Today, we'll check in with the latest on the manhunt for a suspect who shot two LAPD officers. Then, how Vee-Jay Records brought the Beatles to America 50 years ago today, D.C. and Hollywood team up to pass mental health legislation, and much more.
Bipartisan Senate group to propose mental health legislation
Today, a bipartisan group of senators will introduce legislation which they say would strengthen the nation's mental health services and hopefully prevent violent acts by the mentally ill.
Those involved in the effort include Democratic Sens. Debbie Stabenow, Jack Reed, Barbara Boxer and Patrick Leahy and Republican Sens. Roy Blunt, Marco Rubio, and Susan Collins.
Joining them to introduce the bill will be David O. Russell, director of the Oscar-nominated film "Silver Linings Playbook," which is the story of a man grappling with bipolar disorder.
Last night at a screening of the film, Russell told Alex Cohen that this country needs to treat mental illness with the same attention and funding that we do for physical illnesses:
"It's just the tip of the iceberg. It's not enough, but it's something to address it. To say as a nation, listen have we had enough tragedies? With heart disease and diabetes you don't wait until someone is keeling over in the street. You start... Well what's your diet, what's your exercise, like way back. Way before the person is walking into traffic with a heart attack. So that's what this is an attempt to start to do that to provide some of the resources and direction, you know?"
For more on the legislation being introduced today, we're joined by Rebecca Farley, director of policy and advocate at the National Council for Behavioral Health.
Should Cardinal Mahoney face harsher punishment for role in abuse scandal?
Amid the thousands of pages of priest abuse files released by the LA Catholic Archdiocese, you find one name over and over: Cardinal Roger Mahoney. The man who led the nation's largest archdiocese for more than two decades repeatedly acknowledges abuse, but he never alerted law enforcement.
As KPCC's Frank Stoltze reports, some say Mahoney deserves far more punishment than that.
Sequestration could mean a cut in funding for military grocery stores
Military families across the country depend on discounted groceries at base commissaries, but they could suffer price increases if the federal government cuts the program's budget.
Among the critics of government-subsidized groceries is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). He said commissaries, like the one at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, should be able to operate on their own.
“By getting the Department of Defense out of the grocery business here in the United States, Congress could increase military pay across the board and allow military members to shop at stores of their choice,” Coburn said in a report.
Currently, the Department of Defense pays for the commissaries’ staff salaries, utilities and other operating costs, permitting families to shave 30 percent off their grocery bill, and up to 50 percent for meat and produce.
At Camp Pendleton’s main commissary, for instance, apples sold for about $1 a pound – about the cost of what apples sell for at grocery stores in downtown Los Angeles, said Scott Hill, the store director. National brands like Pepsi and Uncle Ben’s rice are sold at only 5% above cost. The profits go to renovating and expanding commissaries.
Depending on their size, military families can save $2,000 to $5,000 a year, Hill said. The Camp Pendleton commissary has evolved with the times, and tries to match customer demand, providing wholesale items similar to Costco. It even offers a fresh sushi counter.
“We don’t operate on profit and we don’t mark products up,” Hill said.
Coburn and others who want to eliminate the federal subsidy for the Defense Commissary Agency’s 248 stores say there is no reason why they can’t be self-sufficient. Critics point to the military’s version of department stores, known as military exchanges, receive little federal support.
Combining the commissaries with military exchanges could save U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion a year, a Congressional Budget Office report indicated.
Funding for commisaries could also be decreased through automatic spending cuts known as sequestration that will go into effect next month unless Congress takes action.
But a group that represents businesses that work with military commissaries and exchanges say removing federal support is shortsighted. They say the Department of Defense saves money in the long run by allowing Uncle Sam to save on cost-of-living allowances to service members.
“Take a close look before you cut this program, because you are going to be basically eating your seed corn for a program that reaps benefits far beyond what it costs,” said Steve Rossetti, director of government affairs for the American Logistics Association.
Commissaries and exchanges provide a $20 return in economic benefit to the nation for every $1 of funding given to both programs, the group said. The grocery savings also helps families save money for the future and allows them to spend those dollars at other businesses.
Budget cuts to commissaries could raise prices, force layoffs and shorten store hours, Rossetti said.
Camp Pendleton Marine Kenneth Keiser said he values the savings when he shops at the commissary for his wife and two children. He said he funnels the extra dollars into savings and taking his kids to nearby attractions like Legoland.
“It’s more convenient,” Keiser said.
