We have experienced nearly 10 years of crime in California without consequence to the perpetrators.
Cleverley buried in the body of this 2014 legislation titled “Safe Schools and Neighborhood Act,” approval of free crime sailed through without a whimper of opposition.
The results of this free crime law have been outrageous.
This legislation emboldened thieves to help themselves without fear of incarceration.
Our kids are growing up thinking this is the way life works. You can rip off anything or anyone as long as the value isn’t more than $950.
The feeble efforts in Sacramento to repeal this legislation have been sent to the perpetual review chambers, never to see the light of day.
The left-leaning liberals are liable for allowing this loose leniency, looting and letting the lawbreakers live free.
We learned as children there were rules. It was one of the first things we encountered as we matured. There are things you can do and things you don’t do.
AND…if these rules were violated, there was the Piper to pay.
If there are no consequences coupled with rules, you have no integrity in your society.
Our legislatures have intentionally allowed this new rule of “Free Theft” to be left in place, to erode the rule of law and create chaos and calamity in our communities.
The contagion in communities without consequence is chaos.
Even elected officials are tempted to operate outside of their authority and take advantage of liberal allowances without consequences.
For example, Santa Clara’s elected District Attorney Jeff Rosen is promoting the idea of reducing convicted criminals from death row to extended sentences. This is quite a change from just a few years ago when Rosen was asking for the death penalty in a “tainted” case where the accused was ultimately found innocent by the jury. In any case, Rosen does not have the authority to make this decision, but that hasn’t bothered him in his pursuit of the “Law According to Rosen.”
Crime in the office of Rosen is what he decides it is or is not. His tenure as District Attorney has turned the rule of law upside down. He loves the idea of Free Theft up to $950. It reduces the number of criminals he would actually have to prosecute. And it reduces his workload so he can go after “real” criminals like Santa Clara Council Member Anthony Becker, whom Rosen has accused of leaking a Grand Jury Report. Wow. What a “tough on crime” conviction and feather in Rosen’s baseball cap that would make.
Let’s see, Rosen hasn’t got time to prosecute real criminals, so he chooses to persecute an elected council member who just happened to run against Rosen’s political ally, Mayor Lisa Gillmor?
Duh!!!
Other Milestones:
Milestones – Stupid Is Seriously…STUPID! – Opinion
Milestones – The Power Switch! – Opinion
Milestones – Simply…Deflect! – Opinion
Becker used his position as a city councilperson and his access to a privilege grand jury report to leak it early to the Forty Niners a corporate special interest that has spent millions of dollars to get him elected to council and in a failed bid to get him elected as our mayor. He seems to have lied about it in sworn testimony and that is why he is being prosecuted for perjury.
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We the people rely on county district attorneys to provide oversight and enforcement of laws to prevent public corruption such as a city councilperson violating his position as an elected official to provide special benefit to a corporate special interest that has bankrolled his political aspirations to the tune of millions of dollars.
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You fail to mention that your own publication also received this leaked report. And that your own employee Carolyn Schuk was the recipient and also is known to have been communicating with Forty Niners executives seemingly to coordinate your publication’s efforts to aid them in diminishing the public relations impact of the grand jury report.
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You and your publication have nakedly been carrying water for the Forty Niners. And even though you and your employees will not report on how this publication has coordinated with Anthony Becker and the Forty Niners to advance Forty Niner interests this has become public knowledge and will become even more public knowledge if this matter does come to trial. Even if you do not report on your complicity it will be reported on by much larger and impactful publications.
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It is a shame that you do not have higher aspirations for your publication. We the people of Santa Clara deserve better than the bickering city council we have including Mayor Gillmor and we the people of Santa Clara deserve better and less biased coverage of political issues in this city. We deserve more from our local news publication than reporting on stadium issues with an agenda that seems to go beyond reporting on those issues to inform the public well.
There are three major special interests in our city, not one, namely: (1) the 49ers; (2) the public employee unions; and (3) the developers (e.g., Related). Five of our current City Council members are, to varying degrees, more closely aligned with the 49ers than the other two members (who are perhaps more closely aligned with the other two special interests).
Regarding the 49ers (including Manco), many (including me) want them to be much more transparent about the performance of their duty to optimize the profits which our Stadium receives from non-NFL events. The 49ers must fulfill its obligation to our City (as its business/contractual partner) to optimize these profits which involve millions and millions of dollars.
However, I would also note that the interests of the 49ers line up quite well with the public interests of our City in the following two important respects: (1) the 49ers share the financial interest of our City in keeping its budget balanced, specifically by reducing City expenditures (i.e., so that our City Council will be less pressed to seek money from the 49ers to resolve its chronic budget problems); and (2) the 49ers also share the public interest of our City in seeing to it that the north side of our City is not overdeveloped or neglected (i.e., so that the public will be more inclined to attend Stadium events).
The public employee unions, on the other hand, want our City to greatly increase the money which it expends on their members which puts substantial pressures on our City’s budget. Similarly, the developers may want to maximize the development of the north side of our City.
Accordingly, none of the three special interests in our City should be singled out for demonization and investigations while the other two are left unscrutinized. Our City Council and Staff must shrewdly deal (i.e., bargain) in a clear-eyed and arm’s length fashion with each of these three special interests, conscious of any and all underlying potential conflicts of interest, to produce optimal results in the best public interests of our City and its citizens.
Agreed that all sides of the 49ers/Levi’s Stadium agreement must abide by the current contract. What is interesting is that neither Gillmor nor the City has ever accused the 49ers of breach of contract. Gillmor’s Gang just keeps screaming “our fair share” without ever producing evidence that the 49ers are not holding up their end of the bargain as specified in black ink on the contract.
