L.A. County Sheriff's Department intends to fire seven deputies

Seven Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been notified that the department intends to fire them for belonging to a secret law enforcement clique that allegedly celebrated shootings and branded its members with matching tattoos, officials said.

The Times reported last year about the existence of the clique, dubbed the Jump Out Boys, and the discovery of a pamphlet that described the group's creed, which required aggressive policing and awarded tattoo modifications for police shootings.

The seven worked on an elite gang-enforcement team that patrols neighborhoods where violence is high. The team makes a priority of taking guns off the street, officials said.

The Sheriff's Department has a long history of secret cliques with members of the groups having reached high-ranking positions within the agency. Sheriff officials have sought to crack down on the groups, fearing that they tarnished the department's reputation and encouraged unethical conduct.

In the case of the Jump Out Boys, sheriff's investigators did not uncover any criminal behavior. But, sources said, the group clashed with department policies and image.

Their tattoos, for instance, depicted an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna with the unit's acronym is wrapped around the skull. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Smoke would be tattooed over the gun's barrel for members who were involved in at least one shooting, officials said.

One member, who spoke to The Times and requested anonymity, said the group promoted only hard work and bravery. He dismissed concerns about the group's tattoo, noting that deputies throughout the department get matching tattoos. He said there was nothing sinister about their creed or conduct. The deputy, who was notified of the department's intent to terminate him, read The Times several passages from the pamphlet, which he said supported proactive policing.

"We are alpha dogs who think and act like the wolf, but never become the wolf," one passage stated, comparing criminals to wolves. Another passage stated, "We are not afraid to get our hands dirty without any disgrace, dishonor or hesitation... sometimes (members) need to do the things they don't want to in order to get where they want to be."

Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said starting the termination process shows that Sheriff Lee Baca "does not take any of this lightly and will move forward with the appropriate action."

Investigators were less concerned about the tattoos, and more focused on the suspected admiration they showed for officer-involved shootings, which are expected to be events of last resort. The deputy told The Times, however, that investigators reviewed their shootings and arrests and found nothing unlawful.

"We get called a gang within the badge? It's unfair," he said. "People want to say you have a tattoo. So do fraternities. Go to Yale. Are they a gang?.... Boy Scouts have patches and they have mission statements, and so do we."

"We do not glorify shootings," he continued. "What we do is commend and honor the shootings. I have to remember them because it can happen any time, any day. I don't want to forget them because I'm glad I'm alive."

If the firings are upheld, it would be one of the largest terminations over one incident in the department's history. In 2011, the department fired about half a dozen deputies who were also said to have formed a clique. Those deputies worked on the third floor of Men's Central Jail and allegedly threw gang-like three-finger hand signs. They were fired after they fought two fellow deputies at an employee Christmas party and allegedly punched a female deputy in the face.

As part of the widening federal investigation of the Sheriff's Department, a criminal grand jury recently subpoenaed the agency for materials relating to deputy cliques, specifically citing several of the groups including the "3000 boys" and the Jump Out Boys.

When the pamphlet revealing the existence of the Jump Out Boys was initially found, officials didn't know if the group was real. But eventually, one member came forward and named the others, according to an official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The seven deputies can fight the department's decision to fire them.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His blue eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

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Profound Weight of Layoffs Seen in Survey

Layoffs have touched nearly every American household in some fashion over the last few years, according to new survey data to be released Thursday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Lissette Marquez, center, and Amiel Ali looked for jobs last week in Miami with the help of a South Florida Workforce customer service representative, Nelson Munoz, left.

While about 8 percent of Americans are unemployed, nearly a quarter of Americans say they were laid off at some point during the recession or afterward, according to the survey. More broadly, nearly eight in 10 say they know someone in their circle of family and friends who has lost a job.

“This to me is why the recession was so all-consuming and is likely to influence the American psyche,” said Cliff Zukin, a public policy and political science professor at Rutgers and co-author of the report. “Almost everyone, four out of five, were directly or one step removed from unemployment and all that goes with it financially, socially, psychologically.”

The survey presented a bleak view of the economic future.

