Donald Trump is visiting Mexico ahead of his immigration speech tonight --how are Latinos reacting?; USC expert suggests a solution to fluctuating pharmaceutical prices; and today marks the first flight from the U.S. to Cuba in more than half a century.
Angelenos react to Trump’s meeting with Peña Nieto
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is reported to meet with President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto today.
The surprise visit comes just hours before Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech on immigration in Arizona. Officially, this trip is Trump’s first visit to a foreign head of state as a nominee, and the facetime could signal a shift in Trump’s hardline immigration stance. President Peña Nieto is criticized domestically for inviting the candidate and the public fears the country will be employed to advance Trump’s political agenda.
Struggling with low approval ratings, the Mexican president is expected to challenge the Republican nominee on a series of proposed policies. How does the American voters, more specifically, Angelenos, feel about this meeting? Guest host Patt Morrison is joined by Washington Post politics reporter to discuss the past, present, and future of US-Mexico relations.
Guests:
Kate Linthicum, reporter for the LA Times covering immigration and politics. She is currently in Mexico City; she tweets from
Sean Sullivan, politics reporter for the Washington Post, he tweets
The possibility of voter fraud influencing the 2016 presidential election
A new Gallup poll revealed more than half of Republicans are convinced voter fraud is a serious problem –but how many of those surveyed were influenced by Donald Trump’s incessant rigged system cautionary speeches?
Numerous sources, including a report from the Government Accountability Office, recognize that voter fraud does exist, but cases are rare. And even after accounting for the negligible amounts of voter ID fraud at the polls, the few fraudulent in-person ballots cast could not influence the outcome of an election. President Obama said earlier this month that elections cannot be “rigged,” as Trump suggested, because the federal government does not run the election process.
Guest host Patt Morrison is joined by Andrew Gumbel to discuss the legitimacy of voter fraud conspiracy theories.
On the possibility of voter fraud
Gumbel: It’s not possible to go in and change the results on a national level in a way that could go undetectable. There are a number of areas, however, of concern. One of which is the possibility of some kind of hack attack on electronic systems that are hooked up to the internet.
On in-person voter fraud
Gumbel: Where I think the system breaks down is not on the level of the individual voter, it’s when it comes to political decision-making of setting the rules and the voter ID laws are a quintessential example of that. Republicans have decided that if the voter turnout is lower, they will do better. The evidence mostly supports that, not entirely, and where you see who’s being impacted by these voter ID laws, it’s minority voters, poorer voters, transient voters –the kinds of people who if they vote, will more likely vote for the Democrats. And a number of studies have shown that Republicans can stand to gain a two or 3-percent advantage in any given race where these laws exist.
On voting incompetence
Gumbel: Incompetence plays a role, too. One thing that has been true in this country regrettably, is there’s never been a proper professional class of election managers. The people who get the jobs at county level with glorious exceptions, I must say, tend not to be the brightest bulbs. It’s not generally viewed as prestigious job within the county. It’s open to vagueness; the machines don’t work very well, the people are run the machines are terribly competent, and it means that in the event of a close race, if one party is in the position to control the vote or control the administrative procedures around the counting of the vote, they will do so and press for maximum advantage.
On private companies building voting machines
Gumbel: The biggest problem with electronic voting machines, or any other voting machines, is lack of standards and oversight. You have a crazy system in this country where, instead of having the equivalent of a central electoral commission that decides the standards they impose, and having a proper system of certification and having people answer to congress or to some other official body, you have this piecemeal. Counties can do more or less whatever they want in terms of buying the machines they want. There is a certification process, but it’s deeply problematic; there is a central body that is supposed to oversee this, the central electoral commission. The whole system of checks and balances that should exist simply doesn’t exist in this country and never has. And there’s no political will to create one because there’s this sense that we don’t want the federal government breathing down our necks for the thing we find most precious in our democracy, which is the right to vote.
Which voting system works best?
Gumbel: Having a central electoral commission that would set up standards and say, “Do whatever you want, but make sure you reach this level of acceptability otherwise we’re going to say no, you need to have machines that work. You need to have administrative procedures that are transparent,” so on and so forth.
On California’s voting system
Gumbel: California is doing much better now than it has in the last 10 years; it has somewhat of an ignominious history going back a long way, but it’s been largely cleaning up it’s act. I give a lot of credit to both Republican and Democratic activists that have been busy around the secretary of state’s office the last 15 years.
