Today on the show, we get an update on the prison hunger strike. A U.S. judge OK'd force-feeding of hunger striking inmates in California; A new report shows that prison realignment is expensive for the LAPD; Calif. lawmakers get to work on more 1,100 bills still pending; Ask.fm changes safety policy to combat cyber bullying; Shortage of foster parents straining Los Angeles County's child welfare system, plus much more.
Judge OKs force-feeding of hunger striking inmates in California
Prison officials now have the legal authority to use force feeding to keep hunger strikers alive, but critics say doing so would violate both medical ethics and international law.
For more on this, we're joined once again by Paige St. John of the L.A. Times.
Report: Prison realignment is costly for the LAPD
A new report is looking into the local costs of realignment, the statewide plan to relieve severe prison overcrowding.
It shows that realignment has caused the Los Angeles Police Department to move more than 160 police officers from their regular patrol beats to monitor L.A.-based ex-cons full-time once they've been released from prison.
For more on this, we're joined now by LAPD Commander Andy Smith.
Calif. lawmakers get to work on more 1,100 bills still pending
The full California legislature is now back in session in Sacramento after summer break. Legislators might still be in vacation-mode but they're up against a ticking clock.
Before they adjourn again next month, lawmakers have more than 1,100 bills to address, or an average of about 55 bills a day.
John Myers, political editor for ABC News 10 in Sacramento, joins the show to take us through some of these bills still on the table.
Ask.fm changes safety policy to combat cyber bullying
Earlier this month, we talked about one of the hottest social networking sites for teens and pre-teens, Ask.fm. While it's growing in popularity, it's also become a place for cyber bullies to torment other kids online.
In recent weeks, more suicides have been tied to bullying on Ask.fm, and there's mounting pressure for the site to better protect its young users.
The site announced Monday that it will make changes to combat cyber bullying by making the report button more apparent, and they'll be adding a special reporting category for bullying and harassment. It will also implement an opt-out option to prevent anonymous questions and help users better moderate the content they receive. The changes are expected to be rolled out in September and October.
For more, we're joined again by Casey Newton, senior reporter for the technology site The Verge based in San Francisco.
Shortage of foster parents straining Los Angeles County's child welfare system
Every month, thousands of children are removed from their homes in Los Angeles County and placed in foster care. It usually takes longer to place an older child because foster parents tend to shy away from troubled kids who may be dealing with serious issues.
But in the past year, child welfare workers say the situation has reversed. KPCC's Rina Palta reports on a growing shortage of homes for babies and toddlers, and the effect it's having on the system
Tuesday Reviewsday: Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt, Ladi 6 and more
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday our weekly new music segment. Joining us this week is Oliver Wang from Soul-Sides.com and music supervisor Morgan Rhodes.
Artist: Big Sean feat. Kendrick Lamar
Album: N/A
Song: "Control"
Artist: Earl Sweatshirt
Album: Doris
Song: "Hoarse"
Artist: We All Together
Album: "We All Together"
Song: "Children"
Artist: Ladi 6
Album: "Automatic"
Songs: "Shine On", "Ikarus"
Al Jazeera America faces stiff competition from network news outlets
Al Jazeera America is now live on TV sets around the country. Just this hour, the TV news network launched its first national broadcast in the U.S.
The Qatar-based company struggled for years bringing its service to a wide audience in America, but when it purchased the network Current TV in January, that gave Al Jazeera the opening it needed.
Joining us now is Kim Bondy, senior executive producer of, "America Tonight," Al Jazeera America's flagship show, which airs at 6 p.m. here in L.A.
College students are relying more on federal aid for tuition
Now on to the state of college education, and how students are paying for it. Students are borrowing more and relying on federal grants and loans to help with tuition, according to information released today from the Education Department.
For more on this we're joined by Janet Lorin, she's a higher education reporter for Bloomberg news
Are online courses ready for prime time?
Massive open online courses, or MOOCS, have generated a lot of excitement and political heat, mainly because they promise to revolutionize education or make it cheaper to offer students the classes they need to graduate.
San Jose State University was one of the first to start experimenting with a pilot program, but as KQED's Charla Bear reports, most students failed the courses.
Tech industry slump negatively affecting US stocks
Back in 2007, Apple released the iPhone and kicked off a new era for the tech sector. Smartphone sales skyrocketed and so did sales for all the technology that went along with them.
As the rest of the economy struggled, the tech world continued to perform. However, over the past year, sales of consumer electronics started to slow. Companies like Google and Apple have posted less than stellar earnings.
But it's not only consumer electronics. Last Thursday, tech giant CISCO Systems announced that it was going to cut 4,000 jobs.
For more on what this says about the tech sector, we're joined by Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategies.
Why people just can't resist the urge to text while driving
If you've been on the Internet at all in the past two weeks, chances are you've come across the public service announcement "From One Second To The Next," by acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog and AT&T.
The poignant 35-minute documentary weaves the stories of four groups of people, both victims and perpetrators, whose lives were torn apart due to distracted driving accidents.
In each case, the driver in question was texting and not paying attention to the road. Some victims lost their lives, others were injured so badly they will never regain the freedom they enjoyed before the accident.
Since its debut, the film has gone viral online and will be shown in thousands of schools this fall, but it's hard to tell whether it will have an effect. A recent survey by the Automobile Club of Southern California shows that since 2008, when using your phone while driving became illegal in the state, texting is up 126 percent, though talking on the phone is down 57 percent.
The dangers texting and driving and the heavy consequences that follow have been well documented, but why can't people resist the urge to pick up their phones behind the wheel?
"In a sense our brains are hardwired to text," said Dr. Gary Small, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, on Take Two. "We want to stay connected to others and we've found this device that we have with us all the time that allows us to connect with others."
For many people, this means despite the countless warnings and laws enacted to steer people away from distracted driving. In essence, it's what Dr. Small calls a "battle of the brain."
"The dopamine circuits, the reward circuits that make us feel good, are driving us to text. The front part of the brain, the thinking brain, the frontal lobe, is telling us this is not a good idea, look at the tragic consequences," said Dr. Small. "It's not just texting. People drink and drive, they do all kinds of crazy things that their better judgment tells them they shouldn't do, yet it feels good in the moment to do it."
The problem is especially bad in southern California, where car culture reigns and many people commute in traffic from far away. Sitting alone in a car that long can be depressing and lonely, so naturally people have the urge to use their devices for some relief.
With the addition of laws, people even engage in more dangerous behavior to avoid getting caught.
"Texting allows us to connect in a way that we think is efficient. But it's clearly inefficient, and we don't know how to regulate it," said Dr. Small. "What happens is we say this is illegal, so what people do is they hold their devices even lower so they won't get caught. It makes it even more dangerous."
Even though laws that impose large fines for distracted driving will help people curb behavior in the short term, people often slip back in to bad habits over time.
"We tend to forget," said Dr. Small. "People will get tickets and they'll go to driving school and they will stop rolling through stop signs, but after about six months or so they find that their driving habits become lax again."
So what can be done to combat this "battle of the brain"? On the one hand it may fix itself over time as technology makes driving easier and safer — self-driving cars, accident avoidance technology, for example. But Dr. Small says the quicker way to fix the issue is to start with the devices.
"I think the way to deal with this is to come up with devices that turn off in the car," said Dr. Small. "We have this to some extent with GPS in cars, you cannot program your GPS while your car is moving."
For now, it's up to those driving on our roads to voluntarily stow their phones away while behind the wheel. The emotional resonance of Herzog's film is indeed a wake-up call; after viewing, most people would have a difficult time not thinking twice before texting while driving.
But the challenge that remains is how to get people to change their behavior not only in the short-term, but permanently.
KPCC's online polls are not scientific surveys of local or national opinion. Rather, they are designed as a way for our audience members to engage with each other and share their views. Let us know what you think on our Facebook page, facebook.com/kpcc, or in the comments below.
BMX pro uses bikes to steer kids away from drugs
BMX pro racer Tony Hoffman lost his way not long ago when he stopped racing and started using drugs. Finally, he ended up homeless. But he recovered, got back into biking and turned his experience into a learning experience for kids.
Now Hoffman teaches more than riding bikes on rough terrain, he also preaches character development and staying off drugs. As reporter Alice Daniel explains, the lessons come right from Hoffman's past.
Kids on BMX bikes speed around a dirt track -- racing along rolling hills and veering up steep embankments. They’re at Woodward Park in Fresno learning how to ride motocross style. The sport teaches discipline and self-confidence, says Tony Hoffman -- traits that might keep kids from doing drugs such as painkillers, which are a growing problem in the Central Valley.
“You’ve got to stay away from these key things if you want to be successful in life, if you want to avoid the wreckage of my past,” says Hoffman.
For five years Hoffman was addicted to OxyContin, then heroin. He doesn’t want others to make the same choices, so he started a nonprofit two years ago called the Freewheel Project. He gives anti-drug talks at high schools all over the Central Valley and says his camp provides at-risk youngsters, like 15-year-old Angelica Haskin, with a positive physical outlet. Haskin says she smoked weed for several years, tried meth and was suicidal.
“It was kind of like a Band-Aid,” says Haskin. “I can just smoke weed and be high and kind of just be in that state where I didn’t have to worry about anything.”
She says that she’s been clean for four months and that the camp is an opportunity to improve her life.
“When my week may not be going well, on Monday, I always get to look forward to coming here and just hanging out,” she says.
