A bi-partisan group of senators unveils plans for immigration reform. Then, San Bernardino, already in trouble, now searches for new manager, the California Report's Mina Kim reports on how gun violence may become a public health issue, and a new book explores how "Tinkerers" made America great, and much more.
'Gang of 8' Senators unveil immigration reform proposal
Immigration reform is getting its moment in the sun. In just a couple of hours, a bi-partisan group of Senators nicknamed "the gang of eight" will unveil their proposal for overhauling the nation's immigration policies.
The plan includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants already here. For perspective, the last major immigration reform effort in 1986 legalized three million people.
UPDATE 10:18 a.m.: According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, the senators will call for accomplishing four goals:
- Creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already here, contingent upon securing the border and better tracking of people here on visas.
- Reforming the legal immigration system, including awarding green cards to immigrants who obtain advanced degrees in science, math, technology or engineering from an American university.
- Creating an effective employment verification system to ensure that employers do not hire undocumented immigrants in the future, including requiring prospective workers to verify legal status and identity through a non-forgeable electronic system.
- Allowing more low-skill workers into the country and allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can demonstrate they couldn't recruit a U.S. citizen; and establishing an agricultural worker program.
For more details on how the Senators' plan would work we turn to National Journal reporter Fawn Johnson. For analysis of the Senate proposal, we're joined by Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who has worked with several state legislators to draft strict immigration bills, including SB1070 in Arizona, and Angela Maria Kelley is the Vice President of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress in Washington.
A new bipartisan effort gets a foothold on Capitol Hill
A recent public policy poll finds Americans have a higher opinion of dental procedures, used car salesmen, and traffic jams than they do of the U.S. Congress. Politicos can take some comfort: they did score higher than the Kardashians.
An advocacy group is trying to shake up the status quo on Capitol Hill by finding ways for Democrats and Republicans to work together. KPCC's Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde says a pair of California lawmakers are on board.
A recent Public Policy poll finds Americans have a higher opinion of dental procedures, used car salesmen and traffic jams than they do of the U.S. Congress. Politicians can take some comfort: they did score higher than the Kardashians.
An advocacy group is trying to shake up the status quo on Capitol Hill by finding ways for Democrats and Republicans to work together — and a pair of California lawmakers are on board.
Congresswoman Janice Hahn first heard of No Labels from a staffer, who heard about it from a friend.
"They were at a Bar Mitzvah together and she was talking to my chief of staff about No Labels," Hahn recalls. "And my chief of staff said, 'This sounds like my boss.'”
The Democrat from San Pedro came to Washington from the non-partisan world of L.A. City Hall. Hahn says about the only time Democrats and Republicans get together in D.C. is at their annual Congressional baseball game.
"We don’t share meals together, we don’t caucus together, we don’t socialize together," Hahn says.
So Hahn started attending Congressional prayer breakfasts, where at least for an hour a week, she says she can "sit in the same room with Republicans and figure out who they are, what makes them tick, and see if a friendship might evolve that down the road might be useful in breaking the gridlock."
Hahn and about two dozen other members of Congress from both parties have joined No Labels. The two-year old organization calls itself a “citizens movement of Democrats, Republicans, and everything in-between, dedicated to promoting a new politics of problem solving.” (As a social welfare non-profit, No Labels doesn’t have to disclose its donors.)
Bill Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution, is one of the original co-founders of No Labels. He says Congress has two choices: continued gridlock, "or you can start talking to each other. It’s just that simple."
Earlier this month, more than 1,300 volunteers from around the country attended a day-long convention in New York City. No Labels boasts “hundreds of thousands” of e-mail followers and two dozen members of Congress from both sides of the aisle — though no California Republicans.
Last week the House passed the “No Budget, No Pay” Act, a measure supported by No Labels. It requires Congress to pass a budget to get a paycheck. Bill Galston says it was the centerpiece of a Congressional race in Sacramento last fall.
"Ami Bera used that to great affect against Dan Lungren, who as the chair of the committee of jurisdiction in the House had repeatedly refused to hold hearings on our proposal," Galston says. "And Bera beat him by 1,500 votes."
Now a freshman Congressman, Bera says No Labels taps into the frustrations many Americans have about their political leaders. Bera has also joined the two dozen Congressional No Labels “problem solvers,” but he remains a dedicated Democrat.
"That doesn’t mean giving up on our convictions," says Bera, "but what it does mean is there’s a lot that we agree on. Let’s start there."
Bera wasn’t the only California Congressional candidate to run on a No Labels platform. Republican Gary DeLong in Long Beach and independent Bill Bloomfield in Manhattan Beach both touted their support for No Labels. Both lost their races.
Marc Sandelow, political scientist at the University of California’s D.C. Center, says a movement like No Labels becomes successful when politicians who embrace it win elections. He says there used to be a political middle of the road.
Now, more sophisticated gerrymandering has weeded out those in the political center, leaving hardliners on the right and left. But Sandelow doubts that No Labels will succeed in overcoming gridlock. He says it’s often hard to keep the politics out, even when the two parties agree on something.
