AEG presents stadium environmental impact report to LA City Council. Compensation for bone marrow is now legal…will it cause more harm than good for patients? Orange County journalists’ roundtable. New study finds buying is better than renting. Company forces employees to work from home.
AEG presents stadium environmental impact report to LA City Council
Today, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), plans to release an environmental impact report of its proposal to build a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles and renovate the convention center. The report, which is 10,000 pages long, will address issues such as traffic implications, air quality, noise and safety.
After AEG President and CEO Tim Leiweke presents the report, there will be a 45-day period for public comments (although Councilman Bill Rosendahl wants 90 days due to the report’s length), and after being approved by the City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, it has 175 days to face any legal challenges. Meanwhile, in the City of Industry, Majestic Realty has a plan for a proposed stadium, which does not have to face the same tough environmental requirements as AEG.
A law signed by Governor Jerry Brown last September places several restrictions on a stadium in downtown Los Angeles, including requiring it to have the highest amount of attendance via non-automobiles out of any NFL stadium in the country.
As a direct result, AEG has made promises to upgrade intersections near the stadium, add a lane on the 101 freeway, and expand the light rail system. Additionally, AEG claims that a stadium and modern convention center would bring in $1.7 billion to downtown Los Angeles.
Is this an exaggeration? Are AEG’s efforts to deal with environmental restrictions going far enough? Does the report reveal any dramatically negative effects about the presence of a stadium downtown? Will this report increase or decrease AEG’s chances of clinching the right to build vs. Majestic Realty in Industry? Is all of this worth it to get an NFL team back in Los Angeles?
Guest:
Sam Farmer, NFL Columnist, Los Angeles Times
Bill Rosendahl, Los Angeles City Councilmember, 11th District, which includes Brentwood, Del Rey, Mar Vista, Marina del Rey, Pacific Palisades, Palms, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista, Venice, West LA and Westchester.
Will compensation for bone marrow cause more harm than good?
Last week the 9th circuit court of appeals in San Francisco rejected an Obama Administration request that it remain illegal for bone marrow donors to receive financial compensation.
The United States Justice Department insisted that bone marrow is covered under the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, and therefore cannot be sold. The only problem, according to The Institute for Justice, the group that argued for compensation when the case was originally heard back in December of 2011, is that there’s no real reason to classify bone marrow as an “organ,” and as far as they can tell bone marrow wmas added into the 1984 law by mistake.
The reason the issue of compensation is coming up now is that the process by which marrow is extracted has changed dramatically in the last couple decades. In the nineties a process called aphareseis was developed. It allows donors to take a medication that causes them to create more marrow stem cells, the excess is forced out of the bone and it can be extracted through the blood. The old way of painfully extracting actual marrow with a needle through the hip is only used a third of the time now. The lawyers for the Institute for Justice argue that it’s much more like donating blood than harvesting an organ. The ninth circuit apparently agreed, striking down the ban on payment for marrow donations.
However, the largest donor registry in the world, The National Marrow Donor Program, is not convinced. They say a system based on compensation is far less effective than one that relies on the human desire to help. Other critics worry that allowing compensation would mean rich people are more likely than poor to get the lifesaving treatment and could lead to an underground market for black market marrow. Proponents on the other hand call that laughable and say that right now demand is far outstripped by supply.
Will the ninth circuit’s ruling save lives or cost them? There’s not much of a problem with blood or plasma being sold on the black market, but could it happen with bone marrow? Will this be a slippery slope? If compensation for marrow is now legal, are kidneys and lungs next?
Guests:
Robert McNamara, Attorney, Institute for Justice, the group that argued for allowing compensation on behalf of several cancer patients and the More Marrow Donors dot org (a California non-profit that wants to give people scholarships and housing payments for donating marrow)
Dr. James AuBuchon, President and CEO, Puget Sound Blood Center (a community-based organization in Seattle serving Western Washington)
Orange County journalists’ roundtable
Larry and our talented trio of Orange County journalists riff on the latest news from the O.C. including troubles at the San Onofre nuclear power plant; the Fullerton high school student who got booted off stage for saying he’s gay and wants the ability to marry someday (and the assistant principal who later apologized); the competitive 69th Assembly district race; Curt Pringle’s ongoing influence; continuing controversy surrounding the Anaheim hotel tax subsidy; a new report showing mixed economic trends in the O.C. and more.
GUESTS
Gustavo Arellano, Editor of the OC Weekly and author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America”
Norberto Santana, Editor-in-Chief of the Voice of OC, a non-profit investigative news agency that covers Orange County government and politics
Ed Joyce, KPCC’s Orange County reporter
New study finds buying is better than renting
We all have to live somewhere, but there's always the question; should I rent? Or should I buy? A new study from the real estate website, Trulia suggests that investing in your own home could save you money on your monthly outgoings.
"Right now, [home prices] are continuing to fall in the L.A.-area," said Economist Jed Kolko. "We see that in Southern California, prices are continuing to fall even though rents are stable or rising."
