Special License Plates Give California Officials A Free Ride; Inland Empire Journalists Roundtable; American Airlines Cancels Over A Thousand Flights For Maintenance; The Value Of Sadness
Special License Plates Give California Officials A Free Ride
Orange County Register reporter, Jennifer Muir, found that scores of California officials and their families have special license plates that often shield them from traffic tickets and toll road violations. The confidential license plate program was initially designed in 1978 to keep law enforcement officials safe. But the program has ballooned, and now hundreds of thousands of public officials and their families have enrolled. As a result, scores of traffic abuses, from parking citations to toll road abuses to red light violations, have been dismissed or ignored once law enforcement and DMV employees got wind of the special plates. Needless to say, this translates into millions of uncollected dollars for state, county, and city coffers. This past Monday, state lawmakers on the Assembly Transportation Committee voted to expand the program further to include veterinarians, firefighters, and code enforcement officers. Larry Mantle talks with Muir about her story, to State Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, and to Assemblyman Sandre Swanson.
Inland Empire Journalists Roundtable
Larry Mantle talks with Steven Cuevas, KPCC's Inland Empire Reporter, Cassie MacDuff, columnist with The Press Enterprise, and David Kelly, staff writer for the L.A. Times, about the latest news, events, and developments in the Inland Empire.
American Airlines Cancels Over A Thousand Flights For Maintenance
Larry Mantle talks with Andrea Chang, staff writer for the L.A. Times, Ian Gregor, spokesman for the FAA, Peter Goelz, Senior Vice President for O'Neill and Associates, and Scott McCartney, who writes The Middle Seat column for the The Wall Street Journal about the grounding of over 1000 American Airlines flights.
The Value Of Sadness
Are Americans addicted to happiness? That may be true if you tally up the amount of self-help books and anti-depressant prescriptions we consume. Well, according to author Eric Wilson, all this effort isn't making our lives any better; in fact, he says bad moods make us more creative and innovative: think of people like Dickinson, Proust and Goya. Larry talks with Wilson this morning about the theories in his new book: "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy."