Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti announces annual city budget, Auto club's 2017 green car guide, the artist behind the Latino cuisine stamp series.
Should it be harder to prove a police officer lied?
Democratic Assemblyman Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles has proposed legislation that would change the standard for proving whether an officer lied in a report or testimony.
The bill, AB 1298, would alter procedures for police disciplinary hearings under state law and aims to protect officers who make innocent mistakes, or if they unknowingly stated incorrect facts.
Assemblyman Santiago was unable to contribute to Take Two's on-air segment but he issued this statement afterward:
"Currently, a police officer may be fired or relieved from duty based upon, amongst other things, a false statement made by that officer in the course of an investigation. This is the case regardless of whether that statement is intentionally false or not. My AB 1298 raises the bar here to ensure that career-determining punishments for officers match actual misconduct on their part by standardizing the burden of proof required in these instances."
It is not entirely clear how common it is for an officer to face discipline for making false statements, even if it seems like a slight one or an innocent mistake.
"It would be helpful if the proponents of the bill could point to examples where officers or deputies have been disciplined for lying, based on honest mistakes - I'm just not aware of any," said Michael Gennaco, founding Principal of the O-I-R Group, which works with local governments on police oversight. "One of the problems is there is so much secretiveness with regard to these kind of cases, that its very hard to do any kind of analysis."
Recently, there's been some movement at the LA County Sheriffs Department to crack down deputies for lying. On whether there a connection between this and what is happening in the legislature, Gennaco had this to say: "It may be a reaction to what Sheriff McDonnell is doing with regard to ferreting out, rooting out deputies that violate their oath of office and make false statements."
"The other thing that's going on is that the Sheriff want to provide this information to the District Attorney, and the union has sued there and that's all tied up in courts," said Gennaco. "So this may in fact be a reaction to that, yes. "
Click on the blue player to hear the entire interview.
The future of Fox News minus O'Reilly
On Wednesday, Fox News officially severed ties with its star host Bill O'Reilly.
Known for his combative personality, the conservative commentator has dominated cable news for almost two decades.
O'Reilly was seminal in building the Fox News brand, but his recent sexual harassment allegations proved too much for the network.
But can the network handle the loss of its biggest star? or is Fox bigger than a personality?
Daniel Holloway, senior TV writer for Variety, joins host A Martinez to talk about the aftermath of the shake-up.
Click on the blue media player above to hear the full interview
Toyota tests a new green semi, Tesla Model X tops AAA 2017 Green Car Guide
Between electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in hybrids and more efficient engines using good old-fashioned gas, it’s easier to drive green than ever before. With Earth Day right around the corner, a lot of organizations leverage the event with environmental news, including AAA, which released its 2017 Green Car Guide, and Toyota, which put a brand-new hydrogen fuel cell big rig into service at the LA Port this week.
The Tesla Model X SUV claimed the top spot in the AAA 2017 Green Car Guide released this week, beating 64 other vehicles to win best overall.
"It got a perfect score for fuel economy and for emissions because it’s an all electric vehicle, but one of the other things that helped put it over the top was it had the most cargo capacity behind the second seat of any of the vehicles we tested," said Megan McKernan, manager of the Auto Club Automotive Research Center.
With a starting price of $83,000 and an EPA-estimated range of 295 miles per charge, the Model X also won the guide's No. 1 spot in the SUV category -- one of six vehicle types included in a guide that runs the gamut from emissions-free battery electrics to low-emissions hybrids to high-mileage gas-powered pickup trucks.
Other winners include the Chevrolet Bolt EV (subcompact), Volkswagen e-Golf (compact), Lexus GS 450h F Sport (midsize), Tesla Model S 60 (large) and Ford F-150 XLT Super Crew (pickup).
The AAA Green Car Guide differs from other green car lists in that it takes a holistic approach to the vehicle. While fuel economy, price and performance top the list of purchase considerations for U.S. drivers, half of those drivers are influenced by a vehicle’s safety technology. What they consider after that are brand, style, color and smart phone connectivity, according to AAA.
