Electricity rates to rise for Southern California Edison customers

SACRAMENTO — Almost 5 million Southern California Edison Co. customers in hundreds of cities and communities across the southern, central and coastal parts of the state will be hit with higher electric bills early next year and bigger hikes in each of the following two years.

The decision, which Edison says will add an average of $7 a month to residential bills for the first year, covers Edison's costs to provide service, which amounts to about half a ratepayer's bill. Other costs for buying fuel and contracting for power deliveries fluctuate and are passed directly to consumers.

The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved new rates, retroactive to the beginning of this year, on Thursday as part of an every-three-years process of reviewing finances at the heavily regulated utility.

The 5% increase for 2012 — providing the Rosemead company with $5.7 billion in revenue — is less than the 16.6% the company had sought. Rates, however, are estimated to rise an additional 6.3% for 2013 and 5.9% in 2014 under the PUC order.

"This decision ensures that SCE is able to invest in smart energy systems, renewables and safety and reliability, while its ratepayers are protected," PUC Commissioner Timothy Alan Simon said.

Edison provides electricity to 13 million people, including most of Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as much of Central California and the Inland Empire. Not included are residents of Los Angeles who get their power from the municipally owned Department of Water and Power.

Edison, the decision notes, has faced "two significant challenges to operations" in the last year: a December 2011 wind storm that damaged the grid, and the extended shutdown of two nuclear power reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County.

Edison in a statement called the commission's action "constructive" because the decision helps it finance needed upgrades in its system.

Consumer groups said they were pleased that commissioners granted Edison, a unit of Edison International, less than what the company sought from the PUC.

"We definitely got a substantial amount shaved off, but it's still more than we think Edison really needs," said Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for the Utility Reform Network, which advocates for ratepayers at the state's three big investor-owned electric companies.

Business groups also complained that the jump in Edison's already steep electric rates could make it harder for them to keep operating profitably.

"California manufacturers already pay 50% higher electricity rates than the national average," said Gino Di Caro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Assn. "Obviously, energy costs are one of the primary budgetary items for any manufacturing operation, and this is all the more reason for California to find ways to offset these costs."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

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Iran blogger's death in prison sets off blame game

BEIRUT — The mysterious death of a dissident blogger while in Iranian police custody this month has generated a rare torrent of criticism from officials apparently embarrassed by a case that has drawn international condemnation and again shined a spotlight on the nation's poor human rights record.

Iranian authorities have echoed calls from such human rights groups as Amnesty International for a thorough investigation of the death of Sattar Beheshti, 35, who died Nov. 3 under still-hazy circumstances after being arrested by Iran's cyber police, according to various accounts.

The case has sparked an unusually public and vitriolic bout of blame-dispensing among various powerful factions in the Islamic Republic.

The late blogger — a working-class high-school dropout virtually unknown to the dissident community until his death became a cause celebre — frequently assailed the lack of freedom in Iran. An online photograph said to be of Beheshti shows a man with a shaved head and a slender chain around his neck, wearing a dark T-shirt.

The few details of the case that have emerged offer a glimpse of the largely hidden world of Iranian bloggers and Web activists working in near-anonymity, though clearly on the radar of the nation's diligent cyber police.

On Monday, Mehdi Davatgari, a parliament member, charged that the cyber police — known as FATA — had held the blogger illegally overnight without a court order. He called for the "resignation or dismissal of the cyber police chief," reported Press TV, the government's English-language broadcast service.

Also this week, the public prosecutor's office said the most likely cause of Beheshti's death was "shock," either from psychological pressure while under interrogation or from beatings received while in custody. Those findings seemed to contradict an earlier assessment by Tehran's chief coroner, Ahmad Shojaei, that Beheshti probably died of natural causes, possibly a heart attack, even though his family reportedly said Beheshti had no history of heart problems.

The coroner, in comments to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency, acknowledged signs of bruising on five parts of the dead man's body — from his hands to his feet — indicating that Beheshti had been beaten. But he said that the blogger suffered no broken bones and that the physical evidence did not indicate any brutality that could have been fatal.

Toxicology and other tests are pending.

The case has provided fuel for the bitter political rivalry between loyalists to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and hard-line critics of the two-term president, who is to step down next year because of term limits.

"Officials are blaming each other and want to shrug off responsibility to others," said journalist Farshad Ghorbanpour, who says he spent eight months in jail for his writings on Iranian opposition websites and news outlets abroad.

