Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won voters over in their home state; LAPD Chief Charlie Beck joins Larry Mantle for his monthly visit; Los Angeles gets a niche bookstore; and Harriet Tubman will soon replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
Analysts set up election 2016 road ahead after NY primary goes chalk
Home field advantage proved too much to overcome for Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz in the New York State primaries on Wednesday as New Yorkers placed their support overwhelmingly behind frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
The former Secretary of State earned about 58 percent of the vote in New York, earning her 139 pledged delegates. Donald Trump also won convincingly with over 60 percent of the vote, which nets him nearly all of the 95 delegates at stake.
While a victory for Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have done much to cut into Secretary Clinton’s commanding delegate lead, it might have been an indicator that the Democratic party had failed to unite behind Clinton. Speaking in Vermont, Sanders expressed concerns with the voter registration process in New York, saying 30 percent of eligible voters couldn’t vote because they registered as Independents instead of Democrats or Republicans.
As for Ted Cruz, he finished third behind Trump and Ohio Governor John Kasich, and he isn’t expected to do well in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states who have primaries next week.
The victories pad both frontrunners’ delegate leads as voters hit the polls on Tuesday in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. But with each passing primary, the importance of California becomes more and more clear in the race for each party’s nomination.
Guests:
Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Chancellor’s Professor of education and political science at UC Berkeley
Pete Peterson, dean of the School of Public Policy and executive director of the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University; he was also a 2014 Republican candidate for California Secretary of State
LAPD Chief Beck on property seizures, the police shooting of the unarmed Walter DeLeon and more
After a court injunction barring the LAPD from seizing homeless people's property, and as the Los Angeles City Council tries to remedy the growing problem, how are police officers balancing safety issues?
Chief Charlie Beck joined AirTalk to discuss the perpetual negotiations over how to address homeless encampments throughout the city.
A different kind of property seizure is once again being allowed by the Department of Justice. The controversial asset forfeiture program allows local police to keep a majority of assets seized during criminal investigations — even without a conviction. How will the LAPD approach asset forfeiture as many regions consider bans on the practice?
Plus, the L.A. City Council might press pause on the department's final purchases of body-worn cameras. As reported by the L.A. Times, Councilmember Mitch Englander is concerned about the pricetag and whether the bidding process found the best cost savings.
What is Chief Beck's response to a possible delay in implementing department-wide body-worn cameras? We discussed license plate readers, crime numbers and frustrated efforts to combat extremist terror recruits.
Interview highlights
On Tuesday, L.A. City Controller Ron Galperin released an audit claiming 458 administrative positions better suited for employees are staffed by able-bodied sworn officers. These jobs are in areas like managing social media accounts, maintaining equipment rooms and keeping track of documents. Galperin claims that having lower-paid civilian workers in those jobs would be more efficient. You could get more cops on the street. Do you agree?
Beck: I agree with the general premise. We may differ over certain positions whether or not they would be better served with civilian employees, but the bottom line is that we haven’t been able to hire [a sufficient number of] civilian employees since the recession, and because of that, we’ve had to put police officers in jobs that have to be done ... When you’re unable to hire civilians, you have to use what you have... We’ve asked, over the years, to hire more civilians. Particularly our jailers. We have almost 100 police officers in a job that we reclassified years ago to be a civilian position... We agree and we hope that the city’s budget will allow us to do that.
How did the imbalance in the positions occur?
Beck: After the recession, the city had to make tough choices, and one of those choices was to reduce the civilian workforce... Right now, I have over 500 civilian jobs that are unfilled. So, we were able to hire sworn [police officers] because everybody understands that, and unfortunately, we got to the point where some of the jobs just had to be done.
On Tuesday, the police commission unanimously found the police shooting of an unarmed man on Los Feliz Boulevard was justified. Walter DeLeon was seriously wounded by Officer Cairo Palacios. The police report claims Officer Palacios and several witnesses thought DeLeon was pointing a gun. He had a towel wrapped around his hand. His attorney Mark Geragos says the shooting was without justification. What is your response to that claim versus what the commission found yesterday?