A majority of Americans say they think it will be at least six years before the economy is made whole again, if ever. Three in 10 said the economy would never fully recover from the Great Recession.

“Despite significant improvements in the nation’s labor market, American workers’ concerns about unemployment, the job market, job security and the future of the economy have not changed much since we conducted a similar survey in August 2010,” the report said.

Just a third of Americans surveyed in this poll, conducted from Jan. 9-16, said they thought the economy would be better next year, the same share that said so two years earlier.

Of those laid off in recent years, nearly a quarter said they still had not found a job. Re-employment rates for older workers have been particularly bad, with nearly two-thirds of unemployed people 55 and older saying they actively sought a job for more than a year before finding one or had still not found work.

Not surprisingly, those who are unemployed are especially downbeat about many economic issues in addition to their own finances. Of those who were jobless and looking for work, 31 percent said their jobless benefits had run out and 58 percent said they were concerned their benefits would run out before they found work.

Of those who have found work, nearly half say their current job is a step down from the one they lost, and a slim majority say they earn less than they did in their previous job. A quarter of those re-employed said they thought that the hit to their standard of living would be permanent.

The reliance on one’s personal network and savings rather than the social safety net showed up frequently in the survey data.

More people reported borrowing money from friends and family than reported using food stamps. A third cut back on doctors’ visits or medical treatment. A quarter of the unemployed said they had enrolled in retraining programs of some kind; half of them reported paying for the education on their own or through family assistance. Twenty-three percent received some type of government financing for their training programs.

Unemployed workers were more likely than employed workers to say that the government is primarily responsible for helping the jobless. But even then, a majority of the unemployed thought that workers and employers were more responsible for getting people back to work than the government was.

Americans over all were also somewhat less critical of bankers this time than they were two years earlier. About one in three (35 percent) respondents attributed high unemployment levels to the actions of Wall Street, compared with 45 percent in 2010.

Americans were most likely to attribute high unemployment to cheap foreign labor. Four in 10 also said they believed illegal immigrants were taking Americans’ job opportunities — which does not bode well for political support for an amnesty program now being discussed in Washington.

Most people surveyed lost at least some of their savings. Asked about their financial health, six in 10 Americans said their finances would not improve in the next few years; just 16 percent said their family finances were already back to prerecession levels or suffered no loss in the first place.

More educated, better-off people were substantially more likely to report being as financially secure as they were before the recession began.

Responses are based on an online survey conducted by GfK using a nationally representative sample of 1,090 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

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Child porn suspect indicted by federal grand jury

A North Hills woman whom authorities allege plied a young girl with crack cocaine and photographed her being sexually abused by an older man was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of producing child pornography and sex trafficking.

Letha Montemayor Tucker was named Tuesday in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all the charges, Tucker would face a mandatory minimum federal sentence of 10 years and could get up to life in prison, authorities said.

The charges come a month after authorities sought the public's help in the investigation by releasing photographs of a man and woman depicted in a set of widely circulated child pornography photos.

Tips started pouring in immediately after the photos were released, investigators said.

Tucker, who goes by the name Butterfly, was located about 10 hours after the release of the photos and taken into custody, said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The alleged victim, who was about 12 when the photos were taken, was found within a week of the case going public, Arnold said. She is an adult now and is cooperating with authorities, he said.

In addition to photographing the girl being sexually abused by the man, authorities said, Tucker also committed sex acts with the alleged victim.

The photos were part of a child pornography collection known as the "Jen Series."

The 40-plus photos were first discovered by investigators in the Chicago area in 2007. Investigators said images in the series have been reported about 300 times and have been found on computers across the country.

The victim "didn't even know these images were out there," Arnold said.

"The horror of child pornography is it's for life, the victimization," Arnold said. "Once the photos are there in cyberspace, they're there forever."

The girl, identified in court records only by the initials J.M.M., lived in the same Los Angeles County residential hotel as Tucker, who worked as a prostitute, authorities said.

Around 2000 or 2001, the girl stopped attending school regularly and spent more and more time in Tucker's room, smoking crack cocaine Tucker provided, according to the indictment.

