Many left behind as Silicon Valley rebounds

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- On a morning the stock market was sailing to a record high and a chilly storm was blowing into Silicon Valley, Wendy Carle stuck her head out of the tent she calls home to find city workers duct taping an eviction notice to her flimsy, flapping shelter walls.

"I have no idea where I'm going to go," she said, tugging on her black sweatshirt over her brown curls and scooping up Hero, an albino dog.

She glanced at the glimmering windows on a cluster of high-tech office buildings just blocks away and shook her head.

"Did you know Google shares hit $840 each this morning?" she asked. "I just heard that on the radio."

Carle, who did not want to give her age, used to manage apartments. Today she lives on a Supplemental Security Income disability payment of $826 a month due to back and joint problems.

The Silicon Valley is adding jobs faster than it has in more than a decade as the tech industry roars back. Stocks are soaring and fortunes are once again on the rise.

But a bleaker record is also being set this year: Food stamp participation just hit a 10-year high, homelessness rose 20 percent in two years, and the average income for Hispanics, who make up one in four Silicon Valley residents, fell to a new low of about $19,000 a year— capping a steady 14 percent drop over the past five years, according to the annual Silicon Valley Index released by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, representing businesses, and the philanthropic Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Simply put, while the ultra-rich are getting even richer, record numbers of Silicon Valley residents are slipping into poverty.

"In the midst of a national economic recovery led by Silicon Valley's resurgence, as measured by corporate profits and record stock prices, something strange is going on in the Valley itself. Most people are getting poorer," said Cindy Chavez, executive director of San Jose-based Working Partnerships USA, a nonprofit advocating for affordable housing, higher minimum wages and access to health care.

Nowhere is this growing disparity more obvious than this sprawling and trash-strewn 28-acre tent city that authorities are trying to clean out. Beneath the sweeping shadow and roar of jets soaring in and out of nearby San Jose's international airport, residents here say times are so tight they have nowhere else to turn.

"This is the most ridiculous place ever," said Kristina Erbenich, 38, clambering onto her bike, a heavy pack on her back. The former chef said she spent $14,000 on hotel rooms before her savings ran out. "If everyone around here is so rich, why can't they do something to help?"

United Way Silicon Valley CEO Carole Leigh Hutton wonders the same thing.

"How is it that in an area so very rich, we have so many people so very poor? Why can't we break that cycle? With all the brain power in the Silicon Valley, we should be able to solve these problems. But what we need is the collective will."

The causes for the growing disparity are complex, but largely come down to one thing: a very high cost of living. The median home price is $550,000, and rents average just under $2,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in this region that is home to many of the nation's wealthiest companies including Facebook, Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Google. For a family of four, just covering basic needs like rent, food, childcare and transportation comes to almost $90,000 a year, according to the nonprofit Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

"The fact is that we have an economy now that's working well only for those at the very top," said Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C. "Unless we adopt a new approach to economic policy, we're going to continue going down this path, which means growth that does not really benefit the great majority of people in this country."

Nationally, Mishel says the declining value of the federal minimum wage is a major factor driving inequality. On Monday, in an effort to address this, minimum hourly wages will rise from $8 per hour to a new minimum of $10 per hour, the nation's largest minimum wage increase approved by voters last fall. While it's a dramatic shift for tens of thousands of workers, it's a minuscule fraction of the increases top earners in the region enjoyed last year.

Silicon Valley's top tech magnates inched up the Forbes annual list of the richest people on the planet released this week: Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison had a reported net worth of $43 billion, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had about $23 billion each, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was worth an estimated $13.3 billion, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, had an estimated worth of $10.7 billion.

"The wealth numbers are staggering, they are absolutely staggering," said Alf Nucifora, who chairs the Luxury Marketing Council of San Francisco

One in five ultra-wealthy Americans, defined by having a net worth above $30 million, lives in California, stoked by the "wealth-generating cluster" of the Silicon Valley, according to WealthX, a company that tracks the super-rich. Stanford University, in Palo Alto, boasts 1,173 alumni with a net worth of more than $30 million — only Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania have more.

