The VA has agreed to create housing for thousands of Southern California homeless veterans. Also, a new statewide poll shows record-setting support for Proposition 13, as well as backing for Governor Brown's proposed budget priorities. We'll check the mood of the state. Then, a new study out of Berkeley claims political correctness enhances creativity. How would self-censoring aid creativity? We'll hear the theory out.
VA settles lawsuit, agrees to transform West LA campus to help disabled veterans
The VA has agreed to create housing for thousands of Southern California homeless veterans. Many of them will live at the West LA VA campus. It's a deal reached with plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against the government nearly four years ago.
They contended the nearly 400-acre site wasn't being used for its legal and intended purpose - housing and caring for homeless vets. Will this make it possible by year's end to find housing for all the approximately 4,000 homeless vets in LA County? And what will happen to the commercial renters on the property, as well as UCLA's use of the baseball field and Brentwood School's use of athletic facilities?
Guests:
Robert McDonald, United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He is the retired Chairman, President, and CEO of Procter & Gamble
Ron Olson, partner, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. He’s been working on this settlement. He also holds the honorary title of Lifetime Trustee for Southern California Public Radio
Toni Reinis, Former Executive Director of New Directions - an organization that offers housing, counseling, training, drug abuse treatment and more to veterans in LA County.
Who is responsible for making sure school children are properly vaccinated?
The recent measles outbreak in California has turned a lot of attention toward school children who aren’t vaccinated because of their families’ personal beliefs. But there are also a surprising number of children who enter school under-vaccinated. State law requires that kids be fully-vaccinated before starting Kindergarten, but exceptions can be made. Kids can be enrolled as “conditional entrants,” with the understanding that they will get fully-vaccinated. Families then have 10 days to show proof of immunization or the child must be kept out of class.
But as it turns out, this isn’t enforced. LAUSD’s director of nursing services tells KPCC that no students are barred from entering class and that their department lacks the resources necessary to keep track of which children have been fully-vaccinated and which haven’t. Many of the parents of the children who are under-vaccinated say it’s not that they have personal beliefs that prevent them from vaccinating their child, but rather logistics and life, in general, can get in the way.
Where does responsibility fall in making sure students are fully vaccinated?
Guests:
Rebecca Plevin, KPCC health reporter
Sen. Richard Pan, pediatrician and California State Senator serving the 6th district, which covers Sacramento, Elk Grove, and West Sacramento
Pamela Kahn, registered nurse, Health and Wellness Coordinator for Orange County Department of Education
Poll: California is sunny again, higher ratings for Gov. Brown and budget
Californians are more optimistic about their government and the state’s public coffers, but there is a racial disparity in attitudes on the controversial issue of policing, according to a poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
Governor Jerry Brown's approval rating has hit a new high of 61 percent among the 1,705 polled (plus/minus 3.6 percent). Seventy-five percent of respondents also support Brown's latest budget plan to pay down debt and build up reserves instead of reinvesting in social services. A smaller number - 52 percent of likely voters - support rumored talk of extending higher income and sales taxes under Proposition 30.
PPIC added questions about police performance in communities, in light of the high profile killings of unarmed black men last year. The poll results show: "Across racial/ethnic groups, most whites (74%), Latinos (57%), and Asians (56%) give their local police positive marks, while only 36 percent of blacks do so. In the aftermath of several incidents involving the police and minority communities, most Californians (55%) say that blacks and other minorities do not receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system and 39 percent say they do."
How do these poll results match up with your views? Is there cause for greater optimism?
Guests:
David Siders, state politics reporter for the Sacramento Bee. He tweets at
Fernando Guerra, professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University
NFL stadium in LA one step closer to reality, but how badly does LA want it?
The discussion over whether to build an NFL stadium in Los Angeles is one that has been going on for years.
Despite coming close with plans to build stadiums in the City of Industry and on an AEG development in Downtown L.A., ultimately neither of them came through. However, developers with the Hollywood Park Land Company submitted nearly three times the required number of signatures for a voter initiative, moving the construction of an NFL stadium in Inglewood one step closer to reality.
While this is certainly good news if you’re a proponent of the stadium, nothing is set in stone. The signatures must first be verified, then the Inglewood City Council can review the measure. Developers hope that there will be a special election held sometime before the start of the next NFL season in September. A project manager with the Hollywood Park Land Company told KPCC that, if approved, construction would begin on the stadium regardless of whether a team moves here. St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke had been vocal this past season about moving the Rams to L.A., and has reportedly told Inglewood’s mayor on more than one occasion that he’s going to move the Rams with or without the NFL’s consent.
How bad do L.A. residents really want an NFL stadium, even if a team isn’t moving here? What are the pros and cons of building the stadium? How does the opportunity to host a Super Bowl again factor in to the discussion?
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Study says political correctness, not irreverence, breeds creativity
Is creativity sacred? Should and could it be policed? Those are questions we’ve been grappling with in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and, to a lesser degree, the Sony hack tied to the comedy, “The Interview.”
The debate touches upon issues of free speech and creative freedom, with defenders arguing that artists and cultural workers should be given carte blanche to do what they want, and our culture’s obsession with political correctness has taken all the fun out of the creative process.
A group of academics have taken that line of reasoning to task in the context of the workplace. As U.S. companies seek to attract a more diverse workforce, these researchers set up an experiment to look at whether political correctness impedes or unlocks creativity. Their study will soon be published in the journal, Administrative Science Quarterly.
Guest:
Jennifer A Chatman, Professor of Management at UC Berkeley. She is one of the lead authors of the study, “Creativity from Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity in Mixed-Sex Work Groups,” which was published in the journal Administrative Science Quarterly.