Beck: Well the plaintiff’s attorney is going to say what the plaintiff’s attorney says. They serve their own self interests. What Mr. Geragos says makes no difference to me. But what does make a difference to me is what the facts show. And in this case, it wasn’t just several witnesses, it was 11 witnesses that also believed that this individual was armed based on the way he acted. Not only that, but we have a 911 call on tape, made from a cell phone and at that site ... So CHP dispatch gets a call from a [reputable] citizen that says, “I have just talked to a man who says to call 911. He has a gun. Call the police,” and described [DeLeon]. So I don’t know what was in [DeLeon’s] mind. I don’t know why he did these things. But I do know that the officers were confronted with what they believed to be a lethal situation and they protected themselves as best they could.
Last week, a preliminary injunction was issued against seizing and destroying homeless people’s property without sufficient notice. The injunction applies to the Skid Row area. What are your officers and sanitation officials doing, along Skid Row, with homeless people’s belongings?
Beck: We have a couple of options. One, if [the property is] dangerous or the kind of thing that’s a biohazard, we can obviously remove those, and we have well-trained sanitation engineers that can make that judgement. The other thing is, if we give sufficient notice, we can remove them, so we’ve determined that sufficient notice is 24 hours. If they’re attached to public structures such as a fence or a building, we can demand that those be taken down. If they are tent structures that are erected between the hours of 6 a.m. and, I believe it's 9 p.m., we can have those laid flat and stored away. So if you go to Skid Row now you see a little sense of order starting to take place. This has been the great back-and-forth over the last 10 years now, trying to balance the needs of the city ... with the needs of the homeless.
Guest:
Charlie Beck, Chief, Los Angeles Police Department. He tweets from
This story has been updated.
Much at stake in Obama’s tense visit to Saudi Arabia
No love was lost between President Obama and the leaders of Saudi Arabia. The President met this morning in Riyadh with King Salman.
Later he'll attend a summit with leaders of six Persian Gulf leaders. Tensions between the US and Saudi Arabia have increased since Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. King Salman made that apparent in greeting other leaders, but not President Obama, as they arrived at the airport.
The President also got a lot of attention for his recent interview with the Atlantic, in which he said that that Saudi Arabia and Iran need “to find an effective way to share the neighborhood.” There are several other points of conflict between the US and Saudi Arabia, one of them coming from a bill in Congress that would allow 9/11 survivors and family members to sue the Saudi government for any role it might have played in the attacks.
There's also a new push to declassify 28 pages of the 9/11 report that supposedly describe a link between Saudi funding of radical clerics and the attacks. Saudi Arabia's used to being criticized for its funding of extreme Islam.
We’ll talk about the political implications of those issues.
Guests:
David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow at the foreign policy think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he covers Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf monarchies
Karen Elliott House, author of “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines and Future” (Vintage, 2013) and former Publisher of The Wall Street Journal
What do you think of Hamilton staying on the $10 and Tubman debuting on the $20?
Last June, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would redesign the $10 bill and replace Alexander Hamilton with a woman to-be-named as the face of the currency.
We even talked about it here on AirTalk, and asked listeners to vote on who they thought should be on the new $10 bill.
Wednesday, the Treasury Department reversed course and announced it will leave Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill and instead replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 bill. Jackson will remain on the $20, but shift to the back side.
The announcement comes after a long campaign by activist groups, most notably Women on 20s, who petitioned the president to have Tubman grace the face of the $20 bill. While the move has been received well overall, some say Tubman was the wrong choice.
Why the sudden change? It could have something to do with the insanely popular Broadway musical “Hamilton.” The play’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, lobbied Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to keep Hamilton on the $10, but it’s unclear whether that actually played a role in the decision.
What do you think of Harriet Tubman on the $20? Would you have chosen a different woman?
