President Obama's plan for reducing the deficit. Malibu melee - how big of a fix is needed at Malibu Lagoon? Two death row convicts make final, desperate pleas. Fear not, problem-solving children of the Enlightenment, for we are the center of the universe. Emmy Awards 2011 golden wrap up.
Obama seeks tax hike on wealthiest Americans
President Barack Obama outlined new plans for reducing the deficit Monday. Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, he pressed his main proposal. "It's only right we ask everyone to pay their fair share," Obama said.
His $3 trillion package includes raising $1.5 trillion in new revenue through overhauling the tax code. "This is not class warfare," the president said. "It's math."
Obama calls his proposal the "Buffett rule," referring to CEO Warren Buffett's request to pay a higher tax rate than his secretary. The president is asking for his recommendations to be taken up by the congressional supercommittee on deficit reduction.
During the speech Obama said his proposal was straightforward and that it's hard to argue against the fact that millionaires and billionaires should pay more than middle class families.
Republican leaders found plenty to dispute. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) responded immediately in a written statement saying, "a massive tax hike, phantom savings, and punting on entitlement reform is not a recipe for economic or job growth, or even meaningful deficit reduction." House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) also responded, adding, "Pitting one group of Americans against another is not leadership."
Obama said the nation's leaders have two clear options. "Either we gut education and medical research or we've got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don't get. We can't afford to do both."
Speaking on KPCC's AirTalk Monday, Tom Del Beccaro, the chairman of the California Republican Party, offered his own alternative to the president's proposal: a flat rate for taxes. The chairman called the current tax code ludicrous and full of loopholes made by lobbyists.
"I would like to scrap the whole thing, have lower flat rates and stop this gamesmanship," Beccaro said. "What I don't want is GM to pay zero taxes because of a complex code."
Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) disagreed with the chairman, saying flat rates would effectively raise taxes for the bottom 40-45 percent of wage earners, something Beccaro later rebuffed.
"If there's a class war it's a class war of the Republican party against the middle class," said Sherman, who argued that the middle class has been suffering from tax breaks for the rich for decades. "When you have every Republican signing a pledge that they won't consider tax revenues even as the slightest part of the solution, you create a system where you can't negotiate."
Beccaro held his ground. "If you want to restore growth, and this has been true since the beginning of time, you have to lower the tax burden and you have to lower the regulatory burden."
Despite the heated debate on what's next for the American tax code, the two agreed on one thing: the system is flawed. What the supercommittee will decide, however, remains to be seen.
WEIGH IN
What do you think of the president's plan? Is he pitting different classes of Americans against each other? He also proposed $580 billion in cuts to benefit programs, nearly half of which would come from Medicare. How would that be executed?
Guests:
Tom Del Beccaro, Chairman, California Republican Party
Brad Sherman, Democratic Congressman, 27th District (West San Fernando Valley), member of the House Financial Services Committee
Malibu Melee: How big of a fix is needed at Malibu Lagoon?
For about a year environmental factions have been at war over what to do with Malibu Lagoon. While the surface of the lagoon doesn’t look so bad, the ecosystem beneath the water is in real trouble. Runoff from the nearby Malibu Creek watershed is filling the lagoon with excess nutrients; while a major restoration effort in the 1980’s has had a deleterious effect. The lagoon has had a long and unfortunate history. In the 30’s it was used as a dump site for the Department of Transportation, then in the 70’s two baseball fields and a massive parking lot were built. Then came the 1983 restoration, in which the ballparks were yanked, seawater channels were cut and series of walkways were erected to allow for nature walks through the area. Unfortunately, the restoration effort caused many unforeseen consequences. For a decade environmental groups chewed over plans for how to fix the lagoon, and finally last October, a $7 million dollar restoration plan was unanimously approved by the Coastal Commission. And that’s where the fireworks began. A group of residents and activists filed suit to stop the plan on procedural grounds, saying the coastal commission didn’t follow proper protocol. A judge granted them an injunction on those grounds last May. But according to reports the real criticism is that the project too extreme and the science behind it is flawed. Critics also say the plan doesn’t take into account the effect a massive rehab will have on area residents. Meanwhile proponents are left a little taken aback. In some cases they’ve worked side by side on environmental projects with the people who are now calling them “eco-terrorists.” So what’s really behind the fight for Malibu Lagoon? How big of an effect will the rehab effort make, and how much will local residents feel the burn? And finally, is there any chance of consensus.