Presidential surrogates have hinted that responsibility lies with Iran's judiciary, whose chief is an Ahmadinejad adversary appointed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The judiciary has nominal responsibility for the nation's detention system.

"The death of a worker writing a blog is very agonizing for me and, as a writer, I feel ashamed of myself," wrote editor Mohammad Reza Naghavifard in an editorial in Khorshid, a daily newspaper that supports Ahmadinejad. "It is more than a shame."

But Ahmadinejad's rivals have suggested that the fault lies with the cyber police and the internal security apparatus, which fall under the president's purview.

Ali Motahari, a conservative Iranian lawmaker and political rival of Ahmadinejad, recently voiced his outrage and warned against meddling.

"Sometimes we as supporters think that it is all right to do all sorts of things to preserve the system," Motahari told Etemad, a widely read daily considered to be anti-Ahmadinejad. "We are following up.... We will not budge, and we will not permit this case to be covered up."

Human rights organizations have long accused Iran of jailing dissidents, suppressing free speech and not thoroughly investigating deaths that occur in custody.

According to Amnesty International, authorities have acknowledged that at least three detainees at the Kahrizak prison, where Beheshti was reportedly held for a period, died as a result of torture or other ill treatment after their arrests in the tumultuous aftermath of the nation's disputed 2009 presidential election.

Many details of the blogger's case — including where he died — remain opaque.

What is known is that Iranian cyber police arrested Beheshti at his home Oct. 30 and accused him of "actions against national security on social networks and Facebook," according to a summary by Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based freedom-of-information advocacy group.

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Obama takes “fiscal cliff” battle to Twitter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama opened a new front on Wednesday in the battle between Democrats and Republicans over the best way to avoid the year-end “fiscal cliff” – Twitter.

The web-savvy Obama administration launched a social media campaign that asks Twitter users to add the “#my2k” hashtag to messages with examples of what $ 2,000 means to them.

The amount is roughly what a middle-class family of four would have to pay extra in taxes next year if Congress cannot strike a deal to remove the threat of roughly $ 600 billion in tax hikes and federal spending cuts.

The fast-paced social networking site known for its zippy 140-character comments is a tried-and-true method of reaching Americans. The latest call for such searchable references is an effort to pressure Congress into finding compromise on long-held partisan views.

Obama announced the new Twitter hashtag campaign at a news conference on Wednesday. He and fellow Democrats, who oppose significant cuts to U.S. “entitlement” programs such as Medicare as a way of balancing the budget, have been trying to break Republican opposition to hiking taxes on anyone, including the wealthy.

Promotions of “#my2k” quickly went out to millions of followers of the White House Twitter account and scores of Democratic backers, including former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Soon, “my2k” was a top-trending subject.

“#My2K means food for a year, the remainder of my student loan paid off or a full month of child care. $ 2200 can make or break a family,” wrote Twitter user Katrina Burchett.

In the anarchic spirit of social media, Republicans, who also polished their Twitter hashtag skills during the bitter 2012 presidential campaign, pounced quickly.

The conservative Heritage Foundation bought the promotional tweet that pops up at the top of the list if one searches for “#my2k” mentions, where the think tank offered its own take on solutions to the fiscal cliff.

House Speaker John Boehner and scores of fellow Republican lawmakers started sharing examples they hoped would put the blame for the lack of a resolution on the Democrats.

“We in the House took steps this summer to avert #fiscalcliff and stop #my2K tax hikes,” wrote Representative Mike Turner. “It’s time for @whitehouse and @SenateDems to act.”

‘BEING AWARE OF WHAT’S GOING ON’

Users on Twitter can sign up to follow one another’s messages, making searchable hashtags a helpful way to sort by subject or theme.

Marcus Messner, who studies social media at Virginia Commonwealth University, said Twitter was a perfect environment to reignite Obama’s base swiftly and gauge public engagement on the issue.

The Obama administration has used Twitter hashtags as part of lobbying campaigns to keep student loan rates low with #dontdoublemyrate and to extend payroll tax cuts with #40dollars, which was their estimate of how much the cuts saved an average family each year.

White House Social Media Director Macon Phillips later called the $ 40dollars hashtag “one of the most significant campaigns we ran on Twitter.”

