Upset by more store openings on Thanksgiving Day, shoppers and retail employees are stepping up efforts to get big chains to back off.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has long been considered the start of the holiday shopping season, with retailers offering big discounts and early-morning deals to attract hordes of shoppers.

But opening times have been drifting earlier. Chains such as Wal-Mart and Sears have announced plans for Black Friday events this year starting as early as 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day. Frustrated workers and customers say they are unhappy about cutting their family Thanksgiving dinners short.

More than 20 petitions on Change.org urge stores to open later.

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Casey St. Clair of Corona went online to ask Target Corp. to "take the high road and save Thanksgiving." Target ads leaked to Internet deal sites say the chain's stores are opening at 9 p.m. on Turkey Day. A Target spokeswoman declined to comment.

"I currently work two jobs, substitute teaching and [at] Target at nights and weekends, so having Thanksgiving off really does give me that one day to relax and visit family," St. Clair wrote on her Change.org petition page. "Having to work on Black Friday prevents me from going home to the East Coast to see my family."

Shoppers such as Brian Zinn, who created a petition asking stores to open no earlier than 8 a.m. Friday, are also outraged.

"People are being kept from seeing family and enjoying a holiday which should be a time of giving thanks, not going out to spend money on stuff we don't need," he wrote on his petition page. "Their decision to open their stores on a holiday is disgraceful, greedy and disrespectful to everyone."

Retailers in recent years have been experimenting with Black Friday specials that creep into Thanksgiving. But last year saw a substantial shift, analysts say, with Thursday night overtaking Friday morning as the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, when retailers rake in up to 40% of their annual sales.

Analysts say bricks-and-mortar retailers may have little choice. To compete with online rivals that are accessible 24 hours a day, companies have to generate excitement in order to drag people out of bed to go shopping.

"They need to make it exciting for shoppers to come into stores," said Ron Friedman, a retail expert at advisory and accounting firm Marcum in Los Angeles. "The way to do that is open up early and have hot sale items, so people think they have to eat the turkey and run to the store."

Discount giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and department store chain Sears are each launching "door buster" deals starting at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day, their earliest times ever.

Most Wal-Mart stores are open 24 hours a day and have been open on Thanksgiving for many years, company spokesman Steven Restivo said. "Historically, much of our Black Friday preparations have been done on Thanksgiving, which is not unusual in the retail industry."

After opening at 4 a.m. Friday last year, Sears heard from many customers who wanted "to drop their drumsticks and get the door busters" right away, spokesman Brian Hanover said. Sears is trying to accommodate its employees by scheduling seasonal workers and volunteers who want the extra holiday pay.

"We see a demand from associates who ask to work, who want that opportunity to supplement their usual income," Hanover said.

No retailer wants to replicate J.C. Penney's experience, which opened on Friday morning last year and lost momentum to early-bird rivals.

Stores are facing even more pressure this year to match Wal-Mart, which as the world's largest retailer wields huge influence.

Analysts say most Black Friday shoppers, eager for discounts, aren't fazed by workers who cry foul and pass around petitions.

"As long as it doesn't affect them directly, they probably don't think too much about it," said Ken Perkins of Retail Metrics Inc.

Many industry watchers predict that Black Thursday will officially take over as the shopping holiday du jour.

"I hope that the day doesn't come that they all open their stores all day Thanksgiving," Friedman said. "But that day could come.

shan.li@latimes.com

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

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Prop. 30 win gives Jerry Brown major boost

SACRAMENTO — Just a few weeks ago, as support for Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative appeared to falter, some of his fellow Democrats were saying privately that he might be serving his last term.

None of them are saying that now.

Brown has emerged from his successful tax fight with replenished political capital, his experience and instinct trumping conventional wisdom.

"His standing in the Capitol is probably higher than it has ever been," said Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, which monitors political races. "Now we have a strong governor.... He is going to be able to get his way a lot more."

A loss at the ballot box would have been catastrophic for Brown politically. It also would have devastated education budgets throughout the state. The passage of Proposition 30 addressed both scenarios.

