New high-speed rail business plan for Calif. unveiled. Supreme Court ruling allows jail strip searches for minor offenses. Opposition appeals for no Walmart in Chinatown. Feds raid major pot players in Oakland. Obama swats at GOP budget. Love, suspense and tragedy on the mean streets of San Pedro.
Do you support the "better, faster and cheaper” high-speed rail plan?
"Better, faster and cheaper” is the mantra for a new business plan unveiled Monday for California’s high-speed rail project. The electric-powered trains would be capable of transporting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours at speeds up to 220 mph.
California High-Speed Rail Authority officials said the revised 212-page plan chops off almost $30 billion from the ambitious effort’s cost by using some existing tracks rather than building new ones, bringing the project’s estimated cost to $68.4 billion. That’s still $25 billion more than the project’s original price tag, reported the Los Angeles Times. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa praised the updated plan, saying a speedy bullet train path stretching 520 miles from downtown L.A. to downtown San Francisco is a natural extension of a transportation network being built in Southern California.
Construction would begin this year, if the plan is approved, on a 300-mile swath of high-speed tracks from Merced to the San Fernando Valley to be completed by 2022. Rail officials Monday said construction of the entire system would be completed in 2028, and open to the public a year later. Supporters of the revised plan say it will infuse the state’s flailing economy with jobs. Critics say the project isn’t what voters were promised in 2008, when they approved a $9 billion bond measure to jumpstart the rail system, and that the state can’t afford it.
Do you support high-speed rail in California? Is it worth it, when it comes to jobs and connectivity, or is it still just costing too much?
GUEST
Julie Small, KPCC's State Capital Reporter
Should strip searches in jail for minor offenses be allowed?
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a five-to-four decision that jailers may strip search people arrested even for minor violations. The court, with its conservative wing defending security above privacy in jails, ruled against New Jersey man Albert Florence, who was strip searched in two county jails after his arrest in 2005 on a warrant for an unpaid fine he had actually paid.
In the case, Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington, the court decided the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, does give jails the right to conduct strip searches on every person arrested for minor offenses no matter the circumstances.
"The problem we have with regard to jails in particular, is they for some period of time, no matter that you're arrested for, you're in a mixed population of people who have been arrested who's criminal history ... who's ability to pull a weapon out of a private area are unknown," said Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "This is the problem that corrections officials have to face every day… Part if their obligation is to protect other people in that jail from other people."
Rushford says the problem varies depending on the jail, because some jails have the space and resources to separate out questionable people from the general population. Many time larger city jails do not have the resources to keep inmates separated from each other.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that courts must defer to judgment of correctional officials “unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security.” In the dissenting opinion supported by the court’s liberals, Justice Stephen Breyer said strip searches subject those arrested to minor offenses to serious invasions of their privacy.
Susan Chana Lask, Florence's attorney, says a systematic use of strip searching is wrong, given that officers have multiple ways to judge whether someone poses a threat to them or other inmates.
"The guards have the ability to know when someone's on PCP. With that ability… they can certainly pat someone down and assess the risk," she said. "There's about five procedures they can do before just blanket strip-searching everyone that walks in. When someone's walking in like Albert Florence who had no record and he was brought in on a warrant that didn't exist… asking this innocent man to strip, squat and cough, that's just wrong. There's no need for that."
Have you been arrested for a minor offense and felt unjustly subjected to a strip search? Do safety and security within an environment as potentially dangerous as a jail outweigh issues of privacy?
Guests:
Susan Chana Lask, constitutional and civil rights attorney, and lawyer for Albert Florence, a New Jersey man the Supreme Court ruled against, who was strip searched in two county jails after his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had actually paid
Michael D. Rushford, president and CEO of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a nonprofit, public interest law organization dedicated to improving the administration of criminal justice and defending the rights of crime victims
Opposition appeals for no Walmart in Chinatown
The Los Angeles City Council on March 23 voted to adopt a proposal from Councilman Ed Reyes to temporarily ban the construction of large retail chains in Chinatown. But the vote couldn’t stop plans for a Walmart grocery store in Chinatown because hours before, the big box conglomerate had already received permission from the city’s Department of Building and Safety to build the store.
