AirTalk debates funding Gov. Brown’s $17-million plan to build tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta ahead of the Metropolitan Water District’s vote this afternoon. We also dive into a new report that the LASD has been allowing ICE to access information on soon-to-be-released inmates; who is the LA Times’s new editor in chief?; and more.
A look at damage as fires hit Orange County, Northern California
Mass evacuations have hit Anaheim Hills and Orange residents as a brush fire rages through the area.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, 24 structures were destroyed due to a blaze that broke around 9:20 a.m. Monday near the 91 Freeway and Gypsum Canyon Road. The fire also spread to the 241 toll road. Meanwhile, in the North Bay, firestorms have continued to rip through the Napa and Sonoma counties since early Monday, hitting Santa Rosa the hardest in what is its county’s worst natural disaster yet.
So what’s the scene on the ground where these fires are spreading? And what is the expected damage? Larry speaks to reporters on the ground in Santa Rosa and Orange County for the latest.
Guests:
Jill Replogle, KPCC’s Orange County Reporter; she’s reporting in Orange below the Anaheim Hills; she tweets
Alicia Robinson, staff writer for Southern California News Group who’s been following the story; she’s reporting from an evacuation center at El Modena High School in Orange; she tweets
Jonathan Cox, battalion chief at State of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; he is also a public information officer with CAL FIRE's Communications Office; he tweets
Randi Rossmann, staff reporter at Santa Rosa’s Press Democrat who has been following the story; she tweets
Sheriff watchdog: Agency was sharing inmate info with ICE
A report released Monday from the independent watchdog agency for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department alleges the department has been allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to have access to information about soon-to-be-released inmates, despite the narrative given to members of the public that its interaction and cooperation with ICE was limited.
Los Angeles County Inspector General Max Huntsman’s office, which compiled the report for the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Committee at the request of the County Board of Supervisors, says that ICE agents were seen communicating directly with LASD staff about inmates that were going to be released and that they got access to LASD’s inmate processing facility, which the IG’s office says gave them a continuous stream of information.
Sheriff McDonnell said in a letter to IG Huntsman that LASD’s statements suggesting the department does not provide ICE agents with lists of inmates being released were not accurate. He says that the information sharing has ceased since the release of the IG’s report.
AirTalk reached out to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the Inspector General’s Office and the Civilian Oversight Commission, but none were able to provide someone for comment, though LASD did send us the below letter in response to the report:
Sheriff Response to OIG Report on Immigration by Southern California Public Radio on Scribd
Guest:
Joel Rubin, reporter for the L.A. Times covering federal courts and agencies; he tweets
Who is the LA Times’s new editor in chief?
The Los Angeles Times has named a veteran journalist responsible for bringing a print-centric Forbes magazine into the digital era.
Lewis D’Vorkin will start his new gig at the Times on Nov. 1. In addition to overhauling Forbes, he had worked at AOL, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the New York Times. He first clocked time at Forbes between 1996 and 2000, then returned at 2010 to usher in a series of digital changes to the magazine.
Now, D’Vorkin is hoping to bring his experience to Los Angeles’s paper of record. Joining Larry to discuss this appointment is longtime LA Times observer Ken Doctor.
Guest:
Ken Doctor, media analyst who focuses on the transformation of consumer media in the digital age; author of “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get” (St. Martin’s Press, 2010)
What’s the future of Gov. Jerry Brown’s delta tunnel project?
The fate of a project that could cost Southern California water consumers billions of dollars hangs on a vote Tuesday at the Metropolitan Water District.
It’s the California Water Fix. A $17-billion plan championed by Gov. Jerry Brown to build giant water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It would change how Northern California water is conveyed to the southern part of the state.
Who votes on the project? Read the full story here.
The MWD board meeting with the vote will be at noon.
Guests:
Sharon McNary, KPCC’s infrastructure reporter who’s been following the story; she’s reporting from the Metropolitan Water District board meeting
Eric Bergh, manager of resources at Calleguas Municipal Water District, which imports and distributes water to most of Ventura County; his focus includes environmental review, developer fees and conservation
Jeffrey Michael, executive director, Center for Business and Policy Research, at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento, where he focuses on environmental economics and regional economic forecasting
A futurist and a skeptic teleport into a bar: Forecasting the future of transportation and personal mobility
Over the last several decades, pop culture has taken innumerable shots at depicting what the future of transportation looked like, whether it’s the pneumatic tubes that move people around as depicted in The Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s TV satire ‘Futurama,’ hovering skateboards like the ones in Back To The Future 2, flying cars from The Jetsons, or even teleportation as depicted in shows like Star Trek.
But how does getting from point A to point B realistically look in 50 or 100 years?
During a recent presentation at the International Aeronautical Congress in Australia, tech magnate Elon Musk shared his plans for one futuristic mode of transportation – a rocket transport system, currently dubbed ‘BFR,’ that would launch passengers into space and drop them gently at their desired location. Musk says the rocket could go about 16,000 mph, which would make a trip from New York City to Shanghai, China take 39 minutes. Whether Musk’s vision is one day realized or not remains to be seen, as several questions about logistics and target market remain, but Musk and others at the cutting edge of transportation and tech are forcing the rest of us to think seriously about how we get around a century from now.
How do you think humans will be getting around in 50 years? 100 years? Taking off your realist cap and using a bit of imagination, what innovations would you ideally like to see in transportation and personal mobility? Are flying cars an actual possibility or just pie in the sky? What about a tube-based people mover like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop?
Guests:
John W. Martin, futurist and CEO and managing partner at SIR, a market research consultancy based in Richmond, Virginia; he is also founder and CEO of SIR’s Institute for Tomorrow, a think-tank looking at demographic and cultural trends shaping America’s future
Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American and a presidential fellow at Chapman University