Today on the show, we'll look at student veterans as they struggle to go back to school and move on with their lives; Residents of Hinkley, Ca are moving away in droves due to continued toxicity; OC Register's university ad deal raises ethics and credibility questions; What does it mean for our state capitol if the Sacramento Kings move to Seattle? Plus much more.
Supreme Court rejects proposed change to voting district head counts
Yesterday, the Supreme Court chose not to comment on a case that challenged how the size of a voting district is decided. In question was whether states should count everyone, not just U.S. citizens, when drawing districts.
Currently, the court says election districts should be equal in size. Under this rule, state and city officials represent around the same number of people. The one-person, one-vote rule has been in place since the 1960s.
The case was brought by a small, conservative nonprofit based in Virginia called The Project on Fair Representation, but could have had big implications for areas like Southern California.
For more on the case, we're joined now by Rick Pildes, law professor at New York University.
What's at stake for Sacramento if the Kings move to Seattle?
Since 1985, California has had four NBA franchises: the Lakers, the Clippers, the Golden State Warriors and the Sacramento Kings. But this month, that number could get cut to three.
Tomorrow, a meeting between NBA owners and two competing groups will determine whether the Kings will stay in Sacramento or move to Seattle. For more on the Kings' future and what's at stake, we're joined by Dale Kasler from the Sacramento Bee.
In Hinkley, toxic legacy sets the stage for a ghost town
Nearly 20 years ago, the California utility company Pacific Gas & Electric paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle legal claims. The settlement, made famous by the movie "Erin Brockovich," stemmed from a suit that the utility contaminated the groundwater in the Mojave Desert community of Hinkley.
It was the largest settlement ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in U.S. history, but since that David and Goliath triumph, a plume of groundwater contaminated with toxic chromium-6 has continued to spread, and the town is emptying. For the California Report, Chris Richard has the story.
Sonja Pellerin’s first- and second-grade classroom at Hinkley Elementary School is a lively and brightly colored place. Each time Pellerin gives an instruction to the class, she punctuates the instruction by clapping her hands. And the children, leaning forward eagerly, their eyes on Pellerin’s face, clap along with her.
For a recent vocabulary lesson, it was business as usual.
“Class, please describe to your partner what a downpour would look like,” Pellerin said, her voice and face cheerful.
She clapped her hands. “Switch! Go!”
The children, absorbed in the lesson, clapped in response and turned to their partners, chattering. That gave Pellerin a moment to step away from the front of the class. As she did, her face grew grave.
“We’re learning every day different areas the kids are moving to now and we’ve had many, many tears,” she said. “Some people have lived here for generations, and it is turning families upside down."
With enrollment falling sharply for several years, Barstow Unified School District trustees say they can’t afford to keep the Hinkley School open on their own. But for the rest of the academic year, the Hinkley School will continue to be a community gathering place. Once a month, the school invites families to share lunch with their children. Roberta Walker came here recently to be with her grandchildren. She’s angry that PG&E refused a district request to buy the Hinkley School in order to keep it open.
“The school was the biggest, biggest part of the community," she said. "And they refused to admit that they were at fault for the decline in enrollment."
In the 1990s, Walker was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit by residents alleging that PG&E had dumped cooling water from a natural gas compression plant south of town into unlined ponds. The waste, laden with toxic chromium-6, contaminated Hinkley’s wells, and the suit blamed the company for widespread cancer and autoimmune disease. The company paid $333 million to settle the case. Much of the money went to attorneys, with the balance divided among 600 plaintiffs.
With her share of the money, Walker built new homes for herself and her daughters about four miles north of the compression plant. She believed that, under a state cleanup order, PG&E would contain the poison. Now, chromium-6 has turned up in her water again. Walker and her daughters are negotiating sale terms with the company.
“There’s still that little hope that the state will continue pushing along, but am I gonna do it? And once I leave, and once I get out of here, am I going to?” she said. “No. I’m not. I’m tired. I’m done."
PG&E already has agreed to buy out a third of Hinkley’s residents. And the company has spent some $700 million trying to clean up its mess. That has included pumping millions of gallons of water a year and spreading it on fields to let microbes break down the poison. The company is also pumping ethanol into the ground to trigger a chemical reaction that neutralizes the chromium. At a public meeting in October, project engineer Kevin Sullivan tried to offer encouragement.
“We’re making a lot of progress,” he said. “We’ve cleaned up like 54 acres. Now, I know that doesn’t. … I, I, believe me, I understand that if it’s not your property, you know, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ But 54 acres is a lot of progress."