"The Silicon Valley is an ecosystem of human capital, venture capital, risk, an educational infrastructure," says WealthX president David Friedman. "All of those things combine into this glorious cocktail of prosperity."

But many residents, even those with college educations, are finding it tougher than ever to make it in the Silicon Valley.

Before the Great Recession, about 10 percent of people seeking food had at least some college education. Today, one in four who line up at food pantries for bags of free food have been to college. Last year the share of households in Silicon Valley earning less than $35,000 rose two percentage points to 20 percent, according to the 2013 Silicon Valley Index.

"There are millionaires, even billionaires, who sit in their sunrooms watching me work in their gardens and they have no clue what's going on," said Sherri Bohan, a credentialed horticulturist who ran a landscape gardening firm for 30 years and raised two sons as a single mom. Today, retired and disabled, she picks up a free bag of groceries every week at her local food bank. Without the food she says she would go hungry.

Silicon Valley's rich do give, and often significantly, but the money mostly leaves the area. Facebook's Zuckerberg gave $100 million to Newark N.J., public schools in 2010; his $500 million gift to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation last year has yet to be designated. The Google Foundation donated about $11 million in 2011, according to its tax forms, largely to global environmental and health projects.

"Many people come here to work, but they have no idea what's really going on," said Lisa Sobrato Sonsini, whose Sobrato Family Foundation — funded by profits gained as a leading real estate and development firm in the region — is the single largest contributor to local charities in the region. "The companies are generous, but they don't see the need directly in front of them, they want to send their money away."

Phyllis Kizer, a long time high-tech business analyst, is disturbed by the challenges people in her community face.

"Looking at myself, I'm very well paid for what I do, I have no complaints," she said.

Once a week, Kizer heads to a low income school where she sits with children, including recent immigrants, helping them learn to read.

"I love books, and I love teaching," she said. "I wanted to pass that on. Some of these children, they can really go far, but we need to help."

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Husband and wife behind 'The Bible' miniseries

NEW YORK (AP) -- Mark Burnett was taken aback by the scale of what his wife, actress Roma Downey, had in mind when she suggested over tea one morning four years ago that they make a television miniseries based on the Bible.

"Momentarily, I think he thought I'd lost my mind," Downey recalled. "He went out on his bicycle and he prayed on it and he came back and said, 'You know what, I think it's a good idea. I think we should do it together.' We shook hands and haven't looked back."

The series debuts on History Sunday at 8 p.m. EST, the first of five two-hour chunks that will air each weekend. The finale airs on Easter Sunday.

Different stories in the Bible have been Hollywood fodder for years. Burnett, the prolific producer behind "Survivor" and "The Voice," said no one had tried to tie it all together and use modern computer graphics to bring images like Moses parting the Red Sea to life on screen.

Instead of being all-encompassing, they tried to concentrate on stories in depth and on characters who would emotionally engage the audience. The first episode illustrates the wisdom of that approach: it flounders at the start with a discussion about the world's creation but becomes more gripping when the emphasis turns to the lives of Abraham and Moses.

Burnett said he believes there's a growing "Biblical illiteracy" among young people.

"It's like saying you never heard of Macbeth or King Lear," he said. "In school, you have to know a certain amount of Shakespeare, but no Bible. So there's got to be a way to look at it from a pure literature point of view. If it wasn't for the Bible, arguably Shakespeare wouldn't have written those stories."

Downey, the former star of "Touched By an Angel," said she wanted to be part of something that would glorify God.

After pitching their idea to several networks, Burnett and Downey found a fit with Nancy Dubuc, History's president and general manager. She likes the challenge of ideas that seem unwieldy. History made the 2010 miniseries "America the Story of Us," which was a big hit, and 2012's "Mankind the Story of All of Us," which wasn't. Last spring's miniseries on the Hatfields and McCoys was an eye-opening success.

Burnett and Downey have been building anticipation for "The Bible" by previewing it at churches and for religious leaders. Rick Warren, Joel Osteen and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, have all endorsed the work.

"The faith community is going to sample it, unquestionably," Dubuc said. "Whether they stay or go remains with the TV gods. Our job has been to present this as an epic tale of adventure."