Hoffman’s high school years were vastly different. He was a nationally ranked BMXer. He had endorsements from Spy sunglasses and Airwalk shoes. He was great with computers. When he graduated, he got a tech job in San Diego – and stopped racing. He started partying and gave into peer pressure to try marijuana, a choice that led quickly to using other drugs.
“I never knew four years later I would be sleeping on the street, sticking needles in my arms, living in hotels,” says Hoffman.
Karen Hoffman, Tony’s mother, is one of 30 volunteers at the camp. She says she’s proud to help her son run his nonprofit.
“If we look at today, where he’s come, Tony’s a miracle,” she says. Her son’s drug addiction was devastating, she says, something she couldn’t stop.
“Tony has been hospitalized numerous times,” she recalls. “Once he almost lost his arm. Once he was stabbed and he had a lung collapse from a drug deal that’s gone bad.
“My husband and I in our darkest moments, in the weakest points, we would just lay in bed and hold hands each night and weep quietly for our child in the streets.”
One Christmas, when Tony was living on the streets, he called and asked to see her, she says. When she drove to the location, it took her a minute to recognize the homeless man with the cart staring into her car window.
“I asked him, I said, ‘What’s in the cart, son?’ ” she says. “And he said, ‘Mother I may be hooked on heroin. I may be living in the streets, but I’m not stupid. I still have my computer!’”
Hoffman went from the streets to prison in 2007 for armed robbery. He says he was so desperate for a fix, he held a gun to a woman who had OxyContin in her home. But prison turned out to be a lifesaver.
“Walking the streets alone with a drug addiction, waiting to die, is the most torment you’ll ever experience in your whole life,” says Hoffman. “Not prison. Prison was the first step to the top for me.”
Inmates were doing heroin all around him, he says, but he got clean. He had a newfound faith in Christianity and an unlikely goal: to train hard in prison and return to BMX as an elite pro.
“For me, coming back to BMX was kind of a redemption from my past,” he said. And an amazing feat, say other pro athletes who didn’t think Hoffman had a chance.
“So I reached the Olympic level,” he says. “I made main events with Olympians.”
And then he decided to start his nonprofit. “I just had to say, ‘You know what? I think it’s time to set it aside and start helping kids.’ ”
And that’s what he’s doing. At the camp, he tells the older kids drugs will kill you or haunt you for the rest of your life. He even tests them to make sure they are listening.
Hoffman says about 65 percent of the camp kids who are 12 and older admit to trying marijuana.
“These kids are able to connect with me,” he says. “They understand that I’m not here to be the police and I let them know that. I just want to know where these kids are at, what are we dealing with? You know.”
Hoffman is now fundraising for his next project – to intensively train and tutor a small group of at-risk students interested in competitive BMX racing.
LA baseball update: Where do the Dodgers and Angels stand this season?
Last night in baseball, the L.A. Dodgers lost to the Miami Marlins by a score of six to two. It was the Dodgers' second loss in a row, but before the two losses, the Dodgers had gone 42 and 8 in their last 50 games. That was the best 50 game stretch in baseball since 1942.
But not all is well for baseball in southern California.
Despite playoff hopes at the beginning of the season, the Angels have slipped to fourth in the division and star first baseman Albert Pujols will miss the rest of the season with a foot injury.
The Angels and Dodgers both had high hopes, and high payrolls, at the beginning of the year, but only the Dodgers have lived up to their team salary.
Fans of the Dodgers and Angels have a bad reputation. Critics say they show up late and don't pay attention to the game, but according to a new study from Emory University's Sports Marketing Analytics team, that's only half true.
They ranked the fan bases of every baseball team in the country by how loyal and supportive they were of their teams, in good times and bad. The Dodgers fan base tied for first and the Angels came in dead last.
It seems that the Dodgers are more a part of L.A. culture, while the Angels have had all of that controversy with changing their city name from Anaheim to LA. Does that play a role, too?
JP Hoornstra is a sports writer that covers both the Angels and Dodgers for the Los Angeles News Group. He joins the show with more.
Crime novelist Elmore Leonard dead at 87
Elmore Leonard, the crime novelist whose books became famous films, died Tuesday morning. He was 87.
Movies such as "Jackie Brown", "Out of Sight" and "Get Shorty" were all based on his works. Elmore Leonard's novella "Fire in the Hold," inspired the popular FX show "Justified," on which Leonard served as executive producer.
Leonard spoke with KPCC's Patt Morrison in 2007, saying he preferred dialogue over narrative, a style he picked up after reading too many thick books in high school, and one that helped win him critical praise.
"I thought these books just have too many words in them. The writer's getting in the way. I think of the way we were taught to write with the independent clause first, but it sounds to me artificial. It sounds like we're trying to write. We're trying to show off that we're writers," Leonard said.
Winner of countless writing awards, Elmore Leonard was working on his 46th novel when he had a stroke earlier this month. He died of complications from that stroke.