It’s only a fraction of the environmental damage. Three years ago, state water quality officials estimated the contamination plume at a little more than 2 1/2 miles long. According to the most recent state report, it might now be more than 7 miles long, and spreading at 2 feet per day.
“It seems like the more we look, the more we’re finding, and it’s something that is, um, is scary for folks,” said Lauri Kemper, assistant executive officer of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency overseeing cleanup efforts.
Frightening as the pollution is, until recently 83-year-old Patsy Morris was determined to stay. She remembered the Mulberry Street neighborhood of her youth, when the houses had green lawns and her children played up and down the block.
Today, the few neighbors who remain have turned off their wells for fear of the chromium. The grass is gone. Most houses are boarded up, and Morris tries to resign herself to leaving.
“You get a bitterness about the whole thing. They’re just going to make this a big dust bowl, that’s all I can say about it,” Morris said “My friends are leaving, one way or another. It gets you, you know?”
PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith has said repeatedly over the years that the company wants to make sure Hinkley survives. But that’s getting more complicated.
“We certainly remain committed to working with the people of Hinkley. If their preference is to have their property purchased and to depart from the community, we want to make sure we have that option available to them as well,” he said.
In a community so small, one loss flows into another. Hinkley is losing its fire department, too. Four of the department’s six members are negotiating the sale of their homes to PG&E, including Fire Capt. Julie Heggenberger.
Her mother was the town nurse. Her father founded the volunteer fire department. By contrast, Heggenberger’s husband moved repeatedly as a child.
“By the time we got married, he was like, ‘I never want to leave. I don’t want to do that!’ ” she said.
Heggenberger’s eyes filled with tears. She swallowed hard, struggling to speak clearly.
“’I want to raise our children, have them grow up in the same school, live in the same house.’”
But both of Heggenberger’s parents died of diseases she blames on the contaminated water. A brother is seriously ill. She herself has Crohn’s disease. Heggenberger and her husband feel that for their children’s safety, they have no choice but to move away. Still, leaving this place he came to call home is very hard for her husband.
“He never had that. And it’s what I had,” she said. “And he’s seen it was what made me a person in the community. And, um, we’re not going to have that.”
PG&E estimates it take could another 40 years to get rid of the pollution. That draws grim laughter from people in Hinkley. They predict their community will be a ghost town in less than 10 years.
See more from The California Report here.
OC Register's university ad deal raises ethics, credibility questions
Newspapers deliver the news, but the Orange County Register has been making headlines of its own since coming under new ownership last year. At a time when other newspapers are contracting, publisher Aaron Kushner has made a big hiring push and expanded coverage.
But the paper's latest move has some journalists questioning whether the Register is risking credibility at the expense of expansion. Three local schools — UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton and Chapman University — have each agreed to pay $275,000 for positive coverage in weekly sections of the Register.
"These institutions have so much that they do and accomplish each week, that frankly one of our bigger challenges with these sections is going to be what we have the space to cover, even with now having full sections for each of the three schools," said OC Register publisher Aaron Kushner.
The sections would contain ads, profiles and feature stories about the schools written by newspaper staff. The newspaper's move has sparked a backlash on social media and reportedly among some of its own staff.
What the schools have to say:
Cathy Lawhon, spokeswoman for UC Irvine: "...We look forward to sharing our many wonderful stories of academics and research, campus life and outstanding students, faculty and staff..."
Mary Platt, spokeswoman for Chapman University: "... Universities are fascinating communities in their own right, but the outside public often sees them as the stereotypical “ivory towers,” closed off to all but those who are enrolled as students or who work on the campus. Chapman wants to throw open the doors of that ivory tower and let a wider readership know about all the exciting things that are happening daily on our campus..."
Guest: Kelly McBride, senior faculty at the Poynter Institute.
The Next Mission: Taking brain injuries from the battlefield to the classroom
Among the signature injuries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – post-traumatic stress disorder, lost limbs and traumatic brain injury – it’s the last that tends to get the least amount of attention. But for veterans who head to school after their service, traumatic brain injury can be an especially difficult diagnosis.
RELATED: See all of our "The Next Mission" student vets coverage
The symptoms read like a list of all the things that can keep you from succeeding in school: It causes trouble with concentration, cognitive processing, reading comprehension, and memory. In the classroom, those symptoms can spell disaster.
Samara Freemark from the Public Insight Network reports.
Tuesday Reviewsday: John Denver tribute, Mad Season and Rilo Kiley
Tuesday, the day of the week we like to talk about new music. On tap this week is NPR's music critic Ann Powers who'll review a new tribute to John Denver, the band Mad Season and Rilo Kiley.
