California public employee pension reform details. Pay no attention to the woman behind the digital curtain. The future of LA's Dodgers. The Deutsche Bank slumlord. Life in the zero gravity realm.
The pension reform battle is back in the Golden State
Pension reform advocates are bracing for a huge fight over two new proposals that could slash up to 40% from public employee pension benefits. The proposals are being pushed by the non-profit California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, which just released an analysis of public employee pensions saying the five biggest pension funds in the state don’t have enough money to cover their current financial obligations. The study says that unless public employee pensions are scaled back, California’s budget will be further squeezed to make up short falls in pension benefits. Public employee unions are organizing opposition to the proposals, dispatching truth squads to the state Capitol to debunk what they call myths and exaggerations about the burden of public pensions on California taxpayers.
Guests:
Dan Pellissier, President of California Pension Reform
Steven Maviglio, Spokesman for Californians for Health Care and Retirement Security
Pay no attention to the woman behind the digital curtain
Losing a loved one unexpectedly is always a tragic. The only thing that might be harder would be to learn that your loved one never really existed and was fabricated by a stranger for inexplicable reasons. That is exactly what happened to Paula Bonhomme, a woman from Los Angeles, who carried out a relationship online from 2005 to 2006 with Jesse Jubilee James, a volunteer firefighter from Colorado. In 2007, Bonhomme learned that Janna St. James, previously thought of as a friend of Jesse’s, was actually the mastermind behind the entire relationship. St. James posted as James on message boards, used a device to alter her voice on the phone for oral communication, sent Bonhomme letters and gifts in the mail, and created dozens of other characters to embellish her story. Now, Bonhomme has filed a lawsuit against St. James on the basis of fraudulent misrepresentation, usually reserved solely for business litigation. How will this court case proceed? What possible motives did St. James have for hatching this elaborate hoax?
Guest:
Daliah Saper, Principal Attorney at Saper Law Offices, Attorney for Paula Bonhomme
The future of LA’s Dodgers
They say all press is good press. For the Los Angeles Dodgers however, that might not be the case. From violence at the games, payroll problems, ownership battles and divorce court, headlines about the Dodgers’ troubles just keep coming. Recently, Major League Baseball (MLB) appointed J. Thomas Schieffer as a monitor to oversee the day-to-day operations of the team, which is dealing with serious financial problems. It reports that the team will have a tough time meeting payroll at the end of this month as a heavily leveraged Frank McCourt tries to deal with his obligations at the same time that MLB and the monitor conducts an investigation into the team's finances. Is Dodger ownership cooperating with the investigation? Just how bad are the Dodgers' financial woes? What does the future hold for LA’s blue team?
Guest:
Steve Soboroff, Vice Chairman, Los Angeles Dodgers
Deutsche Bank slum lord law suit
Los Angeles city prosecutors are accusing one of the world's biggest mortgage lenders of being one of the city's biggest slumlords. Yesterday a lawsuit filed by the city attorney's office showed evidence of homes and apartments left to rot, and listed reams of addresses where tenants were evicted from foreclosed properties, allegedly without cause. Deutsche Bank claims it is merely a trustee for the properties and blames loan servicers. Los Angeles is not the first city to go after the bank for hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and restitution. Cleveland and Milwaukee have pursued it as well. Los Angeles hopes to be the first in the country to successfully collect monies from a bank for the conditions of foreclosed homes. City officials said it also may take action against HSBC, Bank of New York and U.S. Bank. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors launched a suit in New York against Deutsche Bank accusing it of "recklessly" lying to the U.S. Government and causing the Department of House and Urban Development to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims when homeowners defaulted on their "risky" mortgages.
Statement from Deutsche Bank:
“The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has filed this lawsuit against the wrong party. As we have repeatedly advised the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, loan servicers, and not Deutsche Bank as trustee, are contractually responsible for both the maintenance of foreclosed properties and any actions taken with respect to tenants of foreclosed properties.
For over a year, we have offered to help the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office contact the loan servicers that are responsible for maintaining the properties in question, but they have refused our help and would not even tell us which properties they were talking about.”
Guest:
Carmen Trutanich, Los Angeles City Attorney
Life in the zero gravity realm
Today is the 50th anniversary of Americans in space but as the Shuttle program winds down, no one knows when humans will be making future forays into the void. Space is a deadly place lacking in the things we need most to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. So how does a human being survive a stint in space not to mention a bailout at 4,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions and prepare humans for orbital travel, space agencies set up all manner of space simulations -- making it possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. In Packing for Mars, author Mary Roach takes us on a surreal trip into the bizarre science of life in space and space on Earth.
Guest:
Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void