Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in Ferguson, Missouri today to follow up on a pledge that the Justice Department will conduct a fair investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown. Also, Landlords and tenants in Los Angeles are supporting a new plan allowing permits for illegal apartments. Then, are you a digital hoarder?
Crisis in Ferguson, Missouri tests leadership of Obama Administration
Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in Ferguson, Missouri today to follow up on a pledge that the Justice Department will conduct a full, fair, and independent investigation into the shooting of unarmed teenage Michael Brown.
Holder will meet with local leaders, FBI investigators, and Department of Justice prosecutors during his visit. Holder wrote an op-ed published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch talking about widespread concern about the state of the U.S. criminal justice system more general. While Holder has frequently taken a strong stance on civil rights and equality, and has been outspoken about federal involvement in Ferguson, critics of the Obama administration argue that the president should be more vocal about the situation. Holder’s role as a proxy for president Obama is a test for him and for the administration.
How will federal involvement in Ferguson influence developments there? Who can conduct the most thorough and fair investigation? Is the White House handling the situation appropriately?
Guests:
David Nather, Senior Policy Reporter, POLITICO; Politico: Holder's Big Test: Ferguson
Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the author of multiple books on U.S. political history, including On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and its Consequences, 1948-2000
David Nakamura, Staff Writer, The Washington Post; Washington Post: Top Obama Advisers tell African American leaders that justice will prevail in Ferguson
Apartments made on the cheap might get permit amnesty
Landlords and tenants in Los Angeles are often at odds, but they are coming together to support a new plan allowing permits for illegal apartments.
There are countless dwellings that either are not up to code or were built before permits were mandatory. Advocates for low-income renters say as long as the apartments are safe, they should be considered lawful. However, some homeowners associations say laws governing apartments were meant to protect quality of life for entire neighborhood — ensuring sufficient parking and recreation space. Barbara Broide, president of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Blvd. Homeowners Association, says some apartment owners have converted recreation rooms into apartments in a city with a scarcity of park space.
Guests:
James B. Clarke, Executive Vice President, Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles
Barbara Broide, President of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Blvd. Homeowners Association
Are you a digital hoarder?
Overflowing inboxes, endless streams of photos and enormous contact lists are the norm. In the era of massive computer memory, cheap external hard drives and simple cloud storage, holding on to our digital possessions is easy.
Phones, tablets and laptops easily store thousands upon thousands of photos, Gmail logs away years of correspondence and entire works of literature can be filed away in a tiny folder (the complete works of Shakespeare clock in under 10 MB, the size of two song downloads). We keep our music, college papers, photos (good and bad, why bother choosing?) and our writing. Blogs log away personal writing and memories, our social media accounts chronicle every last update.
Digital hoarding may be sleekly contained in a laptop or smartphone, but it’s hoarding nonetheless: How do you keep your digital life organized? Is your technology cluttered, or do you trash the things you don’t use?
Guests:
Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University
Joshua Zerkel, director of worldwide training and consulting at Evernote, productivity strategist, Certified Professional Organizer, and founder of Custom Living Solutions
California Senator wants to shine the spotlight back on Hollywood with tax credits
Tinseltown has lost a large number of TV and movie productions to places like New York and Georgia, which both offer larger tax incentives for the studios that produce.
Senator Kevin De Leon has proposed an amendment to the current lottery, which provides $100 million a year in film tax credits that would expand the film credits to $400 million and include bigger TV and movie productions that were once excluded.
Productions that hire a larger number of people will receive bigger incentives to ensure “the greatest economic impact.” Through the existing lottery, productions are selected for credits without consideration of production size or new employment numbers.
Should California adopt these larger credits for film studios? What should be the criteria for larger subsidies? How will these credits affect the state overall?
Guest:
Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), State Senator representing California’s 22nd Senate District, which includes Los Angeles, Alhambra, East Los Angeles, Florence-Graham, Maywood, San Marino, South Pasadena, Vernon, and Walnut Park.
CA bill could become first in nation to curb antibiotic use for livestock, so why aren’t environmentalists happy?
SB 835, sponsored by Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), would ban the use of certain drugs in cattle and poultry. It would also require a prescription from a veterinarian before an antibiotic could be obtained. It also bans the use of drugs to fatten animals used for food.
Sounds good, no? But environmentalists say the bill has a big loophole in that it allows the use of antibiotics as a preventive measure. Hill counters by saying that SB 835 is an important first step in addressing an impending health crisis.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fatalities from antibiotic-resistant superbugs are on the rise. Humans are becoming immune to drugs from consuming livestock injected with antibiotics.
The bill has cleared legislature and is awaiting Gov. Brown’s signature.
Guests:
Patrick Welch, Legislative Consultant working with California State Senator Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), who introduced the bill
Bill Allayaud, California Director of Governmental Affairs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group
Dave Daley, Interim Dean, College of Agriculture, California State University, Chico and California Cattlemen’s Association 2nd Vice President. He’s also a rancher
Death of James Foley highlights plight of journalists working in Syria
President Obama today condemned Islamic militant group ISIS' (also known as ISIL) murder of U.S. journalist James Foley. In a strongly worded statement, the president called the group a "cancer" that must be eliminated.
"ISIL speaks for no religion. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, or what they do everyday," Obama said from Martha’s Vineyard.
Yesterday, ISIS released a video showing the beheading of the 40-year-old Foley, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012. Foley was a freelance journalist for the news site, GlobalPost.
Foley was among more than 80 journalists who have been captured in Syria by militant groups since the start of the conflict in 2011, according to the advocacy group Committee to Protect Journalists. His death underscores the danger journalists face working in the area.
Guest:
Courtney Radsch, Advocacy Director at the advocacy group Committee to Protect Journalists, which tracks missing journalists around the world. CPJ has been following the James Foley abduction since he was kidnapped in 2012