Artist: Various
Album: The Music Is You: A tribute to John Denver
Release Date: April 2
Songs: "Rocky Mountain High" by Allen Stone and "All of My Memories" by Kathleen Edwards
Artist: Mad Season
Album: Above
Release Date: April 2
Songs: "Locomotive"
Artist: Rilo Kiley
Album: RKives
Release Date: April 2
Songs: "Dejalo," "Let Me Back In"
NRA presents 'School Shield Initiative' to Congress
The National Rifle Association has its own plan to prevent gun violence in schools. Shortly after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA suggested armed guards in schools to protect students.
But that was just one piece in a bigger set of policy proposals made by an NRA taskforce, the bulk of which was presented to Congress earlier this morning. It's called the National School Shield Initiative.
Joining us for details is Robert Spitzer, NRA member, chair of the the political science department at the State University of New York-Cortland, and author of "The Politics of Gun Control."
California members of Congress split on gun control
When the Senate returns from its Easter break next week, one of its first votes is expected to be on a gun violence measure. Some Republican Senators have threatened a filibuster. Any gun control measure that survives the Senate will face stiff opposition in the GOP-led House.
The positions of California lawmakers on gun issues are shaped by political philosophy – but also geography and personal experience.
The Big Bear Shootout
Freshman Republican Congressman Paul Cook represents a rural California district that includes Big Bear, where ex-LAPD cop Christopher Dorner ended his shooting rampage. That happened on Feb. 12, just hours before President Obama prodded Congress for new gun control legislation in his State of the Union address.
Cook says the Dorner incident could well turn his constituents against gun control. He says that’s part of the reason why they’re "very sensitive about having their own personal weapon, that they can defend themselves against somebody that comes in there."
RELATED: Gauging the congressional delegation's stance on gun control
The retired Marine Colonel says he wants to “carefully” look at any gun measures. He says requiring background checks for potential gun owners raises the question of who might have access to that information. And he questions whether regulating guns is the answer to preventing future incidents like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. He says our society produces "people like this" and we have to look at ourselves as a culture and examine what we’re doing. "To just look at the mechanism – obviously guns is not enough."
Other California Republicans
That’s the reaction of most California Republicans on the Hill. Some, including Ed Royce of Fullerton and Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach do support background checks. Others mention school safety. Gary Miller of San Bernardino wants to keep guns away from the mentally ill. But most reinterate their support for the Second Amendment.
Freshman GOP Congressman Doug LaMalfa represents the rural district of Redding and is a former official of a local hunting group. LaMalfa calls gun violence legislation “an emotional reaction” to the “horrific tragedy” at Newtown. But he says it all comes down your views on gun control. "If you’re similar to my views," he says, "you don’t think any more legislation is going to change the world at all."
Democrats find a hunter and gun owner
Rural California lawmakers are more likely to be hunters – and more experienced with guns — than those who live in cities. Which is why House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi picked Mike Thompson, who represents Northern California's wine country, to head her Democratic gun violence task force. Thompson says he's been a hunter all his life. He says when you're "out in the field upland hunting or waterfowl hunting" you're only allowed to have three shells in your gun. "Why do you need 30 shells as a magazine?"
Thompson's task force issued a laundry list of recommendations, supported by most California House Democrats. It includes a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, background checks, and restoring research funding for the Centers for Disease Control to track gun violence as a health issue.
Looking for other answers
The recommendations also include improved mental health screening. That’s the gun violence issue Democrat Grace Napolitano of Santa Fe Springs is fighting for. She’s also a task force member. Napolitano says the focus must be in the schools, "even at a grammar school level" where counselors can "begin to spot some of these disorders and be able to talk to the parents and be able to try to solve them at that early age."
But all of these recommendations from Democrats will have to wait. The GOP-led House is waiting to see whether the Senate can pass its own bill before putting a gun violence measure to a vote.
Why spring training phenom Yasiel Puig isn't playing for the Dodgers this season
The Dodgers rang in the new baseball season with a bang. Ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw went nine scoreless innings, plus he hit a home run — his first ever in regular season play. It put them ahead of the San Francisco Giants four to nothing. Not bad for opening day.
Kershaw might be the best pitcher in baseball, and he's currently discussing a contract extension with the team that could also make him the highest-paid pitcher in the game. Overall, the Dodger offense looks pretty impressive, but the best hitter in the organization outside of Matt Kemp wasn't in the dugout at Chavez Ravine yesterday.