The girl was present when Tucker engaged in prostitution with clients and was usually high when this happened, authorities allege. Tucker instructed the child to take off her clothes in front of the clients, prosecutors alleged in court papers.

The faces of Tucker and the girl are "clearly visible" in the photos, according to the indictment. Tucker had an eyebrow piercing and a tattoo of a sleeping cat behind her shoulder, which made her easier to identify, authorities said.

The face of the man, however, is blacked out in the photographs. Authorities are still trying to identify the man, Arnold said.

"Obviously, we want him also to answer for his crimes," Arnold said.

Arnold said the alleged victim is "going to be dealing with this for a long time."

Now that she has been identified, she will receive a victim notification every time one of the images turns up in an investigation, he said.

Tucker is being held without bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court on Feb. 13. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Ipswich Journal: Paul Mason Is One-Third the Man He Used to Be

Paul Nixon Photography

Paul Mason in 2012, two years after gastric bypass surgery stripped him of the unofficial title of “the world’s fattest man.”

IPSWICH, England — Who knows what the worst moment was for Paul Mason — there were so many awful milestones, as he grew fatter and fatter — but a good bet might be when he became too vast to leave his room. To get him to the hospital for a hernia operation, the local fire department had to knock down a wall and extricate him with a forklift.

That was nearly a decade ago, when Mr. Mason weighed about 980 pounds, and the spectacle made him the object of fascinated horror, a freak-show exhibit. The British news media, which likes a superlative, appointed him “the world’s fattest man.”

Now the narrative has shifted to one of redemption and second chances. Since a gastric bypass operation in 2010, Mr. Mason, 52 years old and 6-foot-4, has lost nearly two-thirds of his body weight, putting him at about 336 pounds — still obese, but within the realm of plausibility. He is talking about starting a jewelry business.

“My meals are a lot different now than they used to be,” Mr. Mason said during a recent interview in his one-story apartment in a cheerful public housing complex here. For one thing, he no longer eats around the clock. “Food is a necessity, but now I don’t let it control my life anymore,” he said.

But the road to a new life is uphill and paved with sharp objects. When he answered the door, Mr. Mason did not walk; he glided in an electric wheelchair.

And though Mr. Mason looks perfectly normal from the chest up, horrible vestiges of his past stick to him, literally, in the form of a huge mass of loose skin choking him like a straitjacket. Folds and folds of it encircle his torso and sit on his lap, like an unwanted package someone has set there; more folds encase his legs. All told, he reckons, the excess weighs more than 100 pounds.

As he waits to see if anyone will agree to perform the complex operation to remove the skin, Mr. Mason has plenty of time to ponder how he got to where he is. He was born in Ipswich and had a childhood marked by two things, he says: the verbal and physical abuse of his father, a military policeman turned security guard; and three years of sexual abuse, starting when he was 6, by a relative in her 20s who lived in the house and shared his bed. He told no one until decades later.

After he left school, Mr. Mason took a job as a postal worker and became engaged to a woman more than 20 years older than him. “I thought it would be for life, but she just turned around one day and said, ‘No, I don’t want to see you anymore — goodbye,’ ” he said.

His father died, and he returned home to care for his arthritic mother, who was in a wheelchair. “I still had all these things going around in my head from my childhood,” he said. “Food replaced the love I didn’t get from my parents.” When he left the Royal Mail in 1986, he said, he weighed 364 pounds.

Then things spun out of control. Mr. Mason tried to eat himself into oblivion. He spent every available penny of his and his mother’s social security checks on food. He stopped paying the mortgage. The bank repossessed their house, and the council found them a smaller place to live. All the while, he ate the way a locust eats — indiscriminately, voraciously, ingesting perhaps 20,000 calories a day. First he could no longer manage the stairs; then he could no longer get out of his room. He stayed in bed, on and off, for most of the last decade.

Social service workers did everything for him, including changing his incontinence pads. A network of local convenience stores and fast-food restaurants kept the food coming nonstop — burgers, french fries, fish and chips, even about $22 worth of chocolate bars a day.

“They didn’t deliver bags of crisps,” he said of potato chips. “They delivered cartons.”