“It’s about being aware of what’s going on and understanding that in the age of social media, you’re just a participant,” he told an Entrepreneur.com blogger in February. “It’s not something that you can control.”

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Oh, Yoko! Ono's fashion line gropes for Lennon

NEW YORK (AP) — You remember that Beatles classic "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"? Turns out Yoko Ono had other things in mind.

Ono's new menswear collection inspired by John Lennon includes pants with large handprints on the crotch, tank tops with nipple cutouts and even a flashing LED bra.

The collection of menswear for Opening Ceremony is based on a series of drawings she sketched as a gift for Lennon for their wedding day in 1969. Ono said she the illustrations were designs for clothing and accessories to celebrate Lennon's "hot bod."

Also in the collection are a "butt hoodie" with an outline suggesting its name, pants with cutouts at the behind, a jock strap with an LED light, open-toed boots and a transparent chest plaque with bells and a leather neck strap.

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Costco joins firms issuing special dividend payments this year

Deputy business editor Joe Bel Bruno and economy reporter Don Lee talk with Kent H. Hughes, director of the Program on America and the Global Economy at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

NEW YORK — Hoping to save shareholders money, Costco joined a growing list of companies issuing dividend payments this year, rather than waiting and seeing if tax rates rise as Congress wrangles over the "fiscal cliff."

The warehouse retailer said Wednesday that it would pay shareholders a special dividend of $7 a share before the end of the calendar year, "our latest effort in returning capital to our shareholders," said Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti.

Dividends, which are profits made from investing in stocks and bonds, are currently taxed at a rate of 15% for the top four tax brackets, and 0% for the bottom bracket. If Congress does not act, rates will jump to as high as 39.6% for the top bracket.

Moving up dividends and making special one-time dividend payouts makes sense because even if Congress and President Obama reach a compromise, taxes on dividends could still go up — though not as much as they would under the fiscal cliff, said Tony Cherin, a finance professor emeritus at San Diego State University.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Hot Topic Inc. and Dillard's Inc. are among retailers that have said they would pay their dividends this year rather than next year. Retailers usually end their fiscal years in January, so many don't usually pay dividends until then.

Other companies may also move up their dividend payments, especially under pressure from their biggest shareholders who could lose millions of dollars if taxes on dividends rise.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft, Cisco and Apple take advantage of this as well," said Randy Warren, chief investment officer of Warren Financial. "That's going to happen in the next couple of weeks."

On Wednesday, Walt Disney Co. also said that it would pay its annual dividend in December, and that the dividend of 75 cents was 25% higher than it was the previous year.

Paying dividends early limits companies' access to cash, which can be problematic if they're trying to make big purchases. But most companies have been hoarding cash during the recession, and probably won't worry about paying out large sums, Warren said. Few are making big acquisitions now anyway because of uncertainty in the economy.

Many of the people who will benefit most from early dividends payouts include the super wealthy who own lots of stock in big companies such as Wal-Mart. The Walton family, for instance, owns about half of Wal-Mart's stock.

But the uncertainty around what tax rates will be next year is wreaking havoc for people such as retirees, who depend on dividends for their income, said Edward Karl, vice president of taxation at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

They also worry about a 3.8% tax on investment income of high-income earners that goes into effect in January as part of Obama's healthcare plan, he said.

The fiscal cliff has turned all sorts of planning upside down, he said. Financial advisors often tell clients to defer their income. But this year they're telling them to accelerate it because of the uncertainty about taxes. They're also telling clients to consider selling some stocks, rather than wait a few months, to avoid higher taxes on those profits as well.

That may lead to an increase in stock market activity as people sell off assets, unless the uncertainty around taxes is resolved.

"There's likely to be a flurry of activity over the next month," Karl said.

Negotiations over the fiscal cliff continue. The Senate has passed President Obama's proposal to extend middle-class tax cuts, but House GOP leadership disagreed publicly Wednesday on whether to vote on the measure.

alana.semuels@latimes.com

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Top Democrat urges progressives to deal on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON – A top Democrat pressured fellow progressives Tuesday to support – rather than fight – a far-reaching budget deal that includes cuts to entitlement programs after resolving  the upcoming fiscal cliff.

“We can't be so naive to believe that just taxing the rich will solve our problems,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “Put everything on the table. Repeat. Everything on the table.”