Yasiel Puig is a 22-year-old outfielder from Cuba, who was voted Dodgers spring training rookie of the year. Mike Piazza and Fernando Valenzuela were just a couple of big names who won the award. But Puig, who hit .517 in the spring, won't be playing with the Dodgers. He's been sent to a AA club in Tennessee. L.A. Times Dodger beat writer Dylan Hernandez explains why.
Should more universities adopt a Student-Athlete Bill of Rights?
Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware will be watching his team play from the bench this weekend in the Final Four. The sophomore guard shattered his lower right leg in a freak accident Sunday night. The devastating injury puts the future of Ware's basketball career and his college scholarship at risk.
But that might not have been the case had he been playing for a California school, thanks to legislation signed into law last year.
SB 1525 requires that universities that generate more than $10 million in media revenues a year:
- provide equivalent academic scholarships to student-athletes who are injured and lose their athletic scholarship
- provide equivalent academic scholarships to student-athletes who have exhausted their NCAA athletic eligibility but have not completed their degree
- pay the health care premiums for low-income student-athletes
- cover all deductibles for injuries related to their participation in an intercollegiate sport
- conduct a financial and life skills workshop for all first and third year student-athletes
- afford student athletes the same disciplinary due process as other students
- adopt and implement guidelines to prevent, assess and treat sports related concussions, dehydration, along with exercise and supervision guidelines for student-athletes identified with potentially life-threatening health conditions
State Senator Alex Padilla of Los Angeles is the man behind that law and he joins the show with more.
Picture This: Louie Palu captures horrors of the Mexican drug war
Warning: Slideshow contains graphic images.
In our regular series, Picture This, we've been focusing a lot on war photographers. While today's guest, Louie Palu, did work as a photojournalist in Afghanistan, he's since turned his lens on a different kind of war.
Palu recently spent a year photographing the drug trade in Mexico, from checkpoints in Texas and Arizona to villages deep into cartel country. He's been witness to hundreds of murder scenes and has learned of the multitude of ways smugglers attempt and succeed to bring drugs into the United States.
In addition, he wanted to document daily life of the people who, despite being surrounded by violence, still call Ciudad Juarez and other gang-heavy Mexican cities home. He joins us to talk about why he decided to train his lens on Mexico, how he stayed safe, and what he hopes his photographs communicate to the world.
Interview Highlights:
On why he decided to focus on the Mexican drug war:
"I had covered the war in Kandahar, Afghanistan on and off for about five years. As soon as the popular media arrived in Afghanistan...I felt like my time was there to move on. I really felt like Latin America wasn't getting enough coverage. I really felt that what was going on in Mexico and I feel spilling over into the United States with the drug war needed more coverage. I've always been drawn to stories that not enough media are covering and I felt like the Middle East always gets this bloated media coverage and it was time for Mexico to get a little more coverage."
On how he stayed safe during his reporting:
"Keeping a low profile is hard to do when you pull two big cameras out. I would rent a hotel in one part of town, go out the back door, and stay in a hotel in another part of town. My biggest fear was that at night, gunmen would come into my room in the middle of the night and take me away, hood me and take me away and either kidnap me or...they haven't killed a foreign journalist yet, but I feel like in any conflict there's always this one point where things change, and I didn't want it to be me."
On a moment when he felt threatened:
"As I was taking photos, this guy walks up to me and starts talking to me very aggressively. I could tell immediately the tone, the kind of guy he was, how he was in my face that I was in really deep trouble. This guy was a gang member from one of the bigger gangs in Juarez. I told him I was a journalist and I was here photographing daily life, but he didn't believe me. He stepped away for a second to talk to his friend before he came back, he said, 'Hey wait here, I want to talk to you more.' The discussion became, should we leave? If we leave now, it'll look like we're running away. We decided to stay because we were being honest. He came back and said, 'Hey, while I interrogate you come over to my barbecue and have some tacos, man.' I drank a bit of Coca-Cola, had some tacos and we had a sit down."
On how the many drug-war related murders affect civilians:
"In the total of a month I covered about 110 [murders]...The thing that made the biggest impression on me...is I turned around and right behind me, a school had just let out and there were all of these elementary school children staring at this scene of this man dying. I just think that it's another one of those cases where if you're going to have security and you're going to have violence, you have to build a social infrastructure. The mental illness, the trauma that people are experience in Mexico is in the hundreds of thousands. Building that social infrastructure builds a dam or a firewall so that these people build productive lives and don't end up going down the wrong road."
On how life in Mexico goes on despite drug violence:
"I wanted to show some daily life, because what people need to understand is that it's not like you walk around every day and there's gunfire and people are killing each other. It happens in the city and some parts of the city you don't even know it's going on. I wanted to show that there is daily life there. That not everybody's killing each other."