His life became a cycle: eat, doze, eat, eat, eat. “You didn’t sleep a normal sleep,” he said. “You’d be awake most of the night eating and snacking. You totally forgot about everything else. You lose all your dignity, all your self-respect. It all goes, and all you focus on is getting your next fix.”

He added, “It was quite a lonely time, really.”

He got infections a lot and was transported to the hospital — first in a laundry van, then on the back of a truck and finally on the forklift. For 18 months after a hernia operation in 2003, he lived in the hospital and in an old people’s home — where he was not allowed to leave his room — while the local government found him a house that could accommodate all the special equipment he needed.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 6, 2013

The headline on an earlier version of this article misstated Paul Mason’s current weight relative to what he weighed nearly a decade ago. He is now about one-third, not two-thirds, the weight he was then.

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Economic Scene: Immigration Reform Issue: The Effect on the Budget

The stars could hardly have shone brighter on the prospects for immigration reform than in the early months of 2007.

The coalition pushing for change included the oddest of bedfellows — roping together business groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce with the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing union in the country. It had an impeccable bipartisan pedigree, including President George W. Bush and Senator Jon Kyl, a staunchly conservative Republican, as well as the Democrats’ liberal lion, Senator Ted Kennedy.

The economy was growing. The unemployment rate was at its lowest level since the dot-com bubble burst six years before. And the flaws of our immigration laws — impotent to stop a river of unauthorized immigrants drawn across the border by job opportunities — were obvious to all.

Immigration reform, however, was not to be.

Immigrants’ rights groups balked at the hurdles put in immigrants’ path toward legalization. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. hated a provision creating temporary work visas, arguing that it was a license for businesses to bring in cheap foreign labor. Then, a Senate Democrat, Byron Dorgan, offered the coup de grâce with an amendment to phase out the worker visa program after five years. Though proposed at the behest of organized labor, the amendment got the support of some of the most anti-union Republicans in the Senate. And it killed the entire enterprise, stripping away corporate America’s main reason to support a deal.

Today, the economy is not growing much. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Yet President Obama thinks the stellar alignment may be  better than six years ago. He is proposing a wholesale change to the same flawed immigration laws. He trusts that Republicans, who lost the Hispanic vote by an enormous margin in November, cannot afford to further alienate Hispanics by voting against their top priority.

Despite the strong case for an overhaul, however, changing our immigration laws may be tougher than the president appears to believe. While we may have overcome some of the obstacles of 2007, reform will probably face deep-seated opposition from many Americans — including most conservative Republicans — to what they will view as a potentially large expansion of welfare.

President Obama’s proposal is based on principles similar to those of the 2007 attempt: a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants in the country, a legal channel for future immigrant workers and their families, and a plan to better enforce the nation’s borders and immigration laws.

Yet immigration reform today means something quite different than it did in 2007. Notably, the elements needed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants north are much less important to the enterprise. The Obama administration has already spent huge amounts of money on border enforcement. Today, border policing costs about $18 billion a year — nearly 50 percent more than it did in 2006. And deportations have soared. What’s more, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle, as Mexico has grown more robustly than the United States. The illegal immigrant population has even been shrinking in the last few years. And it may continue to do so as the Mexican population of prime migration-age people stops growing.

Also, many employers have already gotten some of what they wanted: the number of workers entering the United States on temporary visas for low-end jobs in agriculture and other industries has increased sharply.

“The discussion is in a different environment,” said Gordon H. Hanson, an expert on the economics of immigration at the University of California, San Diego. “The flow of new immigrants is not the story anymore.”

This might help the cause of reform in some ways. It could allow the discussion about work visas to focus on the highly educated workers coveted by technology companies and pre-empt the kind of argument between business and labor over visas for cheap immigrant workers that sank reform in 2007. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., for instance, has heartily embraced President Obama’s plan.

But what supporters of an overhaul of immigration law seem to be overlooking is that these very changes could also make it more difficult to build a coalition across the political divide. If reform is mainly about granting citizenship to 11 million mostly poor illegal immigrants with relatively little education, it is going to land squarely in the cross hairs of our epic battle about taxes, entitlements and the role of government in society.