In a survey of America's 100 most populated areas, 98 were found to be more favorable for would be homeowners — only San Francisco and Honolulu bucking the trend. Here in Southern California over the past year, asking prices for homes are down by 5.4 percent in Los Angeles, 3.6 percent in Orange County and just under 5 percent in Ventura County. Rental prices are up between 1 and almost 7 percent in all those areas.
While buying might technically be cheaper, there are still major differences in commitment and many hidden costs associated with owning versus renting.
"We have to remember that when you own a home, you're much more stuck. There are a lot of fixed costs with buying a home and selling a home, much more so than moving in and out of an apartment," said Chris Thornberg, principal at Beacon Economics.
Thornberg also says that many people in the rental market do not have the choice whether to rent or own. "These aren't directly comparable markets," he said. "A lot of the people in the rental market aren't in the position to make the 10 or 15 percent down payment, anyway."
Have you been on the fence when it comes to making the leap to home ownership? How has the state of the economy impacted your decision to buy or rent? Are you encouraged by this survey to buy now? If you prefer to continue renting, why?
GUESTS
Chris Thornberg, Principal, Beacon Economics
Jed Kolko, Chief Economist, Trulia
Company forces employees to work from home
When the Olympics descend on London this summer, the sprawling city will experience major disruptions and delays. One huge employer there, O2, is trying to figure out how to keep its worker-bees busy through the Games and rethink how they approach work in general.
The top communications company in the UK, O2 conducted a major, work-from-home pilot study. This week they released the results, packed with positive statistics. What they called an "audacious experiment" had the entire staff of its headquarters – 3,000 people – telecommute for one day this past February. The vast majority – 88 percent – say they were at least as productive as normal. More than a third (36 percent) claimed to be more productive. They all saved commuting time, of course, 2,000 hours in all. How did they use that extra time? Sleeping, quality time with family and relaxing, in that order. Mother Earth also breathed easier that day: carbon dioxide emissions were decreased equivalent to a medium-size diesel car driving 42,000 miles.
As a communications company, O2 is interested primarily in how technology is used in these flex-work conditions. It had to upgrade its networks and relied heavily on instant messaging. Ben Dowd, business director for O2, thinks this is the inevitable the future. "[The study] demonstrates that the principles underlying flexible working really are the principles that will build the future of work, and determine the way that people, technology and building interact in the decades and centuries ahead."
Alec Levenson, senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC, said the benefits vary depending on the telecommuter's job.
"There can be a lot of benefits to allowing people to work from home, but the important thing is you have to keep your eye on what are the actual tasks that someone's responsible for, because there are some kinds of things that can be done remotely, and other things that can't," he said. "We are, for the most part, a service and knowledge-based economy, and for those kinds of jobs, it is an option to work from home."
Levenson continued, saying that companies can only be successful with this new work model if the environment and rapport between workers is conducive to the change. People need to have the tools and skills to manage tasks on their own.
"If you think back a couple of generations, the way that people were managed was very much micromanagement," he said. Now, "there is a general trend towards companies wanting to free things up. If you hold people accountable for what they do, not how they do it ... it doesn't matter where they produce it as long as they get it done."
Telecommuting is trending steadily and gradually, due to improvements in technology. Coffee shops like Starbucks for example, no longer charge for wifi access, because they've realized that they've become a mobile office.
"If we think back 15 years ago, back when people didn't have high-speed internet connections at home, when cell phones were not in everybody's back pocket with unlimited calling, it was a big deal for someone to try and work from home," Levenson added.
From the phones:
Tom in Anaheim runs a small business with a couple other partners, and agrees with Levenson that the work environment can be a great enabler for telecommuting, if properly designed.
"We're moving our office precisely so it can be reconfigured to be more like home. I think a lot of the environmental design of workspaces isn't appropriate anymore, either open spaces or cubicles ... none of it kind of really works the way a home environment does, when you can nest when you need to, and work when you need to," he explained.
He added that new technologies allow work to be done much more seamlessly and reliably. For Tom, telecommuting does not just require a new lifestyle, but also different tools and environment.
Max called from Irwindale, revealing a negative experience with telecommuting and giving a perspective of someone who must share a space with a telecommuter. "My spouse works from home about half the time, and it's difficult for me to interact with her when she's working," he said. "I walked in when she was in a conversation and she got mad at me, and a couple times we've gotten into fights over the fact that she's working but she's at home."
Lisa in Beverly Hills found that working from home has made it difficult for her to separate work life from personal life. She's been working at home for almost two years at a major publishing company.
"I absolutely love it, but what I find most difficult and challenging for me is shutting down," she said. "I could be working 24/7; it's nice not to have to commute, I'm out and about all day because I'm in sales, but I can be connected all the time. The notion that working from home allows for more balance or more time with the family is not necessarily the case with me, because I have this sense of guilt, even at 7 or 8 or 9 at night, when I'm not connected or not responding to someone in our Asia office or someone in Europe when they're emailing."
Would this work for your work? While the benefits of this study are highlighted, what are the drawbacks?
Guest:
Alec Levenson, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Effective Organizations, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California