Now, the Democrats who won record-high numbers in the Legislature on Tuesday will owe him for the billions of dollars they'll have to balance the budget. The business interests who fear what a supermajority of Democrats might do with new, unilateral power will be eager to work with the moderate governor. They may see the pragmatic Brown as a check on a hostile Legislature.

Brown himself is already talking about the next steps in the state's bullet-train program and about moving on a multibillion-dollar system to send more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California — projects that could reshape his image into one of a builder like his father, who was governor when the state built new freeways and universities.

He wants to focus on enduring changes to the state's spending policies that he hopes will enhance California's standing with Wall Street and put it on more stable financial footing.

He is vowing to steer the Capitol toward moderation in the coming years, working with business leaders to streamline state regulations that they complain hamper economic growth. He wants to lift some of the policies Sacramento has inflicted on local schools — often at the behest of the Democrats' labor allies — so they have more flexibility in deciding how to operate.

"The work is never done," Brown said at a Capitol news conference after the election, stressing that he would not lose sight of the nuts and bolts of government just because the financial books would be in order for now.

He joked at the Capitol on Wednesday that he never understood why there were so many doubters of his ability to pull off a Proposition 30 victory.

"Some people began to read tea leaves incorrectly," Brown told reporters. "And then you all go off like a herd of buffalo down the road. Hopefully you're all now back on the plane of common sense."

Brown's internal polls had shown steady support for his measure despite public surveys suggesting steep drops. He was watching a surge in Democrats signing up to vote, spurred by the new online voter registration system he signed into law. Unions were mobilizing to get voters to the polls.

The governor also knew he could ride the coattails of President Obama, who appealed to the same demographic group as Proposition 30 and has been consistently popular in California.

Still, the path to victory had looked rocky as election day loomed. As in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, he had resisted pressure from old Capitol hands to mobilize all his forces quickly. He ignored advice to hit the stump early and hard, to hammer away at this theme or that, to blitz the airwaves from the beginning.

Unfavorable reviews of Brown's encore as governor began to mount. Brown had vastly more campaign money than his opponents, but No-on-30 ads blanketed the airwaves, helped by $11 million that secret donors gave a group devoted partly to defeating Brown's measure.

He tweaked his strategy after questioning employees at a San Diego coffee shop. When one young woman told him she hadn't seen his commercials because she doesn't watch TV, he called his chief advisor, his wife, Anne Gust Brown, to say they needed to reach the "non-TV voter."

Only days away from the election, he had not settled on whether he should be featured prominently in campaign advertisements. On a plane, in the air between Bakersfield and Fresno, he drilled a Central Valley state senator about how voters viewed him there and whether his face should appear on their television sets.

"If this had gone the other way, he would be perceived as a lame duck," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a professor in the USC Price School of Public Policy. "You would have seen a lot more visible activity on the part of … possible opponents in the 2014 governor's race."

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, appeared to be positioning himself that way when he openly contradicted some of what Brown said on the campaign trail. As it became clear in the wee hours Wednesday that Proposition 30 would pass, Brown's press secretary had a message for Newsom in the form of a tweet.

It was a link to Elvis Presley performing "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"

evan.halper@latimes.com

anthony.york@latimes.com

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Mark Wahlberg to star in next 'Transformers' movie

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mark Wahlberg, roll out.

"Transformers" director Michael Bay says the 41-year-old actor will star in the franchise's fourth film.

Bay called Wahlberg the "perfect guy to re-invigorate the franchise and carry on the Transformers' legacy" in a post on his blog Thursday. He previously squashed rumors that Wahlberg was joining the film franchise about warring robots.

Bay worked with Wahlberg on his upcoming film, "Pain and Gain."

"Transformers 4" is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures on June 27, 2014.

Bay has said the next film will take a new direction in the series. The first three movies starred Shia LaBeouf and featured Peter Cullen as the voice of Autobot general Optimus Prime.

The third "Transformers" film, "Dark of the Moon," was the second highest-grossing film of 2011.

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States Rush to Meet Tight Health Care Deadlines

After nearly three years of legal and political threats that kept President Obama’s health care law in a constant state of uncertainty, his re-election on Tuesday all but guarantees that the historic legislation will survive.