It’s hard to say with precision what impact offering citizenship would have on the budget, but the chances are good that it would cost the government money. Half to three-quarters of illegal immigrants pay taxes, according to studies reviewed in a 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office. And they are relatively inexpensive, compared with Americans of similar incomes. Their children can attend public schools at government expense — putting a burden on state and local budgets. But they are barred from receiving federal benefits like the earned-income tax credit, food stamps and Medicaid. Only their American-born children can get those.

Government revenue might not change much with legalization. Most illegal immigrants who don’t pay taxes probably work in the cash economy — as nannies or gardeners — where tax compliance among citizens is low. Costs, of course, would increase. Once they became citizens, immigrants would be entitled to the same array of government benefits as other Americans. For Social Security and Medicare alone, offering citizenship to illegal immigrants would mean losing a subsidy worth several billion dollars a year in payroll taxes from immigrants who can’t collect benefits in old age.

The White House and other backers of reform have made much of a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis concluding that the failed immigration overhaul would have increased government revenue by $48 billion over a decade while adding only $23 billion to direct spending on entitlements and other programs. But the report also said that including the costs of carrying out the new law would actually increase the budget deficit by $18 billion over the decade and several billion a year after that. What’s more, it noted that most of the expected new tax revenue came from new immigrant workers, not from the newly legalized population.

Our history suggests we could have much to gain by turning illegal immigrants into citizens and putting an end to unauthorized immigration. The last time we permitted illegal immigrants to legalize, in 1986, incomes jumped for those who took advantage of the opportunity. Their children became more proficient in English and completed more years of school — becoming more productive and paying more taxes over their lifetimes.

But the same history underscores how immigration sets off fears about further sharing of government resources. Ten years after the immigration reform of 1986, reeling from some public anger, Congress passed a law barring legal immigrants from means-tested government services. The same issue is likely again to be a major flash point. Professor Hanson pointed to “the older white man who sees his entitlements at risk because of the demands placed by legalization on our fiscal resources.”

Conservative Republicans set on cutting government spending share those concerns. And for all their reasons to reach out to Hispanics, they might not find making illegal immigrants legal politically advantageous. On Tuesday, Republicans in the House argued against granting citizenship to illegal immigrants at all.

Hispanics are more liberal than the general population on economic matters, polls suggest, and more supportive of Big Government initiatives. Granting them citizenship would give them the vote.

As Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group in Washington that favors more limits on immigration, said, “They will see legalization as a voter-registration drive for Democrats.”

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2013

An earlier version misspelled the first name of one of the two United States senators from Arizona.  His name is Jon Kyl, not John.

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Tour bus had poor safety record before fatal crash

Federal inspectors over the last year found faulty axles and brakes and other safety violations on the tour bus that careened out of control on a winding mountain road near Yucaipa on Sunday evening, killing seven passengers, records show.

Maintenance citations of the tour buses owned by Scapadas Magicas of National City were numerous and serious enough that the company was placed on a federal watch list that flagged its buses for increased roadside inspections.

Bald tires, defective or missing axle parts, and insufficient brake linings were among 59 maintenance violations inspectors found on the firm's buses in the last two years, U.S. Department of Transportation safety records show.

PHOTOS: Tour bus crash

The tour bus was operating under a contract with InterBus Tours and Charters, based in Tijuana, which closed its office Monday, shortly after sending a busload of day tourists to Knott's Berry Farm. The Scapadas Magicas office in National City, in San Diego County, was not open Monday.

Maria McDade, who said she was Scapadas Magicas' administrator for more than 20 years before retiring last year, said none of the company's buses had ever been in an accident and, aside from a fine of $2,500, the company had complied with all U.S. Department of Transportation regulations.

"I feel really, really sad, but accidents happen," she said by walkie-talkie phone from her home in Tijuana. "I feel so sad for all these people." Current company officials could not be contacted for comment.

A message posted on InterBus' Facebook page expressed regret for the accident and told clients that its contractor was insured.