The assistant majority leader’s speech at the influential Center for American Progress comes at a pivotal moment in budget talks between the White House and Congress. Progressive and labor groups have warned President Obama against cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs and to instead focus on raising tax revenue in the administration’s negotiations with congressional Republicans.

The White House and Capitol Hill are working to prevent the combination of automatic tax hikes and deep spending cuts coming at year’s end – what economists have warned would be a $500-billion hit to the economy that could spark another recession.

QUIZ: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

Durbin, a top progressive, has long angled for a broad deficit-reduction deal after having served on the White House’s nonpartisan fiscal commission that devised $4 trillion in new taxes and spending cuts to curb the nation’s debt load. Experts say such a large package is needed to stop record deficits and improve the nation’s fiscal outlook.

In remarks that strayed from his prepared comments, Durbin told the story of a labor leader who questioned his interest in serving on that 2010 panel, asking, “What is a nice progressive like you doing in a place like that?”

Durbin responded by saying it was better to have a seat at the table, a position he reiterated as he tried to prevent a schism among Democrats’ traditional allies while talks continue toward the year-end deadline.

“Progressives cannot afford to stand on the sidelines in this fiscal debate and deny the obvious,” Durbin said.

Already, a coalition of liberal groups is running ads warning Obama against striking a deal with Republicans that would slash social safety net programs while allowing tax breaks for wealthier households to continue.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that negotiations over Social Security should occur separately from deficit negotiations.

"We should address the drivers of the deficit," he told reporters, "and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit."

[For the Record, 6:02 p.m. PST  Nov. 27: This post has been updated to include the latest reaction from the White House. In addition, the lead has been corrected to make clear that Durbin wants the entitlement negotiations separate from a deal on the fiscal cliff.]

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC

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Nintendo Unveils Wii Mini for the Canucks

Nintendo‘s pushing the new $ 299 Wii U console hard (and has already sold 400K units in the process), but in at least one region, the gaming company has a new back-up plan: The $ 99 Nintendo Wii Mini.

[More from Mashable: Wii U Sells 400,000 Units in First Week]

The new smaller, black box with red trim is a simpler game console. It offers no Internet access and cannot play older GameCube console games. What it does do is play virtually all Wii games (Nintendo says there are around 1,300 of them). The other major caveat is that the console is only available in Canada. According to a Nintendo press release on the new system, “Wii Mini is available exclusively in Canada during the holiday season. No information is available about its potential availability in other territories in the future.”

Nintendo also left out some details on the console itself. We do not know the exact size or weight of the box, though judging from the above image, it’s not much wider than a Wii Remote.

[More from Mashable: Meet the Super Fan Who Waited in Line for a Month for a Wii U [VIDEO]]

As Nintendo describes it, the Wii Mini is “all about games,” and without the Internet, it has to be. No Web browsing, cavorting with other Mii’s or multi-player gaming. It’s also worth noting that while the Wii Mini ships with a single Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk (both red), a brand new Black Wii with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort (including Remote and Nunchuk) is currently $ 119 at Best Buy.

What do you think of the Wii Mini? Would you game without the Internet? Is this the perfect gift for young, Canadian children? Let us know in the comments.

GamePad

The Wii U GamePad has a 6.2-inch touchscreen.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'Hobbit' director aims for magical film experience

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Peter Jackson says he hopes technology he used on his "Hobbit" movie trilogy will help create a "magical" experience that will encourage people to return to theaters.

Jackson spoke at a news conference in Wellington hours before the Wednesday premiere of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." He shot at 48 frames per second instead of the traditional 24 to give the film greater clarity. He likened the technology to the leap from vinyl records to CDs.

He says younger people are happy to watch movies on their iPads, so filmmakers "have to make the cinema-going experience more magical and more spectacular."

Some observers who saw preview footage at a convention in April thought the images were too clear and that the realism detracted from the magic of film.

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Amid Hurricane Sandy, a Race to Get a Liver Transplant

It was the best possible news, at the worst possible time.

The phone call from the hospital brought the message that Dolores and Vin Dreeland had long hoped for, ever since their daughter Natalia, 4, had been put on the waiting list for a liver transplant. The time had come.

They bundled her into the car for the 50-mile trip from their home in Long Valley, N.J., to NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. But it soon seemed that this chance to save Natalia’s life might be just out of reach.