This story has been updated.
Sisters open first romance-only bookstore in LA
Two sisters with a love for romance literature are busting open the genre by opening the country's first independent bookstore dedicated exclusively to romance.
At The Ripped Bodice in Culver City, co-owner Leah Koch, says, "We really compare ourselves to a wine shop. Romance is so personal, and you really need a bookseller who not only understands your tastes but then understands the genre as a whole."
Despite a stigma that romance novels are reserved for sappy secretaries, Leah Koch explains, "What people who are not familiar with romance might not know is how many different categories of romance there are. It's not just sort of contemporary romance as a whole, there are cowboys and vampires and tons of historical genres."
Her sister, Bea Koch, adds, "Some authors don't want to be associated with romance books, which are defined as having a central love story with a happy ending. But we offer erotica, women's comedy, such as Amy Poehler, Tina Fey... we love Mindy Kaling. A lot of titles can fit in."
Interview highlights:
What gave you the idea to take on this kind of risk? Do you know that bookstores are so 20th century?
Bea: Indie bookstore sales have been up for four years in a row now. So we're very confident in the bookstore robustness. And we really think a genre bookstore has a really special thing to offer a customer. We can really focus on what romance is beyond the general idea of romance but we can really dig into the sub-genres that are what make romances so unique.
Expand the genre, not just into what we think of the dashing man on the cover of a paperback — the sort of stereotypical romance novels?
Bea: We absolutely have some dashing men on our covers, we won't deny that (laughter)!
But you have, for example, lesbian romance, too right?
Leah: Yes, we have quite a large LGBTQ section and my favorite part of the LGBTQ section is the young adult part of that section, which is focused on gay and lesbian and bisexual protagonists, and transgender, in their teen years, which I think is so important.
And are there very many writers in that sub-genre?
Leah: I think it's one of the fastest growing sub-genres in romance and it's wonderful to see such great writing and great stories coming out of that sub-genre and people who are really hungry for those stories and are maybe feeling like they're finally being represented in all stages of life.
You're really talking about what's called hand-selling in the business, which of course you can't do with an online bookseller, so you can have people who are regulars. You get to know their taste. You are on the lookout for books. All the kind of things you can't do online.
Leah: Absolutely! We really compare ourselves to a wine shop. Romance is so personal and you really need a bookseller who not only understands your tastes but then understands the genre as a whole. Because I think what people who are not familiar with romance might not know is how many different categories of romance there are. It's not just sort of contemporary romance as a whole, there are cowboys and vampires and tons of historical genres.
And cowboy vampires!
The thematically decorated bookstore, complete with Bea's custom-blend rose & lavender potpourri, has been open for less than two months but is already a road-trip destination for the romantically inclined. Leah says brick-and-mortar bookstores thrive in the era of Amazon by offering much more than author signings - including celebrating Mother's Day and community book clubs.
Listen to the full interview by clicking play above.
Guests:
Bea Koch, Co-owner of “The Ripped Bodice”
Leah Koch, Co-owner of “The Ripped Bodice”
The smartest places on earth to lead the next economic revolution? Not Silicon Valley
Outsourcing decimated the manufacturing industry. Jobs tied to the sector fell from nearly 20 million in 1979 to some 14 million in 2007.
Would manufacturing ever become the leader it once was in the US economy?
Economist Antoine van Agtmael and journalist Fred Bakker think so, and detail in their new book how places like Akron, Ohio, or Albany, NY have reimagine modern manufacturing to position themselves as trailblazers to lead the West toward an economic renaissance.
Guests:
Antoine van Agtmael, co-author of the book, “The Smartest Places on Earth” (Public Affairs, 2016) and a senior adviser at Garten Rothkopf, a public policy advisory firm in DC. Disclaimer: He is a member of the NPR Foundation Board of Trustees
Fred Bakker, journalist and co-author of the book, “The Smartest Places on Earth” (Public Affairs, 2016)