Now comes another big hurdle: making it work.

The election came just 10 days before a critical deadline for states in carrying out the law, and many that were waiting for the outcome must now hustle to comply. Such efforts will coincide with epic negotiations between Mr. Obama and Congress over federal spending and taxes, where the administration will inevitably face pressure to scale back some of the costliest provisions of the law.

Mr. Obama faces crucial choices about strategy that could determine the success of the health care overhaul: Will the administration, for example, try to address the concerns of insurers, employers and some consumer groups who worry that the law’s requirements could increase premiums? Or will it insist on the stringent standards favored by liberal policy advocates inside and outside the government?

But for now — with Democrats retaining control of the Senate and Mitt Romney’s vow to “repeal and replace” the law no longer a threat — supporters are exulting.

“For our district and for our country, the debate on Obamacare is over,” declared Bill Foster, a Democrat elected Tuesday to the House from a suburban Chicago district.

Many supporters feel one of Mr. Obama’s most important tasks will be to step up efforts to promote and explain the law to a public that remains sharply divided and confused about it. In exit polls on Tuesday, nearly half of voters said the law should be either partly or fully repealed.

“There is still a tremendous amount of disinformation out there,” said Jeff Goldsmith, a health industry analyst based in Virginia. “If you actually are going to implement this law, people need to know what’s in it — not just the puppies-and-ice-cream parts, but ‘Here are the broader social changes intended and how they can help you.’ ”

Already, advocacy groups eager for the law to succeed have shifted into a higher gear. One such group, Families USA, held a conference call on Thursday with about 300 advocates around the country to strategize about next steps, said Ronald F. Pollack, the group’s executive director. Enroll America, a sister organization, will hold focus groups next week in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas to collect ideas for a public education campaign.

Much depends on the states as they decide in the coming weeks and months whether to build online marketplaces known as insurance exchanges, where individuals and small businesses can shop for health plans, and whether to expand their Medicaid programs to reach many more low-income people.

The clock is ticking on the exchange question in particular: states have until next Friday to decide whether they will build their own exchange or let the federal government run one for them. Some states have asked the administration for more time.

So far, only about 15 states and the District of Columbia have created the framework for exchanges through legislation or executive orders; three others have committed to running exchanges in partnership with the federal government. A number of Republican governors, including those in Arizona, Idaho, New Jersey, Virginia and Tennessee, had said they would decide after the election, giving themselves only a 10-day window before the deadline.

“I would expect that starting today there are a significant number of fascinating conversations going on behind closed doors in state capitols all over America,” said John McDonough, a professor of public health at Harvard who helped draft the law.

With deficit-reduction talks beginning in Washington next week, some observers believe that the law’s most expensive provisions — like federal subsidies to help families with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level pay their insurance premiums — could be scaled back in the name of deficit reduction.

“We know folks on the Hill are talking about this already,” said David Smith, an analyst at Leavitt Partners, a consulting firm that advises states on the law. “There are a lot of competing factors, but they have to find the savings and we believe health care will be one of the places where they will go.”

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Hybrid social networks help users connect online, meet up offline

Not too long ago, friending someone involved more than just clicking a button on Facebook.

So in a retro twist to social networking, a wave of Web start-ups are encouraging users to get off their couches, away from their smartphones and tablets, and back into the real world.

"We have an internal tagline: Use the Internet to get off the Internet," said Kathryn Fink, community manager at Meetup, an online-to-offline start-up with 11 million members.

Hybrid social networks are connecting strangers with similar interests online, then directing them to meet in person for dinners, bar-hopping, bowling or biking excursions. Unlike dating or networking sites, these start-ups are focused simply on helping users make new friends and hang out face to face. If a hookup or job interview results — well, that's just an added bonus.

On the sites, users create a free profile of themselves with basic information and a photo, and search for get-togethers that interest them. Before meeting face to face, people can post questions, offer parking or traffic tips and suggest topics to talk about. Events that cost money are usually paid for in advance online.