The date was Sunday, Oct. 28, and Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm to hit the East Coast in decades, was bearing down on New York. Airports and bridges would soon close, but the donated organ was in Nevada, five hours away. The time window in which a plane carrying the liver would be able to land in the region was rapidly closing.

In a hospital room, Natalia watched cartoons. Her parents watched the clock, and the weather. “Our anxiety was through the roof,” Mrs. Dreeland said. “It just made your stomach into knots.”

The Dreelands, who are in their 60s, became Natalia’s foster parents in 2008 when she was 7 months old, and adopted her just before she turned 2. They have another adopted daughter, Dorothy Jane, who is 17.

Natalia is a “smart little cookie” who loves school and dressing up Alice, her favorite doll, her mother said. At age 3, Natalia used the word “discombobulated” correctly, Mr. Dreeland said.

Natalia’s health problems date back several years. Her gallbladder was taken out in 2010, and about half her liver was removed in 2011. The underlying problem was a rare disease, Langerhans cell histiocytosis. It causes a tremendous overgrowth of a type of cell in the immune system and can damage organs. Drugs can sometimes keep it in check, but they did not work for Natalia.

In her case, the disease struck the bile ducts, which led to progressive liver damage. “She would have eventually gone into liver failure,” said Dr. Nadia Ovchinsky, a pediatric liver transplant specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian. “And she demonstrated some signs of early liver failure.”

The only hope was a transplant.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Natalia’s surgeon, knew that the liver in Nevada was a perfect match for Natalia in the two criteria that matter most: blood type and size. The deceased donor was 2 years old, and though Natalia is nearly 5, she is small for her age. Scar tissue from her previous operations would have made it very difficult to fit a larger organ into her abdomen.

Though Dr. Kato had considered transplanting part of an adult liver into Natalia, a complete organ from a child would be far better for her. But healthy organs from small children do not often become available, Dr. Kato said. This was a rare opportunity, and he was determined to seize it.

But as the day wore on, the odds for Natalia grew slimmer. The operation in Nevada to remove the liver was delayed several times.

At many hospitals, surgery to remove donor organs is done at the end of the day, after all regularly scheduled operations. The Nevada hospital had a busy surgical schedule that day, made worse by a trauma case that took priority.

At the hospital in New York, Tod Brown, an organ procurement coordinator, had alerted a charter air carrier that a flight from Nevada might be needed. That company in turn contacted West Coast carriers to pick up the donated liver and fly it to New York.

Initially, two carriers agreed, but then backed out. Several other charter companies also declined.

Mr. Brown told Dr. Kato that they might have to decline the organ. Dr. Kato, soft-spoken but relentless, said, “Find somebody who can fly.”

Dr. Kato used to work in Miami, where pilots found ways to bypass hurricanes to deliver organs. Even during Hurricane Katrina, his hospital performed transplants.

“I asked the transplant coordinators to just keep pushing,” he said.

Mr. Brown said, “Dr. Kato knew he was going to get that organ, one way or another.”

As the trajectory of the storm became clearer, one of the West Coast charter companies agreed to attempt the flight. The plan was to land at the airport in Teterboro, N.J. The backup was Newark airport, and the second backup was Albany, from where an ambulance would finish the trip.

The timing was critical: organs deteriorate outside the body, and ideally a liver should be transplanted within 12 hours of being removed.

Early Monday, as the storm whirled offshore, the plane landed at Teterboro. Soon a nurse rushed to tell the Dreelands that she had just seen an ambulance with lights and sirens screech up to the hospital. Someone had jumped out carrying a container.

At about 5 a.m., the couple kissed Natalia and saw her wheeled off to the operating room.

Three weeks later, she is back home, on the mend. The complicated regimen of drugs that transplant patients need is tough on a child, but she is getting through it, her father said.

Recently, Mr. Dreeland said, he found himself weeping uncontrollably during a church service for the family of the child who had died. “Their child gave my child life,” he said.

Though only time will tell, because the histiocytosis appeared limited to Natalia’s bile ducts and had not affected other organs, her doctors say there is a good chance that the transplant has cured her.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 28, 2012

Because of an editing error, a picture caption with an article on Tuesday about a girl who received a liver transplant during Hurricane Sandy misspelled the surname of the girl’s family. As the article correctly noted, it is Dreeland, not Vreeland.

