Comcast announced plans to buy Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion. What does this mean for cable consumers? The L.A. City Council is moving ahead with plans to end an 8-year class action lawsuit over garbage-truck driver breaks. Should garbage truck drivers be allowed to do whatever they want while on break? '12 Years a Slave" director Steve McQueen joins Larry to discuss his inspiration for the Oscar-nominated film.
Hail the cable TV king! Will a Comcast & Time Warner Cable merger be bad for consumers?
The two biggest cable companies in the US want permission to merge into one giant media behemoth that would provide cable TV to nearly one-third of all homes in the country. Comcast has announced that it wants to buy rival Time Warner Cable in an all-stock deal worth $45.2 billion.
Regulators still have to approve the deal and it's not clear if the new company would be too big to pass muster with antitrust authorities and consumer watchdogs. The two companies don't currently compete so the change may not be a major upheaval for consumers. But given how much customers love to hate their cable company - this giant merger isn't likely to earn them any fans.
Consumer advocates say it will reduce innovation and drive up prices. The corporations say the merger will actually speed up the release of new consumer products such as Comcast's X1 operating system.
But is cable TV still a necessity in today's world? Cable providers have endless competition from streaming devices such as Roku and Apple TV as well as online content services like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. Given that, it'll be interesting to see if federal regulators decide that the new company will be too much of a monopoly over customers' televisions.
In the meantime, we can always speculate what the new company will be called: ComWarnerCast? ComCable? CoTiWaCa?
Guests:
Steve Effros, analyst and lawyer in the cable industry based in Virginia. Former president of Cable Telecommunications Association, a precursor of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the main cable trade association.
Jodie Griffin, Senior Staff Attorney with Public Knowledge, a consumer rights group based in Washington D.C.
Dispute over garbage-truck driver breaks may prove costly
The L.A. City Council moved ahead with plans to end an 8-year class action lawsuit over garbage-truck driver breaks, to the tune of $26 million, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The settlement comes after a long battle over restrictions placed on drivers breaks. To avoid the misconception that drivers were sleeping on the job, trash truck drivers were forbidden from napping during their breaks. Drivers were also prohibited from congregating near restaurants or parking in groups.
In his interview with David Zahniser, Matthew Taylor, the lawyer representing the drivers, argues that because their breaks were employer-controlled, they should have been paid for that time. Some City Council members, including Councilman Paul Krekorian argue that seeing a large group of garbage trucks or a sleeping city worker would be “an affront” to constituents. The settlement, backpay for nine years of breaks for over 1,000 drivers, averages about $15,000 per person.
Should garbage truck drivers be allowed to do whatever they want on their breaks? How should they be compensated? what’s appropriate behavior in these circumstances?
Guests:
David Zahniser, LA Times reporter covering Los Angeles City Hall, local government
Michael Waterstone, Associate Dean for Research and Academic Centers, J. Howard Ziemann Fellow and Professor of Law at Loyola Law School
The ‘Tiger Mom’ strikes again with a controversial new book
Yale law professor and self-described 'Tiger Mom' Amy Chua is no stranger to controversy. Her first book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother incited a rancorous debate in the so-called 'mommy wars' over the best approach to raising successful children. The book pushed cultural stereotypes about strict Asian parents that use harsh discipline to push their children to be the top of their class in every subject.
Now she and her husband, fellow Yale law professor and novelist Jed Rubenfeld, are back with a new book that fans the flames even further. The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America takes cultural stereotypes even further.
It argues that certain cultural groups - including Cubans, Jews, south Asian Indians and Iranians - experience more financial and academic success in the US because their cultures possess three common qualities: impulse control, feelings of superiority and feelings of inferiority. Their conclusions are controversial and have earned them some serious criticism within the academic community.
Do certain cultural traits make one group more successful than another? Can these traits be learned? Is culture really a good predictor of future success?
-FORUM EVENT PROMO: Tonight Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld join Patt Morrison at our Crawford Family Forum to talk more about their controversial thesis. This event is full, but you can watch the live stream online at KPCC.org.
Guests:
Amy Chua, Yale law professor and co-author of The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America
Jed Rubenfeld, Yale law professor and co-author of The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America
Federal court strikes down Calif. concealed gun ban
A 2-1 decision in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that California will allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed firearms in public. The decision strikes down the core of California’s permit guidelines for handguns.
State law will require gun-carrying residents to show “good cause” beyond self-protection in order to obtain a concealed-carry permit.
RELATED: Court tosses California's concealed weapons rules due to 2nd Amendment
C.D. Michel, the lawyer for the National Rifle and Pistol Foundation, argued that “The right to self defense doesn’t end at your threshold.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that citizens have the right to keep a handgun in their home for protection, but has not ruled on carrying weapons in public.
Should Californians have the right to carry concealed guns? How will the state regulate these weapons? How might this issue fare before the Supreme Court?
Guests:
Chuck Michel, Attorney, Michel & Associates, lead attorney in the concealed carry case and lawyer for the National Rifle Association; author of "California Gun Laws: A guide to state and federal firearm regulations"
Adam Winkler, Constitutional law professor at UCLA; author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America (2011); writer for The Huffington Post & Daily Beast
Interview Highlights:
Did you think you had a good chance to prevail in this?
Chuck Michel: "Well, you never know, that's like trying to predict what a jury's going to do when they come back in, there's so many intangibles, but we were obviously hopeful. We made all the arguments that the court accepted, a lot of the court's opinion adopted all the claims that we made in our brief, so it's a great ruling."
