President Donald Trump threatened repeatedly on Tuesday to shut down the government if Congress doesn’t provide the money he says is needed to build a wall at the Mexican border. We also check in on LAUSD labor negotiations; discuss checkout-free shopping; and more.
President Trump threatens government shutdown over border wall funding
President Donald Trump threatened repeatedly on Tuesday to shut down the government if Congress doesn’t provide the money he says is needed to build a wall at the Mexican border.
Trump’s comments came as he opened a contentious meeting with Democratic Senate and House leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, with the government looking at a possible partial shutdown on December 21 when funding for some agencies will expire.
Schumer and Pelosi both said legislation to keep the government open and provide additional border security could pass both houses of Congress, but Trump said major wall funding was necessary.
Schumer and Pelosi said Monday that Republicans have the power to keep the government open since they control Congress and the White House.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guest:
Sarah Ferris, congressional reporter for Politico; she tweets
If only Bird scooters could fly: Vandalism of electric scooters leave investors cold
In the year since electric scooters first blazed through Los Angeles and San Francisco, the growth in the industry has skyrocketed, but according to The Wall Street Journal, certain issues are proving cause for hesitation among potential investors.
Companies like Bird and Lime are not yet two years old, and though they saw exponential growth, the future of the market remains a mystery. One of the biggest question marks rests on how e-scooter producers plan on curbing and preventing the vandalization of their commodity. In addition to common breakages or riders leaving scooters in unsafe areas, purposefully destroying the scooters has become somewhat of a sport, with Instagram accounts like @birdgraveyard showing people throwing scooters off roofs or setting them on fire.
We discuss the vandalism issues and how e-scooter companies might adapt their products to alleviate the increase in damages.
Guests:
Greg Bensinger, tech reporter at The Wall Street Journal
Patrick Sisson, senior reporter covering urbanism and transportation for Curbed L.A.; he tweets
LAUSD: A check in on labor negotiations and the race to replace former board member Ref Rodriguez
Last week was the deadline to qualify for the ballot to replace Ref Rodriguez,who resigned from the LAUSD board after he pled guilty to felony campaign finance charges.
The special election is in March. Here to talk about that race, and labor negotiations between the country’s second-biggest school district and its teacher unions, is KPCC’s education reporter Kyle Stokes.
Guest:
Kyle Stokes, KPCC reporter covering K-12 education
Christmas (music) comes each time this year. What’s the business behind the sleigh bells?
It’s that time of year again. Whether you like it or not, the festive spirit will be following you from your local grocery store, to the mall and on your drive home, in the form of Christmas music.
Some of you love it. And some of you would much prefer a silent night (month? months?).
So why is Christmas music creeping earlier and earlier into the month of November? Why does every artist seem to be releasing a holiday album, that’s seemingly all covers? What’s the business behind the onslaught of Christmas music and albums?
Guest:
Randy Lewis, pop music writer for the LA Times; this is his 24th year compiling the Times’ holiday music round-up; he tweets
Ahead of Colorado River contingency plan meeting, we check in on negotiations and what they’ll mean for SoCal
Seven Southwestern U.S. states that depend on the overtaxed Colorado River for crop irrigation and drinking water are expected to ink a crucial share-the-pain contingency plan by the end of 2018.
They’re not going to make it — at least not in time for upcoming meetings in Las Vegas involving representatives from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and the U.S. government, officials say.
Colorado River water supports about 40 million people and millions of acres of farmland in the U.S. and Mexico.
After 19 years of drought and increasing demand, federal water managers project a 52 percent chance that the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam, will fall low enough to trigger cutbacks under agreements governing the system. If Lake Mead falls below the shortage declaration trigger point, California could face up to an 8 percent reduction in water supply.
Federal water managers wanted a deal to sign at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference beginning this Wednesday in Las Vegas. Officials say it’s unlikely they’re going to make it in time for the upcoming conference.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Ian James, reporter for the Arizona Republic where he covers water issues; he tweets
, manager of Colorado River Resources for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD)
Skip the line (and the cashier): How close are we to checkout-free shopping?
Possibly coming soon to an airport near you? Checkout-free shopping.
Last week, Reuters reported that according to public records and a person familiar with the strategy, Amazon is looking at how it would apply its cashier-less, checkout line-free store format called Amazon Go to airports, with the idea being to corner a market of consumers who are in a rush and need something that is already prepared and easy to transport. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that the retail giant is also testing out its technology for use in larger stores. The stores where it’s currently in use are smaller but Amazon wants to find out how the tech works in a larger store layout where you might have tall shelves and a larger number of products to track.
We first told you about this technology in late 2016 after the company opened up its first Amazon Go in its hometown of Seattle with plans to open more than 2,000 locations in total. Since then, seven locations in Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco have started using the checkout-free model. Customers scan their smartphones at a turnstile as they enter the store and choose the products they want to purchase. Amazon Go’s store cameras and sensor technology on the shelves are able to detect the items customers take, add it to a virtual cart linked to that person’s Amazon account, and then charge the purchase to that account.
How are the currently operating Amazon Go stores faring in terms of business? How soon are we likely to see checkout-free stores in Southern California? What about nationwide? And is there still a role for the traditional checkout line in the future of retail? And what does this mean for the customer service experience, which is one reason why many shoppers patronize certain retailers repeatedly?
Guests:
Laura Stevens, a San Francisco-based e-commerce reporter for the Wall Street Journal; she co-wrote the article; she tweets
Sucharita Kodali, e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research, a technology research and advisory firm based in Cambridge, MA; she tweets
How living in an age of ‘peak TV’ is leading some to a binge burnout
In 2013, Netflix rolled out a new original series called “House of Cards” with an idea that might have seemed unorthodox at the time: make every episode from the show’s first season available for subscribers to watch immediately as opposed to the traditional TV release model of releasing new episodes each week.
Today, it seems, binging has become the preferred way that many consume their TV. Why watch a show I have to wait a week for when I can choose one that has two seasons already out on Netflix that I can watch on my own time? But as technology continues to advance and new ways to deliver content to customers emerge, many of these streaming platforms are experimenting with new content delivery systems and models. And in the meantime, the rest of us are left to our own (streaming) devices as far as deciding what amongst Netflix or Hulu’s vast libraries we’re going to spend our valuable time watching.
At what point does the amount of TV available become too much? If you’re a subscriber to a major streaming or video-on-demand platform, has the glut of content had a chilling effect on your desire to watch a new show? How will technology continue to affect the ways streaming platform release content to services?
Guest:
Natalie Jarvey, digital media editor for The Hollywood Reporter; she tweets