The Defense Commissary Agency, which runs the military grocery stores, said no matter what happens, it will do “everything possible to minimize the impact of any budget decisions” on its customers, which include active, on reserve and retired military members, as well as their families.
The defense commissary said it has already stopped official travel for conferences and training that is “considered noncritical to the agency’s mission.”
Why 'sequestration' is a four-letter word to military contractors
Businesses in every state will be keeping an eye on Washington over the next few weeks. The continued political stalemate there increases the possibility that automatic, across-the-board federal spending cuts will kick in on March 1st.
Nearly half of those the cuts would hit the military and California has a lot at stake, with its large numbers of bases, research facilities, and contractors. For The California Report, Erik Anderson of KPBS recently attended the largest military trade show on the West Coast and found lots of people talking about the "s-word." Sequestration.
Stuart Freeborn, 'Star Wars' make-up artist, dies at 98
Hollywood is mourning the loss of one of its greatest make-up artists. Stuart Freeborn passed away earlier this week in London, he was 98 years old. Freeborn created classic characters such as Yoda, Chewbacca, and Jabba the Hutt from the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
For more on his life and work, we're joined now by Nick Dudman, a fellow make up artist whose work you may have seen in the "Harry Potter" films.
Interview Highlights:
On working with Stuart Freeborn to prepare Yoda for his first day on the 'Star Wars' set:
"I think we worked a couple of nights in a row all the way through to get it ready because it was a very strict deadline. Myself and another guy Bob Keen…had been helping Stuart literally bolt it all together and about four in the morning, Stuart went, 'OK that’s it we're done'. It was due on set at eight o'clock in the morning. Stuart went home to a flat he had around the corner from the studios. Bob and I just emptied out a load of old foam rubber prosthetics out on the floor and sort of curled up on them and passed out.
"Got up at six and walked back into the room and Stuart had come back. He had taken the entire bloody thing to bits just because he thought he could make the blink be just that little bit quicker. We stood there an I just remember going 'Bob, let him live!' You just wanted to pick him up and bounce him around the room. It was just like, "What have you done?"
On Freeborn's work ethic:
"He was an absolute perfectionist…he would rather it went on set a couple of hours late and work to his standard than he stand there knowing that it could be, if he had another hour, just that little bit better. That's something I learned from him. There's always a way of improving something and if you fail to spot whats wrong with your work, where it could be improved somewhere, then you should stop because you've lost your eye."
On the origin of Chewbacca:
"Chewbacca was really just an extension of the work he had done on "2001: A Space Odyssey" when he did the apes for the opening sequence for Stanley Kubrick. And the technology of how you made the lips move using the performers own tongue and mouth and jaw, Chewbacca was a sort of extension of that just a more refined version."
On the origin of Yoda:
"With Yoda, that was a whole new thing. They brought in Jim Henson to discuss it because it was very much a Muppet. And puppetry wasn't something people had really explored. The reason Yoda made such an impact is it was the most sophisticated puppet anyone had tried to build at that time. So you had the combination of it being manipulated expertly by someone like Frank Oz, who could do it in his sleep, but also the fact that you had these mechanical eyes and ears. It was just a meshing together of technology and puppeting skills that fell into place."
'Please Please Me' at 50: How Vee-Jay records brought the Beatles to America (Photos)
Today is an obscure, but important anniversary in the annals of pop music. You see, on this day, 50 years ago, The Beatles' first single, "Please Please Me," was released in the United States.
The song got a little bit of airplay in February and March of 1963, but not much, and it sold about a little more than 5,000 copies. Remember, this was 1963, the whole Beatlemania thing — the appearance on "Ed Sullivan," the screaming teenage girls — none of that happened until 1964.
In early 1963, The Beatles British record label, EMI sent a recording of "Please Please Me" to its U.S. affiliate, Capitol Records, but the executives at Capitol passed on it.
The rights to the record were shopped around to other labels, and one called Vee-Jay picked them up. At the time, Indiana-based Vee-Jay was the biggest black-owned record label in the country — this was long before Motown really got started — and they were primarily an R&B label. They had artists like Leadbelly, the Staples Singers, and the great Jimmy Reed.
Might seem strange, for an R&B label to release British rock and roll, but by 1963 Vee-Jay had begun to venture beyond R&B.
"Vee-Jay had put out 'I Remember You' by Frank Ifield after Capitol had turned that down, and [it] became a number-five hit," said Bruce Spizer, author of the book "Beatles' Records on Vee-Jay. "Also at this time, The Four Seasons "Big Girls Don't Cry," so the idea wasn't that absurd when you think about it."
