Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that allows doctors to prescribe medication to end the lives of terminally ill patients. Then, California voters could get not one but two opportunities on the November 2016 ballot to change state and local public pensions. Also, newer companies who have risen to popularity largely through the Internet, are taking a different approach to customer service.
What’s next now that CA becomes 5th state in nation to allow assisted suicide for the terminally ill
Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that allows doctors to prescribe medication to end the lives of terminally ill patients, ending a decades-long fight in the state.
The CA law is modeled after the one voters in Oregon passed in 1994, and goes into effect January 1, 2016.
After signing the law, Gov. Brown released a statement. "I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain," Brown said. "I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill. And I wouldn't deny that right to others."
How will the program be implemented in California? What are the pieces that need to be in place and the protocol that needs to be established?
California's AB-15 End of Life Bill
Guest:
Toni Broaddus, California Campaign Director at Compassion & Choices, an advocacy organization behind the push to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the state.
Dan Diaz, Brittany Maynard’s husband and an advocate of end of life options
George Eighmey , Vice President, Death with Dignity National Center based in Oregon. He was an Oregon state legislator in 1997, when Oregon law was passed. He headed Compassion in Dying of Oregon, a nonprofit that facilitated implementation of the Death of Dignity law in Oregon.
Aaron Kheriaty, psychiatrist and director of medical ethics at UC Irvine Medical School
Reduce, recycle, fuhgettaboutit! NYT writer claims recycling a waste of time, critics disagree
Recycling's long been touted as a way to extend the life of landfills, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce the need for mining, drilling, and logging.
Here in California we sort our household waste into multiple containers, feeling good about ourselves in the process. But in a recent opinion piece for the New York Times, columnist John Tierney argues that recycling is a useless practice that has very little impact on the national environmental footprint and on the overall efforts of conservation and waste management.
Many in the recycling business disagree. Mark Murray, Executive Director for the environmental nonprofit organization Californians against waste, says that California has seen great success adopting recycling success, not just on the waste management front, but also in terms of their infrastructure.
Do you recycle? Do you think it makes a difference? Or is it just an exercise in futility that doesn't solve the larger issue?
Guests:
Mark Murray, Executive Director for Californians Against Waste, an environmental nonprofit organization.
John Tierney, New York Times columnist who wrote the recent opinion piece "The Reign of Recycling"
2 ballot propositions take aim at public pensions
California voters could get not one but two opportunities on the November 2016 ballot to change state and local public pensions.
That’s thanks to a pair of proposed ballot props put forth by a group led by the former Democratic San Jose mayor and longtime pension reform advocate, Chuck Reed.
One measure would switch new public employees from guaranteed pensions into market-invested 401Ks. The other would cap the percentage of retirement benefits that could be contributed by a city to individual employees.
Most new employees could receive up to 11 percent of base compensation to pensions, while firefighters and other public safety workers could receive up to a 13 percent contribution.
Opponents argue that altering public pensions would “chill hiring and retention” in the public workforce. Pensions would remain the same for employees with a current plan in place and changes would only apply to new employees.
Ballot box and court defeats have made it tough for cities to make substantial public employee pension reform benefits -- could this be their fix? Do you think public pension decisions should be a matter for voters?
Read more here.
Guests:
Jon Ortiz, reporter with the Sacramento Bee
How some companies are trying to jack up profits by investing in customer service
It starts with dialing an 800 number and having to navigate your way through a maze of automated prompts just to talk to a human being on the other end. Whether or not the human being can actually answer your question, however, is often a totally different story.
Customer service call centers have garnered a reputation of being notoriously unhelpful and staffing members who are poorly equipped to handle customer concerns. However, some newer companies who have risen to popularity largely through the Internet, are taking a different approach to customer service.
Recently, the L.A. Times ran an article that profiled how Dollar Shave Club has invested in an improved customer service team that is not only trained to handle just about anything a customer might throw at them, but do it with the irreverent, candid style around which Dollar Shave Club has built its brand.
It’s more expensive and time-consuming than simply outsourcing customer service to a third party company, but the idea is to staff the customer service team with people who actually use the product.
Other companies are employing similar methods of hiring and training in the hopes that excellent customer service will create return customers, and that those profits will offset the extra costs from hiring and training the customer service force.
How is the landscape of customer service changing? How important is good customer service to you? Are you more or less inclined to buy certain products or services if you know they have good or bad customer service? What do you think about the customer service model behind companies like Dollar Shave Club?
Guest:
Micah Solomon, customer service consultant, Forbes.com contributor, and author of several books on customer service, including “Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Love Your Business” (Forbes Media, 2014)
Kelly Wolske, senior trainer at Zappos Insights
Inside DARPA: the world’s most powerful military wonk
National security has kept research and key documents safely guarded from the public for decades. Naturally, this has raised questions and concerns.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA, is America’s top-secret military research agency. It was created in the late 1950s to develop breakthrough technologies for national security. Its $3 million annual budget and exemption from standard bureaucratic regulations allows DARPA to hire only the most qualified individuals to research and develop sophisticated technologies exclusively for military use.
New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen goes behind the curtains of DARPA to reveal how the most powerful military science agency in the world works.
EVENT INFO: Annie Jacobsen will be talking about her new book, “The Pentagon’s Brain” tonight, October 6, at 7:00pm at Vroman’s in Pasadena. Click here for more info.
Guest:
Annie Jacobsen, journalist and authors of a number of books, including “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base” (Little Brown, 2011) and her newest, “The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency.” (Little Brown, 2015)