How soon will sheriffs in urban counties have to provide concealed carry permits?
CM: "We're a ways from this becoming an order. This is the court of appeals decision. The court of appeals reversed the district court, the trial court's, ruling that said that it wasn't a Second Amendment violation and sent it back down to the trial court. But before it goes back down to the trial court the county will have an opportunity to ask the Ninth Circuit to review the decision, and potentially to ask the Supreme Court to review the decision of the Ninth Circuit here, so, before this case goes back down to the trial court and the trial court issues an order, it has some other steps to go along the way.
That order would only apply in San Diego for now, but obviously this case establishes a precedent. We have a case in Orange County right now that makes the same claims. It's been stayed pending this opinion, so any city that has a similar requirement that you establish some special need to get a license, something beyond just the need for self defense is going to be vulnerable, but not automatically struck down by virtue of this opinion."
Does the ruling surprise you?
Adam Winkler: "It's surprising in one way. There are three other federal courts of appeals that have gone the other way, that have held that state or cities restrict concealed permits to only those who show good cause are Constitutionally permissible, so it's surprising in that way. It's not surprising in another way. A couple years ago in 2011, California passed a law banning people from carrying openly unloaded weapons. That law, when that was passed, my self included, warned that that would lead to today's ruling.
As the court said today, we need to give some people some opportunity to have a gun in public for self-defense under the Second Amendment. Because California took, I think a foolish step two years ago by banning open unloaded carry, it's going to make it a lot easier for people to get concealed carry permits and we're going to have a lot more guns on the streets of Los Angeles and San Diego than we would have ever had under open carry rules."
Do you think at some point that it's likely that sheriffs and police chiefs are just going to start issuing these routinely if they see the legal handwriting on the wall?
AW: "I think that may happen in some circumstances, but my sense is that most sheriffs, especially in places like Los Angeles and San Diego and San Francisco are going to really fight this to the very end. In fact, I think there's a good chance that this case tees up the question of concealed carry permits for the United States Supreme Court.
The court has ruled on two major Second Amendment cases in recent years, in both time suggesting that the right to bear arms protects the right to have a gun in your home. But not making it clear whether the Second Amendment applies outside of the home. I think the Supreme Court is likely to step in and sheriffs are going to try to pursue these cases until they get a Supreme Court ruling requiring them to give up those permits."
If there is an en banc review of a larger panel of the Ninth Circuit, do you think it would likely go to the Supreme Court after that regardless of what the larger panel decided:
AW: "I think it would be far more likely to go to the Supreme Court if the larger panel of affirms today's ruling and says that people have a right to get a concealed carry permit, even if they don't have good cause to get such a permit. If the larger court does not rule in that way, then you have the Ninth Circuit ended up being very consistent with the other circuits who have ruled on this...and that makes it less likely that the Supreme Court steps in."
Do you agree with this legal analysis?
CM: "Essentially, there is definitely a circuit split now between the Second, Third and Fourth circuits and the Ninth and Seventh circuits because we did have the Shepard and Moore cases out of the Seventh Circuit, which struck down Illinois ban on carrying firearms in public, and they've recently set up a licensing scheme for folks to be able to get the permits to carry in public. It's definitely going to be addressed by the Supreme Court sooner or later..."
Some listeners think this will increase gun violence on the streets. How do you respond to that?
CM: "Licensed carry of firearms in public is not the problem, in fact in the 40-odd states now that require the issuance of a license to carry a gun in public for self defense, the violent crime rate actually goes down, because the bad guys don't know who might have a gun and usually about 5 percent of the people in any given state actually get a license, less than 5 percent actually carry a gun because it's actually kind of a pain, literally...Interestingly sometimes property crimes go up because there's no human victim there that might shoot back. It's not the licensed firearms in public that are the problem, it's the unlicensed guns that are in the hands of criminals that are the problem."
In those must-issue states, do you see an increase in tensions and gun violence?
AW: "It doesn't happen very often. What we've seen is in states that allow concealed carry permits, there is some evidence that maybe some of the violent crime goes down. There have been some conflicting studies on this and studies supported by the gun control community, even those studies show that if there's any effect it's negligible, but more importantly, it's pretty clear that it doesn't lead to spikes in violence...We may see some incidents here and there, but overall its not going to make a big difference. I think Chuck is right, the people who are law abiding, licensed concealed carry holders are not really the people we need to worry about in terms of committing violence."
Full court ruling:
'12 Years A Slave' director Steve McQueen on depictions of slavery in film
Steve McQueen’s “12 Years A Slave” has been a box office hit and critical darling, earning nine Oscar nominations and snagging the Best Picture - Drama award at the Golden Globes.
The film tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free-born African American violinist who was captured by slave traders -- Northup recounted his experiences in his memoir, Twelve Years A Slave. McQueen’s adaptation features a stacked British and American cast, and has attracted attention for being violent and realistic.
In an interview with CNN, McQueen spoke about the lack of films portraying slavery realistically, saying. “For me, being of African descent, I thought there was a hole in the canon of cinema regarding this subject. It was very natural that I wanted to put it on film.”
What inspired McQueen’s direction of “12 Years A Slave”? How have depictions of race in film changed, and how will they continue to transform?
Guest:
Steve McQueen, Director, “12 Years a Slave,” which received nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. McQueen wrote and directed 2011’s “Shame” and 2008’s “Hunger.”