A spotlight on the homeless, today, with the court fight over the seizure of homeless people's belongings in LA's Skid Row, and the effort to count the youths living on Fresno's streets. Also, the US Census drops the word, "negro," former NBA star Dennis Rodman's visit to the secretive state of North Korea, and more.
LA city versus the homeless - who will win?
Los Angeles is fighting to seize and destroy some homeless people's belongings.
Today it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower-court ruling that prevented it from taking items that were temporarily left behind by the homeless on the streets of downtown.
It's sparked a heated battle between homeless advocates and those looking to clean up the streets.
We're joined by Andrew Blankstein who's been covering this for the Los Angeles Times
After years of cuts to California early childhood programs, will sequester add more pain?
Some California families do not have to imagine what the impact of sequestration might be. Subsidized early childhood education programs in California have already been cut by 40 percent over the past five years, leaving thousands of poor families without access, according to Laura Escobedo of the Los Angeles County Office of Childcare .
She said early childhood education programs across the state have suffered proportionately higher cuts than other areas of the state budget.
RELATED: Sequestration timeline
Before the recession of 2008, the state spent roughly $2 billion on Early Childhood education. Now California spends about $1.1 billion. The money comes from a mix of state funds and federal dollars from the Head Start and TANF programs.
The impact of $1 billion in cuts has been dramatic. A coalition of advocacy and data groups, including the Advancement Project/Healthy City, First Five LA, mapped where the seats were lost, neighborhood by neighborhood. The Los Angeles Children’s Data Network found that Los Angeles County suffered the biggest loss of child care seats in the state: 11,200.
“What the analysis definitely bears out is that several low income communities are bearing more than their fair share of the burden and have been hit much more harshly than others,” Patillo-Brownson said.
Roughly 100,000 slots have disappeared statewide--roughly one quarter of the spots that were offered in 2008 , according to Kim Patillo Brownson, Director of Educational Equity at the Advancement Project .
“At the end of last year, that left us in a situation where four out of five children no longer have access to early care and education programs,” Patillo-Brownson said.
Advocates said they're concerned about what sequestration cuts will mean for the already dwindling care options, should they come through. The Obama Administration has warned that the Head Start program will be cut by around $400 million. That would eliminate about 70,000 children from the program nationwide, and almost 12,000 here in California.
What advocates for early childhood education fear most is that the communities that have already been hardest hit will continue to receive the brunt of further cuts.
The California Children’s Academy runs 15 child care and preschool centers in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. That’s fewer than it used to. The state-funded provider that has had to close centers and lay off staff over the past several years due to funding cuts.
Most recently the it closed its center in Whittier – one of the areas hardest hit by the budget cuts. Executive director KC Brown and her staff said they've had to tell parents that there is no longer a slot available .
“The parents don't have the resources to put the children somewhere else," she said. "They’d have to quit their job or they’d have to quit school in order to stay home and take care of their children.”
In response, she and other providers have mounted organizing and lobbying efforts to avoid more cuts. Brown, along with parents and teachers, have traveled to Sacramento to “advocate for the children in our program.”
It appears the pressure has worked. This year, Governor Jerry Brown’s 1492 page budget proposal kept preschool spending the same for the coming fiscal year.
It was a short-lived victory. Advocates are staring down the barrel of automatic cuts to federal dollars which will kick in Friday if legilators in Washington fail to reach a budget compromise, something that is seeming more and more unlikely.
This is something that Andrea Joseph dreads thinking about. She attended one of the California Children’s Academy programs in Lincoln Heights when she was a toddler. She now runs the center and is the Vice President for Education at the Academy. (Hear more about her story in the radio feature attached to this story.)
Advocates like Brown and Patillo-Brownson emphasize that cutting early education for poor kids will impact all children. More and more economists are joining that choir.
Nobel laureate economist from the University of Chicago, James Heckman , has made news proving that a low-income child that receives quality pre-school instruction will have a higher IQ and brighter economic future than one that doesn’t. And that, he argues, improves everyone’s prosperity.
Southern California scientists fear the effect of sequestration cuts on medical research
With the swing of the federal budget sequester ax just hours away, some scientists in California are concerned for the future of their federally-funded medical research projects.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s leading medical grant agency, is facing a $1.6 billion cut to its budget that funds research into everything from biomed innovations and discoveries to cures for various diseases.
Among those in California’s booming biomed research industry who are concerned for the future of their projects is Tom Otis, professor and vice-chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
His pending NIH grant application focuses on brain research into the cerebellum and how its circuits allow a person to gain and maintain coordination.
Otis says until a few weeks ago, his five-year, $2 million research project appeared on track for full NIH funding.
But that changed when the automatic across-the-board federal spending cuts, known as sequestration, began grabbing headlines. A recent call he made to the NIH gave him little hope that his funding would survive should the cuts actually happen.
"The staff said that if the sequester went forward, the project wouldn’t be funded," Otis said. "But if the sequester was somehow avoided, then the project would quite likely be funded."
RELATED: Coming soon to an airport near you? 'This flight has been delayed due to sequestration difficulties'
The full effect of cuts on medical research jobs is uncertain. Some estimates put thousands at risk of losing their jobs. In addition, the cuts could stall important biomedical breakthroughs.