Disappointed by the news, Reyes said he’d hoped his moratorium would help the neighborhood to protect itself against projects that were out of character with the needs of the community. Labor unions and advocacy groups were also angered by Walmart’s proposed project. A number of pro-labor organizations like the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy condemn Walmart’s non-union workforce and low-end pay scale.
LAANE and other advocacy groups are appealing the decision to permit the planned grocery store in Chinatown. They say it’s an attempt to circumvent an existing city ordinance that prevents Walmart from expanding a big box retail outlet in Los Angeles.
Eight years ago, the council approved an ordinance that would make it difficult to build a Walmart Superstore with a grocery that exceeds 100,000 square feet, but because this new market in Chinatown is going into an already existing retail space, council approval was not needed. Should Walmart be allowed to build a grocery store in Chinatown?
Guest:
James Elmendorf, LAANE’s Deputy Director
George Yu, executive director of the Chinatown Business Improvement District
Feds raid major pot players in Oakland
The U.S. Department of Justice is making good on threats to crack down on pot shops in California. Yesterday, federal agents raided Oaksterdam University. Part training school for pot proprietors, part dispensary, and part advocacy team – Oaksterdam’s founder, Richard Lee, and his colleagues are arguably the biggest players in the fight to legalize pot in this state.
Yesterday's raid was a joint effort by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. The warrants are still sealed but we know that last year the IRS said marijuana-related businesses cannot write-off business expenses because they are in violation of federal law. "This is a calculated attack across the state on everyone who is trying to bring the cannabis industry out of the darkness and into the light," says Dale Sky Jones, executive chancellor of the school, in the Los Angeles Times.
Oaksterdam and its supporters are planning a rally in San Francisco today. A majority of Oakland residents and its city council support marijuana business. The city has increased dispensary and pot farm permits continually, as well as a pot tax. Oaksterdam University's Lee bankrolled and wrote Proposition 19 – the measure to legalize and tax recreational marijuana on the November 2010 ballot. It was defeated – 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent.
The raid wouldn’t come as a surprise to the pot school. Last year, the Justice Department took legal action against several pot shops and issued warning letters to dozens more. Department officials argue the pot collectives are for-profit enterprises not dedicated to helping cancer patients and the like.
Were Oaksterdam's owners violating the law? Were they being targeted by federal officials because of their profile? Is the Justice Department sending a message to pot collectives across the state? If the Oakland community largely supports pot shops, how should the feds respond?
Guests:
Paul Armentano, Instructor (teaches science & physiology), Oaksterdam University; Deputy Director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
John Lovell, Lobbyist, California Police Chiefs' Association; California Narcotic Officers Association
Obama swats at GOP budget
Delivering a speech in front of the Associated Press today, President Barack Obama took a very harsh stance against the budget plan being supported by House Republicans. While Obama has already been engaging in the rhetoric of inequality when referring to the plan, he further tweaked his language to contrast the difference between himself and the GOP's presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney. He referred to the budget as a "Trojan horse" and "thinly veiled Social Darwinism." In an election year, them's fightin' words. AirTalk takes a look at Obama's speech and the potential political fallout for both parties. Furthermore, we'll look forward to tonight's primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington D.C.
Guest:
David Mark, Senior Editor, POLITICO
Love, suspense and tragedy on the mean streets of San Pedro
“It’s Joseph Wambaugh’s world. Other crime writers just live in it.” So says the Los Angeles Times about the writer known as the father of the modern police novel.
His latest novel is set in San Pedro, one of the world’s busiest harbors, and is the fifth in his “Hollywood Station” series. Wambaugh knows his beat: he’s a former LAPD detective, and his experiences on the force have flavored each of his riveting books with fascinating characters, some of whom resurface in “Harbor Nocturne.”
Guest:
Joseph Wambaugh, author of “Harbor Nocturne” (Mysterious Press), the fifth novel in his “Hollywood Station” series. Wambaugh has written twenty prior works of fiction and non-fiction, including “The New Centurions,” “The Choirboys” and “The Onion Field.”