Latest primary results: Romney’s still on top but the no one’s dropping out. Limited victory for transgender model. LAUSD considers new homework policy. Should elite passengers not get preferential treatment on airport security lines? How Mexican food conquered America.
Latest primary results: Romney’s still on top but no one’s dropping out
Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington D.C. all held primaries yesterday and the results are in: a clean sweep for Mitt Romney. He took all three primaries with double digit wins, even taking 70% of the vote in D.C. None of the races held many surprises, Romney had been ahead in most polls and his closest rival wasn’t even on the ballot in one contest.
This latest round puts Romney even more squarely in the lead than he was before. He’s past the halfway mark in delegates he needs to secure the nomination, but that doesn’t mean the other candidates are bowing out to spend more time with their families. Newt Gingrich, who just barely cracked double digits in yesterday’s races, has maintained that he isn’t going anywhere except for Tampa in August.
Santorum has indicated the same thing, saying yesterday that this is just half-time and he’s ready to come tearing out of the locker room on April 24th when Pennsylvania, his home state, holds their primary. However, none of this changes the delegate math. Barring something absolutely cataclysmic, there is absolutely no way any candidate will be able to overtake or even catch Romney in terms of delegates.
So, is the race for the Republican candidacy over? Where does Romney stand with republican voters? And why do Gingrich, Santorum and Paul stick around when this thing is a good as Romney’s?
Guests:
Matt Rodriguez, Democratic strategist; former senior Obama advisor in 2008, who now runs the Los Angeles office for the Dewey Square Group
Arnold Steinberg, Veteran Political Strategist and Analyst
Limited victory for transgender model
Two weeks ago a transgender model, Jenna Talackova, 23, was kicked out of the Miss Universe Canada pageant because the rules of the contest run by Donald Trump's New York City-based organization say entrants must be "naturally born" females. Talackova was born a male but underwent a sex change four years ago.
The competition organizers have since reinstated Ms. Talackova to allow her to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada pageant after all, provided that she meet the legal requirements for being a woman in Canada. It is still not clear whether Ms. Talackova will be able to compete because these requirements vary slightly by province in Canada and can include obtaining medical certificates and legal affidavits from doctors.
The model became a finalist last month in the 61st Miss Universe Canada pageant in May but was disqualified from the competition when it was learned she was born a male. Soon after that Ms Talackova tweeted “disqualified for being born” and a flurry of press attention ensued. Her lawyer Gloria Allred called a press conference on Tuesday and condemned publically the discriminatory rules that disqualified her client.
Are these rules governing beauty pageants fair? Ms. Talackova’s passport clearly states that she is a woman. Should the fact she was born a male disqualify her from this competition? Is this a victory for the transgender community?
Guest:
Mr. Gunner Scott, Executive Director of Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition; creator of the “I Am: Trans People Speak” campaign.
How does LAUSD's homework policy affect your family?
Like death and taxes, homework has long been a standard feature of life, for public education students, anyway.
Homework’s unlikely to go away any time soon, but the ongoing debate about the proper amount and the impact it should have a student’s grade is heating up in L.A. Unified schools and beyond.
Last summer, the Los Angeles Unified School District implemented a new policy allowing homework to count for only 10 percent of a student’s grade. But that policy was quickly suspended after parents and teachers complained that they hadn’t been consulted. So the district held a series of community meetings over the past several weeks, in an effort to get parents more involved in the decision-making process.
Reaching consensus continues to be difficult. There are many parents – especially those with kids in advanced classes – who complain that the amount of homework students are forced to do is an untenable nightmare. Other parents, however, say it’s just fine.
The district’s new proposal would limit the impact of homework on a student’s grade to 20 percent. It would also set guidelines on how much time students should have to spend after school working on outside assignments, based on grade level. Kindergartners – yes, even they get homework – would be limited to a total of 10 minutes a day. For fifth graders, the limit would be 50 minutes.
The recommendations were crafted by a 15-member committee of administrators, teachers and parents and will be brought to the Board on April 10th for a vote.
Anti-Homework
Elisa in East LA
"I have four children, this whole week is Spring break and I am working for a volcano project and a family history project for my 9-year-old that's just one child. I am working the whole week around this project, me and my husband because we're busy. We want to do other things we want to take the time to be be creative with our kids and do things that are not mandated by the schools, and it's very hard, but I also have to teach her to do her work"
Sue in Irvine
"I think homework is really out of hand. I see that kids have to make a decision many times between whether I want to get A's in school or whether I want to participate in a sport. Many kids pick between, well if I want to do my sport I'm going to have to get Bs in these classes or I'm going to have to abandon extracurricular stuff so I can get A's because homework will last anywhere between 3 and 5 hours… It becomes a joke I wonder whether they go to school just to get their homework graded."