Sales Manager Jordi Garcia said the agency's insurance would be handling burial expenses for the deceased. He said the agency had been open for one year and offered daily trips to Disneyland, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Universal Studios. The trips attracted people from all walks of life, including students, families and young professionals.

"Big Bear is also very popular this time of year. They want to experience nature," he said. The daylong excursion cost $40, he said.

He said the business contracts with independently owned bus operators and that they are responsible for complying with all U.S. and Mexican regulations.

"We're only interested in their availability and the condition of their buses," he said, adding that the agency has never had a problem with any of the several operators with whom they contract.

The Scapadas bus left Tijuana early Sunday with 38 passengers, including children, and was descending California 38 from the ski resort town of Big Bear Lake when the driver apparently lost control about four miles from Yucaipa.

The bus clipped a small Saturn sedan before it veered into oncoming traffic and began to roll, tossing out passengers who were not wearing seat belts. It crushed an oncoming Ford pickup before coming to rest upright atop a boulder and10-foot elderberry bush on a stretch of highway along Mill Creek. Backpacks, clothing and body parts were strewn across the crash site and, on Monday morning, a body remain draped out one of the bus windows.

"It is a gruesome and horrible scene. It's one of the most horrific scenes I've ever seen in 10 years with the department," said Officer Leon Lopez, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

CHP officials were joined Monday by investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board at the scene of the accident, which occurred about 6:30 p.m. Sunday just north of the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in the San Bernardino National Forest. The highway was closed most of Monday.

The bus driver, as well as passengers, reported that the vehicle was experiencing mechanical problems before the accident occurred, authorities said. Investigators believe a problem with the brakes may have led the bus to speed out of control down the highway's sweeping curves.

On Monday, those officials questioned the driver, identified as Norberto B. Perez, 52, of San Ysidro, but did not disclose his account of the crash.

"Everything happened so fast. When the bus spun everything flew, even the people," passenger Gerardo Barrientos, who was sitting on the bus next to his girlfriend, told the Associated Press. "I saw many people dead. There are very, very horrendous images in my head, things I don't want to think about."

Ramon Ramirez, who is listed in documents as the owner of Scapadas Magicas, lives in Tijuana and rents an apartment in Chula Vista. No one answered the door at the Chula Vista residence.

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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DealBook: Dell Nears a Buyout Deal of More Than $23 Billion

Dell Inc. neared an agreement on Monday to sell itself to a group led by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake for more than $23 billion, people briefed on the matter said, in what would be the biggest buyout since the financial crisis.

If completed, a takeover would be the most ambitious attempt yet by Michael S. Dell to revive the company that bears his name. Such is the size of the potential deal that Mr. Dell has called upon Microsoft, one of his most important business partners, to shore up the proposal with additional financial muscle. The question will now turn to whether taking the personal computer maker private will accomplish what years of previous turnaround efforts have not.

The final details were being negotiated on Monday evening, and a deal could be announced as soon as Tuesday. Still, last-minute obstacles could cause the talks to collapse, the people briefed on the matter cautioned.

The consortium is expected to pay $13.50 to $13.75 a share, these people said. Mr. Dell is expected to contribute his nearly 16 percent stake to the deal, worth about $3.8 billion under the current set of terms. He is also expected to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh capital from his own fortune.

Silver Lake, known as one of the biggest investors in technology companies, would most likely contribute roughly $1 billion, these people added. Microsoft is expected to put in about $2 billion, though that would probably come in the form of preferred shares or debt.

Dell is also expected to bring home some of the cash that it holds in offshore accounts to help with the financing.

A spokesman for Dell declined to comment.

For decades, Dell benefited from its status as a pioneer in the market for personal computers. Founded in 1984 in a dormitory room at the University of Texas, the company grew into one of the biggest computer makers in the world, built on the simple premise that customers would flock to customize their machines.

By the late 1990s, its fast-rising stock created a company worth $100 billion and minted a class of “Dellionaires” whose holdings made for big fortunes, at least on paper. Mr. Dell amassed an estimated $16 billion and formed a quietly powerful investment firm to manage those riches.