Guests:
Suzanne Goode, Senior Environmental Scientist, California State Parks
Marcia Hanscom, Director of the Wetlands Defense Fund
Two death row convicts make final, desperate pleas
The impending executions of two prison inmates have gained national and international prominence, but they are two very different cases.
The Georgia case of Troy Davis has attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters, including the Pope, because they believe Davis might be innocent. Whereas in the Texas case of Duane Buck, his lawyers make no question of his guilt. They argue Buck’s sentencing was unfair because of racially biased testimony at his sentencing hearing.
Last week the Supreme Court of the United States granted a last-minute stay of Buck's execution while they review the claims of his defense team. He was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler in 1995. The Troy Davis case is fraught with different problems. His advocates believe the case was based on weak eyewitness testimony and a lack of physical evidence to prove Davis shot and killed an off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail, in 1989.
Even some proponents of the death penalty, such as former U.S. Congressman Bob Barr, have urged clemency writing, "it is clear now that the doubts plaguing his case can never be adequately addressed." Davis' lethal injection is scheduled for Wednesday.
WEIGH IN
Why hasn’t Davis’ defense team been able to convince appeals courts? Why has the Buck case caught the special attention of the Supreme Court? Was there racial bias at the sentencing hearing?
Guest:
Lisa McElroy, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University's Earle Mack School of Law & writer of the Plain English Column on SCOTUSblog.com
Fear not, problem-solving children of the Enlightenment, for we are the center of the universe
In his new book “The Beginning of Infinity,” quantum physicist and philosopher David Deutsch seeks to understand the implications of our scientific explanations of the world. Deutsch, a pioneer in quantum computation, argues that explanations hold a fundamental value in the universe, or in his words, the “multiverse.” The book is about everything, says New York Times Book Critic David Albert, from art, science, philosophy to history, politics, bugs and the future. Deutsch argues that the stream of ever-improving explanations of the universe only makes our capacity to understand, control and achieve infinite. For eons, little changed on this planet, he says. Progress was a joke. But once we got the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, our powers of inquiry and discovery became infinite. The Enlightenment revolutionized how people sought knowledge. The search for good explanations is the origin for all progress and the basic regulating principle of the Enlightenment. Deutsch argues that the extent of all possible knowledge is essentially unbounded (thus the title of the book), and he makes a case for this being an extremely optimistic state of affairs. How were we as humans able to come to rapid, open-ended discovery? How do we know which scientific theories are tenable or not? Do you think the Scientific Revolution has paved a limitless path for humans to seek knowledge? Get ready to wrap your brain around the book about everything.
Guest:
David Deutsch, Author of The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World; member of the Quantum Computation and Cryptography Research Group at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University
Emmy Awards 2011 golden wrap up
It was all glitz and glam at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles Sunday night as stars convened for the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. The ceremony was hosted by Glee’s Jane Lynch and featured 25 major categories. The competition in the Outstanding Drama Series category was especially fierce, with shows like Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Game of Thrones, The Good Wife and Mad Men. While there was no shortage of talent in the Lead Actor group, Mad Men’s tall-drink-of-water Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, was largely expected to win -- finally. Did the rightful contenders take home the golden statuette? Did the losers lose gracefully? Was there justice in Emmy land? We’ll get the red carpet results from LA Times television critic Mary MacNamara and take your calls.
Guest:
Mary McNamara, Television Critic for the Los Angeles Times