Joel in Sherman Oaks
"I was a teacher for two years, and I would never give my students homework, I think it's a bit inappropriate to intrude into their personal family lives and many occasions I found that the parents didn't know how to help the students throughout the work so it was a problem at home. Most of my students did perfectly fine without the homework, but in general I think LAUSD should leave it to the teacher to make the decision on a teacher-to-teacher basis"
Jervey in Alta Dena
I would say that when homework interferes with children becoming passionate readers, that they have free time to figure out what they want to read, like my daughter is passionate about reading the Hunger Games, her school they don't do that, but it just seems like such a problem. At the college level the difference between the kids who are avid readers and the ones that just study for the SAT and the AP, it's alway apparent.
Pro-Homework
Nicole in Pasadena
I teach at one of the lowest performing schools in LAUSD and find that the problem is that my students who are extremely intelligent, but don't have the academic skills don't have enough homework. I find myself fighting a battle where i am the only teacher assigning homework, reading, writing, thinking and my colleagues don't, so the students don't develop any good habits in terms of going home and extending their learning.
Sam, a parent in Glendale "I have to say with more and more dual parent families out there and parents working longer and longer hours, we get further and further away from being in touch with how our kids are doing in school and to me doing homework with my kids in the evening helps me gauge where they are in terms of their learning, what things we have to work on at home and what things I can talk to the teacher about afterwards. So I kind of feel like we're taking away a big part of family time when we don't do homework with our kids in the evening."
Amanda in Tustin.
I am a college student, and I can't speak to elementary school, it's been too long, but I have found that in my high school, homework load did not prepare me for the time management issues that I am facing in college. I've been in college enough to get a hold of it now, but I found that it was such a big jump that my first year of college was anxiety and procrastination and not understanding how to manage it.
WEIGH IN:
Do the new recommendations strike a better balance for students, parents and teachers? Who should decide how much homework kids get – district officials or individual teachers? Is homework a necessary evil or something that should be abolished altogether? How does homework affect your family?
Should elite passengers not get preferential treatment in airport security lines?
Should paying first class include elite treatment on airport security lines? That’s the question Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) answered a big resounding "no" to with his recently introduced Air Passenger Fairness Act.
The legislation proposes promoting fairness for all air travel passengers by barring airlines and airports from using express security lines to allow certain groups of passengers, mainly first class and elite frequent fliers, to jettison to the front of Transportation Security Administration security screening lines at airports.
Nelson says the point of an airport security line is to ensure traveler safety, regardless of ticket status, and that priority treatment is unfair to those who pay less for their flights, yet wait patiently in long lines. The bill would allow the TSA to operate fast-track screening programs, including the newly implemented PreCheck pilot program that lets travelers pre-approved through a background check speed through the screening process.
Critics of Nelson’s bill say the measure would penalize high-paying and frequent fliers who keep the airline industry in business, and that equal-for-all airport security lines would just discourage those elite passengers from flying.
Are you tired of priority passengers getting special airport security line privileges? Or, if you fly business or first class, do you expect perks given what you’re paying, including moving faster through security checkpoints?
Guest:
Charlie Leocha, director of the Consumer Travel Alliance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization trying to help improve consumer understanding of travel.
How Mexican food conquered America
Do you remember when most Americans had never heard of a taco or a burrito? It’s hard to believe, but until fairly recently, the American culinary landscape didn’t include Mexican food.
Today, Taco Bell is one of the largest franchise restaurants in the world and salsa outsells ketchup. How did that happen in just a couple of generations?
Gustavo Arellano, author and OC Weekly editor, offers a comprehensive history of the rise of Mexican food in America with his new book “Taco USA.” Arellano said he's amazed by how vastly Mexican food differs across the United States, and his book focuses on the evolution of the cuisine.
"The mixing not just within Mexico, of the Spanish and Indian, and also, to a lesser extent, the Chinese and Arab traditions, but once you're up here in the United States, you have all sorts of amalgamations of Mexican food," he explained. "You do have the great regional traditions that some people will deride as inauthentic, but I say no, it's very much part of the Mexican family."
Arellano's talking about Tex-Mex, Cal-Mex, bacon-wrapped hot dogs and Doritos, to name a few. In Denver for example, residents love a dish called the "Mexican Hamburger." It's a burrito of beans and chicharrones with a hamburger patty inside, smothered with orange chili.
"They think 'Oh, everyone knows what a Mexican Hamburger is.' None of us outside of Denver know what a Mexican Hamburger is," he said. "It's just wonderful to see Mexican food evolve one way or another way depending on who the customer is and what their tastes are."
"Taco USA" also explores a variety of other topics, including the story of how Chipotle Mexican Grill brought the San Francisco style burrito to the rest of the nation and how the Aztecs made a momentous contribution to world cuisine.
Arellano covers the latest street food trends, highly influenced by Mexican cuisine and examines the all important questions, like what’s “gringo” food, and what constitutes “authentic” Mexican fare. Important personalities from the food world who helped popularize Mexican dishes like Rick Bayless and Diane Kennedy are also profiled.
How has Mexican food completely transformed with way Americans eat? Why do Americans love Mexican food so much?
Guest:
Gustavo Arellano, author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America” (Scribner) Arellano is the editor of the OC Weekly and his column ¡Ask a Mexican! has a circulation of more than two million in thirty-eight markets.