Otis predicts his research project would likely advance neuro-prosthetics, the field of biomedical technology that engages the human nervous system to control prosthetic limbs for amputees.
"If we can understand how the circuitry works, we can design better prosthetics," says Otis.
Across town at USC, the looming spending cuts are generating similar concerns.
"Cancer rates are declining and at this point and time we can’t afford to diminish our investment," says Dr. Stephen B. Gruber, director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. "It’s just paying too many dividends to patients and to the public’s health to cut that funding."
Gruber says the potential 5.1 perchttp://www.cancer.gov/ent automatic federal budget cuts would translate to a $240 million loss to the budgets of the National Cancer Institute.
"With more than 1.6 million Americans who are going to be diagnosed with cancer in 2013, it’s incredibly important that we communicate how important cancer research and bio med science is as a national priority," he says.
Why isn't Wall Street freaking out over sequestration?
Congress probably won't stop the sequestration cuts before tomorrow's deadline. Despite this, the stock market is reaching record highs. Sure, there was a dip at the beginning of the week - likely a little reaction to the Italian election. But what about the fuss over across-the-board spending cuts? The
Here with some thoughts on the relationship between what's happening on Wall Street and what's not happening in Washington is Barry Ritholtz. He's an investment advisor and columnist for the Washington Post.
Cindy Abbott raises awareness for rare diseases on the Iditarod Dog Sled trail
On Saturday, Californian Cindy Abbott will be hitching up her dog sled team to race more than 1,000 miles across the Alaskan wilderness.
She's participating in the 2013 Iditarod dog sled race where mushers vie to be the first to make it from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.
They're expecting tempatures of a chilly 50F below zero but Abbott is no stranger to tough challenges.
At the age of 48, she was training to climb Mt. Everest when she found out she had a serious and rare disease called Wegener’s Granulomatosis.
Abbott continued her training and two years later, to the surprise of her doctors, she stood on the summit of Mt. Everest holding the banner for the National Organization of Rare Disorders.
Today, on Rare Disease Day, Cindy Abbott joins the program from Anchorage, Alaska.
For more information visit:
National Organization for Rare Disorders
Why the Census removed 'Negro' from its forms
The U.S. Census has decided to remove the word "Negro" from its forms, citing complaints from some respondents who found the word offensive.
For a century, forms used the phrase "Black, African American or Negro" as racial identifiers. Going forward, the last word will be dropped.
Linguist and author John McWhorter says that the word isn't so much offensive as archaic and out of date.
"'Negro' until fairly recently was a perfectly acceptable way to refer to what we now call African Americans or blacks," he said. "But it fell out of fashion and now for many people it hearkens back to the days of Jim Crow and overt racism and so it makes people uncomfortable."
The word is still in use in some official capacity - for instance, the United Negro College Fund. But McWhorter suspects that organization will likely change its name in the near future as well to reflect current language.
City Hall Pass: special interest spending explodes, plus Garcetti's CODA debacle
KPCC's political team Frank Stoltze and Alice Walton join the show for a regular roundup of the latest political news.
This week they discuss the explosion in independent spending on the election over recent weeks and what it could mean for the race.
Plus, Eric Garcetti is viewed as largely responsible for luring electric car manufacturer, CODA, to Los Angeles with tax payer funds. Now with business on the brink, will he take the fall?
North Korea welcomes 3G Internet, Dennis Rodman
This week, the hermit kingdom seemed to emerge from its shell- just a bit.
North Korea welcomed its second high-profile foreign delegation in as many months - former NBA all-star Dennis Rodman and three members of the Harlem Globetrotters.
The country also launched its first 3G network, allowing foreigners to live Tweet and post to Instagram, although Internet access is still heavily restricted.
The tweets and photos have provided a glimpse into daily life in this secretive nation, a country that just two weeks ago- conducted underground nuclear tests.
Guest: Jean Lee, the Korean bureau chief for the Associated Press.
The Dinner Party: Outsourcing homework, the age of actors in high school movies and more
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party Download.
In China, an executive was caught outsourcing his 12 year old daughter's homework to professionals. Apparently he hired a film crew to help her with a project to document her life.
We all know Hollywood likes to cast older actors to play high-schoolers. But how much older? College Humor recently did a survey of teen movies and found the average age of an actor playing a teen is around 21.
This week in 1878 the first "Woolworth's Great Five Cent's Store" in Utica New York.
Eye-catching Lautner home for sale in Palm Springs
If you are looking to make an investment in real estate and have $50 million to spare, you might want to check out a stunning house in Palm Springs. This 23,000 square foot home was designed in 1973 by a famous California architect named John Lautner. It looks like a giant space-aged mushroom. Here with more about the home and the man behind it is Chris Nichols of LA Magazine.
And if six bedrooms and 10 bathrooms in Palm Springs isn't enough home for you... How about 7 bedrooms and TWENTY bathrooms in tony Bel Air? An 8.4 acre mansion on Bellagio Road might be on the market for the low, low price of just 225 million dollars. With more on this piece of property and the current state of high end real estate in California is Adrian Glick Kudler, editor of the website Curbed LA.