But growing competition has sapped Dell’s strength. Rivals like Lenovo and Samsung have made the PC-making business less profitable. Last month, the market research firm Gartner reported that Dell sold 37.6 million PCs worldwide in 2012, a 12.3 percent drop from the previous year’s shipments. Perhaps more significant is the emergence of the smartphone and the tablet, two classes of devices that have eaten away at sales of traditional computers.

Mr. Dell has sought to move the company into the more lucrative and stable business of providing corporations with software services, spending billions of dollars on acquisitions to lead that transformation. The aim is to refashion Dell into something more like I.B.M. or Oracle. Even so, manufacturing PCs still makes up half of the company’s business.

The company’s stock had fallen 59 percent in the 10 years ended Jan. 11, the last business day before word of the buyout talks emerged. That has actually made Dell more tempting as a takeover target for its founder and Silver Lake, which see it as undervalued.

A Dell deal would be a watershed moment for the leveraged buyout industry: It would be the largest takeover since the Blackstone Group paid $26 billion for Hilton Hotels in the summer of 2007. No leveraged buyout since the financial crisis has surpassed the $7.2 billion that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and others paid for the Samson Investment Company, an oil and gas driller, in the fall of 2011.

Private equity executives have hungered for the chance to strike a deal worth more than $10 billion, an accomplishment believed difficult because of the sheer size of financing required. Dell would take on more than $15 billion in debt, an enormous amount arranged by no fewer than four banks.

But the debt markets have been soaring over the last two years, as the cost of junk bonds has stayed low. Persistent low interest rates have prompted debt buyers to seek investments that carry higher yields

Dell was unusually well-placed to make a deal with private equity. The company carries $4.9 billion in long-term debt, which some analysts have regarded as a manageable amount. And its management has signaled a willingness to bring back at least some of the company’s cash hoard held overseas, despite potentially ringing up a hefty tax bill.

It is unclear whether the company’s biggest investors will accept a deal at the levels that the buyer consortium is advocating. Shares of Dell fell 2.6 percent, to $13.27, on Monday after reports of the proposed price range emerged.

Biggest Private Equity-Backed Leveraged Buyouts

DEAL, IN BILLIONS	TARGET	BUYER	ANNOUNCED
Source: Thomson Reuters *At time of deal, including assumption of debt, not adjusted for inflation.
$44.3	TXU	Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs	February 2007
37.7	Equity Office Properties Trust	Blackstone Group	November 2006
32.1	HCA	Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Merrill Lynch Global Private	July 2006
30.2	RJR Nabisco	Kohlberg Kravis Roberts	October 1988
30.1	BAA	Grupo Ferrovial SA, Caisse de Depot et Placement and GIC Special Invest	March 2006
27.6	Harrah’s Entertainment	Texas Pacific Group and Apollo Management	October 2006
27.4	Kinder Morgan	GS Capital Partners, The Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings	May 2006
27.2	Alltel	TPG Capital and GS Capital Partners	May 2007
27.0	First Data	Kohlberg Kravis Roberts	April 2007
26.7	Hilton Hotels	Blackstone Group	July 2007

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Russia, Iran support idea of talks in Syria

BEIRUT — A faint glimmer of hope of breaking the diplomatic standoff on Syria has emerged as two key allies, Russia and Iran, reacted positively to a leading opposition figure's surprise offer of conditional talks with the government of President Bashar Assad.

Officials from the two countries spoke approvingly of the offer at a global security meeting that ended Sunday in Munich, Germany. At the same time, Israel's defense minister seemed to acknowledge that his country was responsible for last week's airstrike on Syrian territory — an attack that Israel has not officially confirmed but which has raised the ominous specter of a wider regional war.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters at the Munich conference that the attack in Syria was "proof that when we say something, we mean it." The comment was widely interpreted as indirect confirmation that Israeli warplanes conducted the Wednesday strike, which reportedly targeted a Syrian arms convoy destined for the militant group Hezbollah, Syria's ally and Israel's avowed adversary.

His remarks somewhat overshadowed the potentially promising developments on the long-stalled diplomatic front. Both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, seemed to give their blessing to an effort by Syrian opposition figure Moaz Khatib to open talks with Assad.