Not only did Vee-Jay sign a deal for the rights to "Please Please Me," they also signed a contract for the right to license all the recordings made by this unknown group, The Beatles, and the right to release them in the United States for a period of five years.
"If Vee-Jay had played their cards right, "Sgt. Pepper" would have been on Vee-Jay," said Spizer. But, sadly, Vee-Jay didn't play their cards right, or perhaps they were dealt a bad hand. Oh, and by the way, that deal? It was signed on April Fool's day.
Hindsight Is Always 20-20
There was no way to predict that the then-unknown Beatles were going to be the biggest thing ever. Capitol Records didn't know it, Vee-Jay didn't know, maybe even The Beatles didn't know it. But by the end of 1963, it's clear that The Beatles are big. Elvis big, and maybe even bigger.
They schedule a tour of the States, and Capitol Records, realizing it made a monumental mistake, mounts a campaign to get back the record rights.
Vee-Jay notices an opportunity and decide to re-release "Please Please Me" in early January of '64. The new release gets to number three on the charts and sells more than a million copies. Meanwhile, just after Christmas in 1963, Capitol violates the licensing agreement and releases "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," The Beatles single that really launches the group in the U.S.
Capitol's executives, and its fleet of lawyers decide to be aggressive, especially since they know Vee-Jay has a problem. Turns out Vee-Jay's president had spent most of the company's reserve funds to pay his personal gambling debts. Plus, it failed to pay some royalties, meaning it may have voided the contract.
Desperate for cash and short on legal talent, Vee-Jay renegotiates the deal. It holds on to the rights to release 16 Beatles songs, but only for about a year. Capitol executives breathe a sigh of relief, and start preparing for the January, 1964 release of their album "Meet The Beatles," which will officially introduce America to the Fab Four.
The album is subtitled as "the first album by England's phenomenal pop combo," but, in fact it wasn't the first. Because, in spite of their financial problems, and their lack of legal talent, Vee-Jay managed to release an album, "Introducing the Beatles," ten days before Capitol got their record out.
Vee-Jay does very well with Introducing The Beatles. It quickly sells more than a million copies, even though Capitol fought against the release at every turn. But ultimately the financial problems and the legal problems were just too much, and Vee-Jay was pretty much out of business by the end of 1964. Two years later Vee-Jay Records filed for bankruptcy.
Today, Capitol Records is still headquartered in that cylindrical, stack-of-records-like tower on Vine that you can see from the Hollywood freeway. On this day, fifty years ago, when "Please Please Me" was first released, The Beatles were, for practical purposes, unknown. But exactly one year later, on February 7th, 1964 they were superstars.
A Producer's Own Missed Opportunity
Here's where I need to reveal my own missed opportunity, and also the fact that I am pretty old and creaky. You see, as an 11-year-old kid, I owned a copy of that Vee-Jay album, "Introducing The Beatles." It was among the first albums I'd ever bought — I think I had a Ray Charles record, and maybe one by the Beach Boys. Not only that. I had the single, "Please Please Me," too.
Sadly, they're long gone, but according to our Beatles expert, the album could be worth as much as $15,000 and a near-mint copy of the single could command up to 4,000. That's for a record that cost 69 cents in 1964.
Oh, well. Thanks to Bruce Spizer, who you can find at Beatle.net. He expects to re-release his history of Vee-Jay as an e-book later this year. And next year, about this time, there will be a lot of stories about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles conquering America, but now we know that, at least in some measure, that anniversary is really...today.
Navajo singer Radmilla Cody headed for glitzy Grammy Awards
Among all the glitzy rockers, rollers and rappers at Sunday's Grammy awards, one woman is likely to stand out in her traditional Navajo dress and moccasins. Radmilla Cody, the daughter of an African-American father and a Navajo mother, was raised on a reservation, and has been nominated for an album sung in her Native American language. From the Fronteras Desk in Flagstaff, Arizona Laurel Morales reports.
Navajo singer Radmilla Cody has been nominated for her first Grammy. She will likely turn heads at the ceremony Feb. 10 in Los Angeles in her traditional Navajo dress and moccasins. But the former Miss Navajo has never been afraid to stand out in a crowd.
Cody’s grandmother raised her on the Navajo Nation amidst the rust-colored plateaus and sagebrush.
"You have all this land around you," Cody said. "I had to find entertainment. I would go out and herd the sheep and sing to them and sing to the saltbushes and the rocks. I mean everything had life."
It was here where Cody rode horses, carded and spun wool, lived off the land and discovered her voice.