Quiz: How much do you know about California's economy?

The sites are doing especially well among twenty- and thirtysomethings in big cities, where finding new people to hang out with can be challenging.

"When you're in college, friends are basically thrown at you," said Greg Self, 22, an assistant at a film production company. "You get off the bus, you step on campus, and everyone is in the same situation as you and it's super easy."

But that wasn't the case after Self moved to L.A. from Virginia earlier this year. He searched online for ways to meet new people and came across Grubwithus, a Venice start-up that enables users to create and attend group meals.

Grubwithus meals are hosted at restaurants and typically bring together six to 10 people who have never met each other. Everyone pays in advance for their meal on the Grubwithus site — the start-up generally takes a 20% to 30% cut of each transaction — so there's no mulling over the menu or bickering over the tab.

In L.A., there have been Grubwithus meals geared toward traveling enthusiasts, vegans, Clippers fans and music aficionados. A recent dinner at the Venice Ale House was devoted to people who love beer and the television show "Arrested Development."

Grubwithus has tripled its user base since the beginning of the year, with meal reservations growing 15% month over month; the company has more than 80,000 subscribers. It launched out of start-up accelerator program Y Combinator and has raised $7.6 million in financing from investors including Ashton Kutcher and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Since February, Self has attended nine Grubwithus meals and said he has made a handful of friends from the dinners.

"It's definitely added to my experience in this city," he said, though he added that some "can be hit or miss."

"I've been to ones before where you're sitting in between two people who are not really talking at all, or are not very interesting," he said. "And you're like, well, at least the food's good."

Grubwithus Chief Executive Eddy Lu said users like such online-offline sites because they provide a safe way for people to meet — members identify themselves through their profiles and get the chance to communicate with one another online before meeting at a business or other public place. That way, he said, intentions are clear from the start.

"If you talk to a girl at a bar, she thinks you're hitting on her; if you talk to a guy at a bar, he thinks you're hitting on him. It doesn't work," said Lu, who co-founded Grubwithus after graduating from UC Berkeley and having trouble finding new buddies when he moved to Chicago.

What seemed to work best, he realized, was house parties where people got to know friends of friends over a casual dinner. He set out to re-create that experience at restaurants, with the focus on fostering "low-pressure hangouts."

The hybrid social networks aren't just for the friendless. Many members of Meetup, an online community for groups to organize in-person outings, are using the site to supplement their core social circles, Fink said. In Southern California, Meetup has groups dedicated to art and museum enthusiasts, runners, Korean moms and young L.A. Eastsiders, among others.

"You might have a fantastic social circle with friends and family and co-workers, but if they're not into hiking and you love it, what do you do?" Fink said.

Still, some of the start-ups have been slow to get off the ground.

After receiving $5 million in funding in the spring, Lifecrowd, an experience marketplace for in-person group activities such as kickball and kayaking, went offline a few weeks ago. Chief Executive Bong Koh declined to comment on the start-up's progress; on its website, the Los Angeles company promises to "be back soon with an even better Lifecrowd."

Venture capitalist Mark Suster of L.A.'s GRP Partners says investing in start-ups that bridge the gap between online and offline social interactions has become a smart move instead of "putting all your eggs in the online-only basket."

"Pure online friends aren't the same as the people you've met in your personal life," said Suster, who backs Grubwithus.

Another rising tech start-up is Grouper, which connects two groups of friends for face-to-face hangouts after pairing them online. Users apply for membership and are matched with someone else on the site. Each person then invites two other friends to join in for drinks; after prepaying online for the first round of drinks, the group of six meets at a bar chosen by Grouper. The setup takes away some of the awkwardness of meeting someone new alone, said Michael Waxman, Grouper's co-founder and chief executive.

Launched in New York last year, Grouper expanded to L.A. in September.

"In a lot of ways, we're the anti-Facebook," Waxman said. "One of the original things that played into the genesis of Grouper was the idea that social software didn't make a lot of sense. There's this underlying paradox: Facebook, Twitter, social products — you usually use them by yourself by the glow of your computer screen."

andrea.chang@latimes.com

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