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Federal budget standoff is nerve-racking for state's long-term jobless

SACRAMENTO — The federal budget crisis in Washington known as the "fiscal cliff" has an estimated 400,000 long-term jobless Californians on the edge.

A 41/2 -year-old program of emergency federal jobless assistance, which provides many of the state's unemployed up to $450 a week in benefits, is scheduled to expire Dec. 29 — unless Congress and President Obama agree to keep it going.

Nationwide, about 2 million people face a cutoff in unemployment benefits, estimated to cost $30 billion in the coming year. An additional 1 million jobless workers are expected to lose state benefits by March.

"There's going to be millions of us who, basically, will be out in the streets," said Lis De Bats, 54, an Agoura Hills resident laid off in January from a job as a new-home sales manager. "I'd lose my home and everything that goes along with it. I've used up all my resources."

Although the federal budget debate has prompted worries in many sectors of the economy, including federal workers and aerospace workers in Southern California, the threat to these emergency benefits is especially nerve-racking to those with no other means of support.

In California, notices of the impending loss of benefits are being mailed this week. The letters also provide information about other types of state support, including food stamps, welfare and healthcare programs for the poor.

And the benefits are important not just to needy individuals and families but also to economically hard-pressed communities, economists say.

"If you take money out of the economy, it will slow economic growth," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. "What's happening in Europe should show us that taking money out of the economy leads to recession."

So far, the nation's policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration haven't reached an agreement on whether to extend unemployment benefits, keep the President George W. Bush-era payroll tax cuts, and allow automatic federal spending reductions to kick in, among other options, before Congress adjourns at year's end.

The uncertainty is troubling for Eric Silvern, 53, a Culver City high school teacher laid off in June 2011 and whose federal benefits were scheduled to run out in April. But now they may be gone by the end of the year.

"I'm very scared because I'm eligible for four more months, and I totally depend on them," he said. "I'm biting my nails every day worrying about it. In the past, they postponed the cuts, and I'm hoping they do that again."

For many chronically unemployed, those who haven't found steady work more than a year after being laid off, these emergency benefits are often their only way to pay for mortgages or rent, food and gasoline. As of October, about 35% of the state's nearly 2 million jobless had been out of work for 52 weeks or longer, according to the state Employment Development Department.

De Bats of Agoura Hills said she applies for an average of 50 jobs a week only to see the few openings filled by lower-paid, entry-level job seekers.

"I've cut everything to the bare minimal needed," she said. "It's been really tough."

Her predicament is typical of a large group of stubbornly unemployed despite gradual improvements in both the California and national economies, experts said.

California's unemployment rate in October dropped to 10.1% from 11.5% in October 2011. Still, the state had the third-highest unemployment level in the nation after Nevada and Rhode Island. The national rate was 7.9% in October.

The unemployment insurance program was "only designed for temporary sustenance while looking for a new job. It was never a substitute for welfare," said Employment Development Department spokeswoman Loree Levy.

"What we have is a crisis of long-term unemployment," said Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director on the West Coast for the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the jobless and working poor. "We've never had this many people unemployed for this long."

Whether the federal unemployment payments get another extension remains uncertain. Unemployment benefits got little attention during the presidential campaign. But the president did address the issue publicly at a town hall meeting in Cincinnati last summer when he responded to a question from the daughter of an out-of-work construction worker.

"We'll continue to negotiate with Congress to make sure that unemployment is there," Obama responded. "But the most important thing I want to do is make sure your dad can get a job."

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, said that "Democrats have supported extending unemployment insurance benefits over and over again." But he noted that the federal emergency extensions are just one of about "a dozen things that expire at the end of the year" and that might be addressed as part of a "fiscal cliff" deal.

For its part, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown is lobbying Washington about "the significant impact the end of benefits will have on unemployed Californians," said Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for Brown.

Jennie Roberson, 29, said she learned the hard way about the importance of the federal unemployment payments. The Los Feliz graduate of UC Santa Barbara "has been searching for solid work since August 2010" and been "couch surfing" — living with a friend — since May because she didn't have enough money for rent.

Roberson just started working part time as a waiter and feeling that her life soon might turn around. The former administrative assistant for a nonprofit golfing organization is eager to find any type of office position.

But until that happens, the extended benefits are "a lifesaver, absolutely," she said, because "if I didn't have that coming in, I wouldn't have had any income."

marc.lifsher@latimes.com

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