It was during this time she dreamed of becoming Miss Navajo. In 1997 she achieved that goal and became the first biracial woman to hold the title. She went on to pursue her next dream -- a Grammy. But getting to this point has been rough at times.
Growing up half African-American on the reservation, even her relatives called her names.
"My uncles were not too fond of having a biracial child in the family," Cody said. "They would make it known that was how they felt by basically belittling me, demeaning me."
Years later when she ran for Miss Navajo Nation some tribal members protested because of her dark skin. Because of her own struggles with racism, Cody is working with educators to replace a derogatory Navajo word for African-American people with a more respectful one.
"I sat down with a medicine man and asked him about coming up with a new name," Cody said. "‘What name can we come up with so we can empower our children?’ And he said to me in our ceremonies we call them “Naahilii.” And so I sat there and repeated it. And I felt a big difference I felt that empowerment."
Cody also works to empower victims of domestic violence. A survivor of an abusive relationship herself, she speaks out about reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. The current version of the bill would give tribal courts the jurisdiction to deal with non native offenders. She quotes frequently cited statistics, such as one in three Native American women will be raped.
"This is very important because in the end it's about protecting our communities and our women who are sacred and give life," Cody said.
Cody’s own violent relationship almost tore her life apart. About 10 years ago she was arrested and served 18 months in federal prison for her involvement in an international drug-dealing ring led by her abusive boyfriend.
"I knew even while I was doing time I needed to get to a place of balance, a place of harmony, a place of understanding, a place of inner peace before I could go out and help others," Cody said.
It was traditional Navajo music that helped her through that difficult time.
If Radmilla Cody’s name is called on Sunday, she knows she will also have to thank her grandmother Dorothy Cody, who gave her the strength to carry on. She passed away last year. When Radmilla got the call that she was nominated, the young singer immediately looked toward the sky and said: "What are you doing up there? Are you in cahoots with Whitney Houston?"
After the Grammys it’s on to her next dream: getting her Master’s degree in sociology and putting a new spin on traditional Navajo music, maybe even adding African drums.
DEVELOPING: Ex-LAPD officer on the run after series of suspected 'revenge' killings
PRESS CONFERENCE: LAPD Chief Charlie Beck briefs the public about suspect Christopher Dorner:
View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.
Ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner is wanted in connection with the revenge slayings of a college basketball coach Monica Quan and her fiance in Irvine on Sunday. He's also believed to be responsible for shooting four police officers, killing one in Riverside Thursday morning.
Dorner, 33, threatened "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against police in an manifesto posted on his Facebook page. The former U.S. Navy reservist, was fired in 2008 for allegedly making false statements about his training officer.
In his manifesto, Dorner named Randy Quan, father of the Cal State Fullerton assistant basketball coach who was found dead Sunday along with her fiance, Keith Lawrence. Quan, a retired L.A. police captain, was part the review process that led to Dorner's firing.
Quan, 28, and Lawrence, 27, had recently become engaged and moved into the condominium complex near Concordia University, where they had played basketball and received their degrees, authorities said. Lawrence was a campus officer at USC.
Police are searching for Dorner, described as being 6 feet tall, about 270 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. He may be driving a blue, 2005 Nissan Titan pickup truck (Calif. license plate 7XO3191), and his last known address was in La Palma, Calif.
Dorner LAPD Statement Regarding Christopher Jordan Dorner by
City Hall Pass: A recap of AirTalk's mayoral debate
The primary for Los Angeles mayor is less than a month away. Last night, KPCC's AirTalk hosted a debate with the five leading candidates for mayor. Reporter Alice Walton, who was here late covering the event, joins the show with a recap.
RELATED: Check out KPCC's voter guide
Stock market surge has investors fleeing bond market
By many measures, investors are starting to feel better about the economy. Congress dodged the fiscal cliff (at least for now), housing prices are looking a little better, and the stock market is climbing.
But just like anything, there's always a negative side to things. That strong stock market has investors fleeing bonds. Just last month, they moved more than $70 billion out of bond funds into stocks.
Is this a sign the bond bubble is about to pop? Paddy Hirsch, senior producer of Personal Finance at Marketplace, stopped by the studio to help explain all this.
Amazon to dole out virtual coins for app purchases
Now for a bit of positive financial news. This week Amazon announced that it would be handing out free money, in the form of 1,000 Amazon Coins. The virtual currency will be released in May for Kindle Fire app purchases.
Here to tell us whether we're all going to be rich is KPCC's business blogger Matt Debord.