Guest:
Andrew Gumbel, award-winning journalist and author of several books including, “Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America” (New Press, 2016); he tweets
How to solve the EpiPen, triple-the-price problem? Treat it like a public utility say USC experts
Despite nationwide debate over EpiPen pricing, many sufferers of fatal allergies will still fork out $300 for a two-pack of generic EpiPens prompting some to ask why patent-owner Mylan does not face either more competition or, failing that, government regulation over its pricing.
Which solution would have the best outcomes? Geoffrey Joyce, an expert in pharmaceutical economics at the University of Southern California, usually takes the position that the government should not be negotiating the cost of drugs.
However, he says Mylan's EpiPen is a special case. "They have not invested billions of dollars in R & D (research and development) to earn a patent and justify the price." Joyce says Mylan lucked out by purchasing the patent rights from Merck as competitors failed to keep pace, which allowed them to increase the price without fear of competition. "This was a pure and simple exercise of monopoly power. So [the government] could tell Mylan, since you're a monopoly, you can charge enough to make a reasonable profit, but you cannot gouge consumers who need a potentially life-saving drug."
Yevgeniy Feyman thinks the government should help spur competition, which should bring the price down.
What do you think is the best solution?
Guests:
Geoffrey Joyce, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmaceutical & Health Economics, University of Southern California; Joyce co-wrote this commentary “No More Mylan Monopolies”
Yevgeniy Feyman, adjunct fellow and deputy director of the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress
Farmworker overtime: long overdue or a disaster for the agriculture industry?
Governor Jerry Brown could approve the first bill in the U.S. that would approve overtime pay for farm workers who’ve worked more than 40 hours a week or eight hour days.
The current rule on overtime states that workers receive extra pay if they’ve worked more than 10 hours a day or more than 60 hours a week.
AB 1066 was passed on Monday by the state legislature and would require farms to phase in overtime pay for field workers and fruit pickers between 2019 and 2022. Farms that have 25 workers or less would have until 2025 to make the change. But the bill must still be approved by Gov. Brown.
The United Farmworkers Union championed AB 1066. To supporters of the legislation, the transition is long overdue and will be a win for the humane treatment of workers.
But critics of AB 1066 argue the law would hurt both workers and the agricultural economy as a whole, as work is seasonal and farmers may choose to cut worker hours.
What do you think of the bill? Does it support the humane treatment of workers, or will the impact on the agricultural industry be too costly?
Guests:
Roman Pinal, Oxnard coordinator for United Farm Workers of America; his organization has been pushing for the approval of AB 1066 ; he is currently at a Muranaka Farm, a vegetable farm in Moorpark, Calif.
Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation; the federation has been lobbying against the bill
Jeremy B. White, reporter with the Sacramento Bee; he has been following the story; he tweets from
Cuba: officially open for tourists, but are they ready?
The first commercial flight between the United States and Cuba in more than a half century landed in the central city of Santa Clara on Wednesday morning, re-establishing regular air service severed at the height of the Cold War.
The flight of JetBlue 387 opens a new era of U.S.-Cuba travel, with about 300 flights a week connecting the U.S. with an island cut off from most Americans by the 55-year-old trade embargo on Cuba and formal ban on U.S. citizens engaging in tourism on the island.
The restart of commercial travel between the two countries is one of the most important steps in President Barack Obama's two-year-old policy of normalizing relations with the island. Historians disagree on the exact date of the last commercial flight but it appears to have been after Cuba banned incoming flights during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
How ready is Cuba for the glut of expected tourists? What are the the country’s infrastructural challenges?
With AP files
Guests:
Deepa Fernandes, KPCC correspondent who has just spent the summer on a reporting trip in Cuba; she lived and reported on Cuba two decades ago; she tweets
Christopher P Baker, Cuba travel expert and travel writer and photographer; he tweets
Andy Gomez, Cuba scholar and former senior fellow and special assistant to the President for International Affairs at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami
Researchers on aging study to expand lifespans of man’s best friends
We humans do all kinds of things to live better and longer, from exercising regularly to supplementing with vitamins.
Taking a page from scholarship in human aging, researchers at the University of Washington are studying what could be done to increase the life expectancy of dogs. Biologist Daniel Promislow and pathologist Matt Kaeberlein at the school have started the Dog Aging Project to understand how dogs age, and to explore how medications could help them live longer. The team is hoping to launch a longitudinal study involving 10,000 dogs from all over the country.
Kaeberlein talks to Patt Morrison about the project, and what he and his team have learned about how dogs age.
Guest:
Matt Kaeberlein, Co-Director of the Dog Aging Project and a Professor of Pathology at the University of Washington; he tweets