Brown joins forces with rivals to form new tax proposal, Orange County. journalists’ roundtable, HBO cancellation of 'Luck' & After 50 years the Dictionary of American Regional English is finally complete-plus all the news.
Can Gov. Jerry Brown get voters to embrace proposed tax hikes?
Governor Jerry Brown, hoping to avoid a showdown at the ballot box, has revised his controversial tax initiative to align more closely with a competing plan proposed by the California Federation of Teachers. Combining the proposals reduces the confusing array of measures that voters will face in November from three to two.
Yesterday Brown filed a constitutional amendment to put the combined initiative on the ballot, leaving very little time for supporters to gather the necessary signatures. In the new proposal, Brown’s state-wide half-cent sales tax increase has been cut to a quarter-cent, while the tax increase on the wealthy has gone up.
The governor’s three-tier income tax hike has been revised; the lowest tier of $250,000 for singles and $500,000 for couples remains the same but the upper two brackets would increase by greater amounts than Brown had proposed. CFT’s original measure had no sales tax increase and a two-step increase on earners starting at $1 million per household. California’s Department of Finance estimates the new plan would raise $2 billion more through June 2013 than the governor’s original initiative.
There is still another tax proposal on the ballot, sponsored by civil rights attorney Molly Munger, that seeks an across-the-board income tax to provide $11 billion for public schools. The 11th-hour switch has critics questioning whether Brown will have enough time to get the measure on the ballot. And supporters of the original CFT plan are disappointed that, under the new plan, funds would go to reduce the state budget deficit of $9.2 billion, rather than to the state’s higher education programs.
GUESTS
John Myers, Sacramento bureau chief for KQED's California Report
Elizabeth Ashford, Chief Deputy Press Secretary, Office of Governor Jerry Brown
Carol Kocivar, President, California State Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
Arnold “Arnie” Steinberg, veteran Republican strategist and analyst
Raphael Sonenshein, Executive Director, Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs
WEIGH IN
Did the governor cave to mollify his liberal allies? Will his strategy work to get voters on board with tax hikes? Is it too late to switch horses in this race?
Orange County journalists’ roundtable
Larry and our talented duo of Orange County journalists riff on the latest news from the O.C. including stories on the departure of the Schullers from the Crystal Cathedral, Rick Warren’s interfaith alliance with Muslims and the potential lawsuit against at-large Anaheim districts.
We will also talk about whether housing developments in the Great Park exceed what was originally planned for and allegations that the Santa Ana City Councilman Carlos Bustamante was trading job promotions for sex.
GUESTS
Gustavo Arellano, Editor of the OC Weekly and author of the forthcoming book “Taco USA”
Norberto Santana, Editor-in-Chief of the Voice of OC, a non-profit investigative news agency that covers Orange County government and politics
HBO cancels ‘Luck’ after a third horse dies
After agreeing initially to suspend filming on “Luck,” HBO has cancelled the hot horse-racing drama entirely. It comes after an accident on Tuesday, when a horse was injured and later euthanized.
The horse was being lead to a stable by a groom when it reared back and fell down sustaining a head injury. This is the third horse that has been put down due to injuries, the other two took place during the filming of the first season.
HBO has maintained that it consistently works with the American Humane Association’s film and TV unit which develops protocol for the proper treatment of animals used on set. In addition, they’ve also enlisted the services of racing industry experts to exceed safety regulations of TV and film industry standards. HBO said in a statement that an official representative of the American Humane Association was onsite when the accident took place saying, “as always, all safety precautions were in place.”
After the death of the first two horses, HBO and its production of "Luck" drew sharp criticism from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA implied that the deaths of the horses were a failure on behalf of the production from not following safety guidelines correctly and did not consider the matter closed.
Vice President of PETA Kathy Guillermo wrote in a complaint to Pasadena Police where the filming was taking place, “Three horses have now died and all the evidence we have gathered points to sloppy oversight, the use of unfit, injured horses and disregard for the treatment of thoroughbreds.” PETA has forwarded its original complaint about the deaths from the first two horses to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
WEIGH IN
Is there a safer way to use animals in film under these circumstances? Are there sometimes accidents that happen which cannot be controlled by regulation and protocol? Were these horses being pushed to the limits due to a demanding production schedule?
GUESTS
Karen Rosa, Senior Vice President of Film and Television Unit of the American Humane Association
Kathy Guillermo, Vice President, PETA, specializes in horse racing
Radical! The Dictionary of American Regional English is finally complete
Gnarly! Hella! Wicked! No matter where you're from there are always certain words or phrases used solely by people in your region. Sure, some colloquialisms spread nationwide (like radical, perhaps), but there are some that never make it across state lines.
In the 1960s, dialect scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided it was time to put together an exhaustive compendium of American colloquialisms. From 1965 to 1970, interviewers went into the field with a 1,600-question survey covering everything from birth and death to farming and cooking.
"The result was about 2.3 million responses," explained Joan Houston Hall, chief editor of The Dictionary of American Regional English. "One major reason for slow progress… has been the tremendous wealth of digital resources, and we found that we couldn't leave them out, they're too valuable to consult them."
Besides ending up with a mountain of written material, researchers also came back with thousands of recordings featuring accents and phrases from all over the United States. Then came the daunting task of compiling all that information into several enormous volumes that is essentially the last word on words in the country.
The motivation for the book was to collect and reflect on regionalisms, not necessarily as a way to preserve language that is fading away due to television or the media.
"We can certainly learn lots of new words through television and we can learn that other people might not sound the way we do, but television is not an interactive medium," says Houston Hall. "When we hear Barbara Walters, we don't go away from the television sounding like Barbara because we communicate with people who speak similarly to the way like we do."
The Dictionary of American Regional English, which was finally completed this month, is 5,500 pages long with 60,000 entries of all the different colorful, regional ways we have of referring to objects, concepts and events.
An online component of the book is expected to launch in September 2013.
WEIGH IN
So what are the funny regionalisms where YOU’RE from? If you’re not from Southern California, did you even know you were spouting regionalisms until you left your home town? And what about you locals? What are some uniquely Californian colloquialisms?
GUEST
Joan Houston Hall, Chief Editor, Dictionary of American Regional English