The city’s employee unions and their buying of Council Members is at the heart of the financial problem and constant bickering with the 49ers. According to data from Transparent California, Santa Clara Police Officers (not including sergeants, lieutenants, captains, or chiefs) collect a base salary 16% higher than Sunnyvale’s Public Safety Officers and 21% more than Campbell’s Police Agents (officer and agents are the same role).
• Santa Clara av. $171,125.20
• Sunnyvale av. $147,646.35
• Campbell av. $141,806.71
(*2022 data using base salaries over the annual minimum specified by each city)
Remember that Sunnyvale’s Public Safety Officers are dual certified as Firefighters as well. If the City of Santa Clara reduced salaries to be in line with the City of Campbell it would save more than $2.2 million per year just from beat officers. Apply the same salary matching through supervisors up to the Chief, the city would save $3 million per year. And this is just from the Police Department. Everyone is aware that Santa Clara’s fire department, engineers, maintenance staff, etc. also receive much higher salary and benefits contributions than found in neighboring cities. Additionally, higher base salaries correlate to higher pension contribution liabilities that aren’t easily seen by the public.
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Some city council members and the police union make the 49ers the perpetual bad guy as no city resident works for the organization. Imagine if Lisa Gillmor targeted the stock rise and market cap of Nvidia, AMD, Intuit, Applied Materials, or ServiceNow and called them the capitalistic bad guys demanding they “pay their fair share” to fund public services? What do you think the reply would be, who do you think they would or would not endorse for City Council?
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The City of Santa Clara has built itself into an entitled crybaby and is not living within its means. Here is the remedy…
1. Replace Gillmor with a fiscal conservative minded resident who is not a water carrier for employee unions.
2. Replace Watanabe with an independent and competent resident.
3. Replace Becker with a professionally mature resident.
4. Freeze all salary increases that are more than 2.5% above similar roles in neighboring municipalities and reduce all salaries that are more than 3% to the county average.
Haggerty has it right.
Miles has a wide range of issues in this opinion piece.
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Any intentional theft should be prosecuted as appropriate under the law. If the laws are insufficient, they should be examined and updated. While Miles points his finger at “left-leaning liberals”, it is us collective citizens who are ultimately responsible. It takes little effort to send an email, letter, or make a phone call to your two State Representatives. Currently in Santa Clara our Representatives are Assemblymember Eval Low (https://a26.asmdc.org/) and Senator Aisha Wahab (https://sd10.senate.ca.gov/).
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Jeff Rosen and his DA’s office doesn’t make laws. While I’m not opposed to the Death Penalty is certain cases, Rosen’s argument that the state will never execute someone on Death Row therefore it’s a waste of taxpayer money is a valid position. When someone is sentenced to death, there are a lot more legal benefits to them like a seemingly endless opportunity to keep the matter appealed in court. https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/how-many-appeals-do-criminals-get-for-death-row–168827.html
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Miles wraps Council Member Becker and Mayor Gillmor into enforcement of state laws and death penalty appeals which they have nothing to do with. Given his opinion track record, I tend believe the two previous topics are simply filler to keep his beef with Gillmor up on the marquee.
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The leak of the Civil Grand Jury Report is trivial but if Becker did commit a felony, he should be investigated and the matter should go before a judge or jury and he has every right to defend himself and be provided competent counsel by the state/county if he cannot afford one on his own.
The writer pegged it exactly right. Jeff Rosen truly is an upside-down district attorney. He primarily cares about whether a prosecution favors him or his friends. Protecting the community is a distant second.
Case in point, my children are being sex trafficked by an attorney who is associated with him. After I told Mr. Rosen that this was happening, he filed charges against ME. I hadn’t even committed a crime. The whole goal was to bring the matter to competency proceedings in an attempt to discredit me. Said attorney had promised to tamper. Rosen didn’t care what that would mean for my kids.
When I refused to undergo a psychological evaluation, I was repeatedly assaulted. I begged Mr. Rosen to help. He just ignored me and allowed this attorney to continue to assault me without consequence.
Now all of my organs are damaged, testicles atrophied, and the shape of my face has changed. Worst of all, my kids are still being put into harm’s way.
I put all of this, including a link to a picture that shows the great bodily harm, here: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/272/404/301/district-attorney-jeffrey-rosen-please-stop-sex-trafficking-my-kids/
I don’t understand why anyone would vote for Mr. Rosen.
Mr. Rosen is just an actor. He knows how to say all the right things to make people feel safe.
I am not the only one who has experienced prosecution and assault after reporting children being sexually abused. check www.freearianna.org
There are many other parents who have been ignored after making similar reports. Violet Brooks begged Mr. Rosen to protect her 3 young girls. DA Rosen left the girls to be sexually abused until the age of 18.
Before Mr. Chung was fired, I begged him for help. He was initially on my case, and seemed like an honorable man.
About two weeks later, it was reported that he was fired.
Rosen says that he is against the death penalty.
Why would he continue to incentivize assaults against me?
It’s all an act.
Rosen will prosecute Becker for allegedly leaking a report, but won’t prosecute a homicidal child sex trafficker with associations to him. That’s all you need to know about it him.
I have told DA Rosen numerous times at public meetings what was happening to my kids. Last week, at the moment I mentioned that my 13 year old son confirmed that was raped, Mr. Rosen started eating. One would think that it would make him sick to his stomach, but he just kept eating. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/LaKUYhXaLV8?t=2133