History's own campaign is not targeting a religious audience, emphasizing some of the dramatic scenes to suggest that audiences won't be preached to. The screening that Downey and Burnett have sweated the most was when their teenage children showed it to some friends.

"We knew that we could make it heartfelt," Downey said. "We knew we could make it faithful. But we wanted to be sure that we could make it cool."

Downey spent nearly half of 2012 in Morocco supervising filming, beginning in the cold of February and ending in the blistering heat of July. "We wanted it to be gritty and authentic," she said. "We didn't want it to look like somebody had just stepped out of the dry cleaners."

Her husband flew back and forth to the United States, where he would work on his other programs. Downey said she initially had no intention of appearing onscreen, but stepped in when they had trouble casting an actress for an older Mary, mother of Jesus.

Except for Downey, few of the actors involved are well known in the United States. Portuguese TV star Diogo Morgado portrays Jesus Christ, and many of the other lead actors are based in Britain.

The television airing of "The Bible" on History is only the beginning for this project. Lifetime will air a repeat each week after a new episode appears on History. It will air internationally, and a DVD package will go on sale this spring. The series' scripts are bound together into a book. Producers will make a theatrical release movie of a portion of the story, and are looking at showing it in stadiums this fall. Burnett and Downey have also reached a deal to make parts of the film available as part of a religious education curriculum for churches.

"More people will watch this than any of our other series combined over the next three decades," Burnett said.

Even better, their marriage survived the grueling process intact — even stronger, Downey said.

"Nobody has taken on the broad vision from Genesis to Revelation, and I think we probably realized at midpoint why no one had done it before," she said. "It was maddeningly complicated and extraordinarily hard work. We approached it humbly, but we were exhilarated by it."

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History is part of A&E Networks, a joint venture of The Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Corp.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — David Bauder can be reached at dbauder(at)ap.org or on Twitter (at)dbauder.

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Vatican denies sinister motives behind diplomat's transfer

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican denied on Friday that Pope Benedict's decision to send a senior official to a new post in Latin America was linked to a secret report about leaked papal papers.

Since Benedict announced his resignation on February 11, Italian newspapers have been full of rumors about conspiracies, secret reports and lobbies in the Vatican that they say pushed the pope to abdicate.

Some reports hinted there were sinister motives behind the pope's decision to promote Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, an Italian who holds a post roughly equivalent to deputy foreign minister, to be the Vatican's new ambassador to Colombia.

The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said the suggestion that the pope had made the appointment to get Balestrero out of the Vatican was "absurd, totally without foundation".

Lombardi said the appointment had been decided weeks ago and that the Vatican had waited for the Colombian government's official agreement before announcing it.

The pope has announced that he will step down on February 28, becoming the first pontiff to abdicate in some six centuries.

The 85-year-old Benedict said his failing health no longer enabled him to run the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church as he would like.

Italy's Repubblica newspaper has run a series of unsourced stories about the alleged contents of a secret report prepared for the pope by a commission of three cardinals who investigated the so-called Vatileaks scandal last year.

In that scandal, Paolo Gabriele, the pope's butler, was convicted of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media.

The documents alleged corruption in the Vatican and infighting over the running of its bank, which has been at the heart of a series of scandals in past decades.

The Italian media stories suggested Balestrero was mentioned in the cardinals' report, which was handed to the pope and is still secret.

Balestrero was head of the Vatican's delegation to Moneyval, the Council of Europe's committee that evaluates how countries are applying international standards on financial transparency.

The Vatican, a sovereign city-state surrounded by Rome, subjected itself to Moneyval's investigations in an attempt to achieve full financial transparency and put its scandal-tinged financial past behind it.

The Moneyval report, issued last July, gave the Vatican an overall passing grade but said it had to made improvements in several areas, including the management at its bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

The Vatican has said it is willing to adhere to all of Moneyval's recommendations.

Bogota is one of the most prestigious posts in Latin America for a Vatican diplomat because it is the headquarters of CELAM, the umbrella group for all of the continent's bishops conferences.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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