Toyota took advantage of this Saturday's Earth Day to make some big news at the Port of LA this week with a new kind of semi truck. Called Project Portal, it’s an 18-wheeler that runs on hydrogen gas. Toyota, which sells a hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicle called the Mirai, is using two of that car's hydrogen fuel cells in the semi, and pairing them with a larger battery and motor to travel 200 emissions-free miles per tank.
These new stamps celebrate Latin American dishes and they are 'delicioso'
Tamales, flan, sancocho, empanadas, chile relleno and ceviche.
These are staples in Latin American cuisine that are enjoyed throughout Southern California. Now, all this yumminess will grace some postage stamps near you.
Illustrations of these tasty treats are part of the U.S. Postal Service’s new "Delicioso Forever" stamps line, which was released Thursday.
To celebrate, we got in touch with John Parra. He's the artist that created the mouthwatering postage. He joined A Martinez via Skype.
How does someone get their art on a stamp?
"I've been a professional illustrator and artist for about 20 years now and most people actually know me for my children's books. I do many different children's books with Latino themed work in them. So, I'm kind of guessing that they probably saw some of those books and contacted me because of that."
Dish diversity
"My background is more Mexican and I grew up in California, so I was very familiar with a lot of the dishes from the Mexican side of the family and things like this, but now that I live in New York and my wife is Puerto Rican...and she's a wonderful cook...but they have their own style of cooking dishes.
...And you have friends of Colombia and Ecuadoran...and they all have different styles, even though there's some overlap. Some may call it different things and they use different ingredients. So, I think the choices that we selected for the stamps...they could appeal to different Latin American cultures. So, empanadas could be across many different countries...we wanted to select some of the choices for the stamps that anybody could say, 'Hey this is what we cook at my house!' No matter what Latin American country you were brought up in or come from."
Stamp style
"Working on this was such a challenge because the size of the stamp...it has to be very clear when you're looking at these stamps that are just 1 inch by 1 inch in size. I wanted to make it that people would look at the stamps and be really just excited about them and really make them hungry, in a sense!
When we think of Latino food, it evokes a very specific wonderful feeling of the food and I really wanted to kind of...with that sort of enjoyment...I wanted to make that a part of the work."
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Mixing musical traditions to create a new sound: Primero Sueño
For the last twenty-eight years, music students at CalArts have been recording at the renown Capitol Studio B. Outside the studio, five young band members are feeling pretty emotional.
After all, recording at this legendary studio, doesn’t happen every day:
“Excited, nervous, adrenaline all over my body…"
The group is called ‘Primero Sueño’, First Dream. The band takes its name from the most important work written by Mexico’s renown 17th century poet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It was founded at CalArts by bassist-singer Estrella Arias last September, at the suggestion of band-mate and singer Elsa Lund. “When I first listened to the song that Estrella wrote over the Summer, I thought it was so beautiful and I thought it sounded like the sound of a like group that I would also like to write for.”
Arias’s instrument is called 'Leona', a small, four-string bass, played in the traditional folk style of Veracruz and known as ‘Son Jarocho’.
“I was mostly playing jazz a lot, last year. Then over the Summer I started writing songs, with the instruments that I play all my life. One way or another I identify with this music because it’s the earliest memory of music that I’ve had.”
Arias moved from San Miguel de Allende to LA in 2015 to attend CalArts and enrolled in the Jazz Program. When Arias and Lund put together the core members of ‘Primero Sueño’, they decided to invite other female musicians. Mandolinist Vera Webber heard them perform and was immediately attracted to their unique sound. It’s based on the contrast created by mixing classical and traditional instruments: “This group is such a great opportunity just to experiment and hear what these instruments sound like with each other and that’s one of the greatest things about this group.”
Violinist Rachel Iba says the band creates exciting new sounds by exploring the intersections of music traditions from different cultures.
“There’s a huge world music environment, it’s a big part of CalArts. So we all come to the group with different experience, both of music from our own cultures and things we’ve studied at CalArts.”