"This is a very important step, particularly taking into account that the [opposition] coalition was created on a platform of categorical rejection of any conversation with the regime," Lavrov said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Moscow and Tehran are widely viewed as the only international interlocutors able to exert influence or pressure on Assad, who has vowed not to step down despite an almost two-year rebellion that has left tens of thousands dead, millions homeless and much of the country in ruins.

Khatib, who heads a Western-backed dissident coalition forged in November, broke a taboo among many opposition advocates and declared last week that he would be willing to speak with Assad's representatives under two conditions — the release of 160,000 Syrian prisoners and the renewal of passports for Syrian exiles. Khatib first made the offer in a Facebook posting, then reiterated it in Munich, where he met with high-ranking Iranian, Russian and U.S. officials, including Vice President Joe Biden.

"As a gesture of goodwill, we say, just to ease the pain of the Syrian people … we are ready to sit at the negotiating table with the regime," Khatib told reporters, adding that he still favored overthrowing Assad "by peaceful means."

Despite the offer, no breakthrough in Syria appears imminent. Many obstacles remain. There are no scheduled negotiations as the fighting drags on.

The United States and its allies, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have insisted that Assad must go, a condition rejected by Russia, which has used its veto power on three occasions in the United Nations Security Council to block international action against Assad.

In Munich, Biden reiterated the White House position that "President Assad, a tyrant hell-bent on clinging to power, is no longer fit to lead the Syrian people and he must go."

On the battlefield, however, many experts see a stalemate in which neither side can prevail. The rise of Islamic militants among the fragmented rebel battalions has troubled the White House and helped scuttle proposals to provide sophisticated weaponry to opposition forces.

Meanwhile, Khatib's suggestion of talks with Damascus has caused a backlash among fellow dissidents who insist that Assad must resign before any negotiations can take place. Some have even accused Khatib — a respected Sunni Muslim preacher and an engineer from a well-known family of Islamic scholars in Damascus — of selling out a sacred cause.

Amid the outcry, Khatib said he was speaking for himself, not for the umbrella group that he heads, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. But any formal talks with the Assad government would presumably require the approval of the full coalition.

The Syrian government does not seem likely to comply with Khatib's demands for a wholesale release of prisoners and the renewal of the passports of many of its most bitter expatriate critics. Damascus has yet to comment publicly on Khatib's offer of talks. Assad recently renewed calls for dialogue with the opposition, but he has repeatedly excluded "terrorists," a term he has used broadly against both rebel fighters and their political supporters.

Still, both Russia and Iran seemed to view Khatib's offer as an encouraging development. In private, officials in Moscow and Tehran have reportedly voiced concerns that sticking with Assad could have disastrous consequences if he is ultimately overthrown.

Lavrov was quoted Saturday as saying that Khatib's offer demonstrated that "realism has prevailed." He added, "Of course, this does not guarantee that a dialogue will begin, at least because the opposition does not have a negotiating team."

Iran's Salehi called Khatib's initiative "a good step forward," adding that he had a "very good meeting" with Khatib in Munich. The Iranian diplomat backed the idea of the opposition and the government entering into negotiations for new elections in Syria.

Meanwhile, violence continued to rage in Syria, especially in the embattled northern city of Aleppo. The historic city, which had been the nation's economic hub, is gradually being destroyed amid a battle for control by rebel and government forces that began in July.

On Sunday, opposition activists reported that government rockets hit a five-story residential building in the rebel-held Ansari district, killing at least nine people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based pro-opposition group. The group also said that rebels had executed four men in Aleppo accused of complicity with government security services.

In addition, the group confirmed reports in the state-run press that rebels in Aleppo killed a former member of parliament, Ibrahim Azooz, his wife and two daughters. The opposition group said the four were "summarily executed."

In a statement, Assad accused Israel of trying to "destabilize and weaken Syria," and vowed that the nation would repel "aggression."

For the first time, state television aired footage of what it said was a scientific research center outside Damascus bombed by the Israelis. Western sources have described the target as an arms convoy. Footage showed a beige building with broken windows and other damage, along with destroyed vehicles outside that may have suffered direct hits.

Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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