"If you’re Nancy Pelosi," says Sandelow, "and you might be convinced to do something the Republicans want, but it makes the Republicans look good and you’re thinking, If I make the Republicans look bad in general, maybe they lose the midterm elections, maybe I become Speaker. If I become Speaker, we can push cap-and-trade and make choice more available to more women, we can do a million things. It makes you not want to compromise."
Sandelow says it's not "necessarily evil" to work against the opposition party if you think that your party is going to be better for the country in the long term.
It may not be evil to stay true to your party, but as the public ranks Congress less popular than a root canal, it could prove painful at the polling booth.
San Bernardino, already in trouble, now searches for new manager
After only eight months on the job, San Bernardino’s acting city manager Andrea Travis-Miller is leaving.
She’s taking a pay cut to work as the executive director of the San Gabriel Council of Governments. Her departure--and the rumored upcoming departure of the city’s Finance Director-- are the latest in a long string of bad news for San Bernardino as it limps through bankruptcy court carrying $143 million in debt.
The city filed for bankruptcy on August 1, 2012, citing a $46-million deficit for this fiscal year. A federal judge has yet to rule on the Chapter 9 protections. Granting those would shield the city from creditor lawsuits until its finances are restructured under a roadmap approved by the court. It is one of four California cities to go under recently. The others are Stockton, Vallejo, Mammoth Lakes.
Since the summer filing, the city has cut its police force to below-2009 levels and the homicide rate has shot up by more than 50 percent. City services have been reduced to the essentials, and residents are beginning to feel the impact.
City resident Cindy Moore says whever she calls the city water department or other divisions she's put on hold twice as long as before. Moore, who's lived in the city for five years, said she got lost in an area of the city she wasn’t familiar with because the streets had no signs.
“We had all this new construction but they hadn’t put up a sign,” she said.
Lifelong resident Nick Acosta, 21, plans to leave the city as soon as possible.
“Everybody I know wants to leave,” he said. “They say it’s trashy. Everybody. They don’t even want to say they’re from San Bernardino when they ask where you’re from.”
Like Moore, he’s noticed the consequences of cuts to city services. He said street trash isn't being cleaned up and tagging is left unaddressed.
In her short time as interim city manager, Travis-Miller made some tough calls. She stopped the city's $2.4 million monthly payments to CalPERS, America's biggest public pension fund and the city’s largest creditor, when the city filed for bankruptcy. It now owes at least $10 million to the pension system.
CALPERS wanted to sue, but a federal bankruptcy judge sided with the city in December, preventing the fund from taking legal action. The city plans to resume payments in July.
Losing Travis-Miller now will likely complicate the bankruptcy proceedings, said economist John Husing, a former city resident.
But he's not surprised.
“She’s one of a long line of people to get disgusted around there and leave. It’s not unusual,” Husing said. In part, that's because of the city's politics.
“Everybody is at everybody’s throat,” he said. The city is well known in city manager circles to be one of the most dysfunctional places in California, he said, if not the entire country.
That will make finding her successor particularly difficult.
Mayor Pat Morris said he’s put out calls to find “a top-notch budget specialist" who has done the job before. He has until February 19th to find a replacement.
“We don’t have that kind of talent in-house, not even close.”
Husing said even if he were to find the perfect candidate, he has little hope for much improvement in the city.
“I don’t think you can solve San Bernardino’s problems,” Husing said.
He has studied that city’s government for nearly 50 years and he says its structure is the problem. He and others argue that the city’s hands are tied by its governing documents, which have locked it into spending levels it cannot sustain and which city officials wield as a political weapon against one another.
“You have three branches of government and unless all three agree, it is difficult to do anything,” he said.
Husing sees only one solution: dissolving the city’s charter and putting it under general law.
Most California cities are organized under a standard set of laws and are considered general law cities. But a about a quarter of cities in the state are Charter cities. That means they have more independence and less state oversight. They’re often the older ones like Los Angeles, Compton, Pasadena, and San Bernardino.
Still, converting the city to general law would require a majority of the council voting to put on the ballot eliminating their districts and therefore their jobs. And that seems unlikely, even to Husing.
“So whoever comes in will be dealing with a mess," he said. "They probably, as they generally have, will limp through making whatever decisions are absolutely necessary but no matter what they do coming out the other side, the long term future will be as depressing as the current situation is.”
Outside city hall stands an 11-ft sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. For Husing, it symbolizes the city’s civic virtue and racial harmony at the time it was commissioned in 1971. “The spirit of doing it came out of the African American community, the money came out of the white community and the sculptor was Hispanic,” he recalled.
After forty years, like the city, the bronze sculpture is starting to come apart. A group of citizens have organized to raise funds to repair it. Many are hopeful that a similar civic spirit can repair the city. “I mean, it was a great city that’s completely disintegrated and it’s a tragedy,” said Husing.
Should gun violence be considered a public health issue?
Gun violence will be the focus of a joint hearing at the California state capitol on Tuesday.
California lawmakers have previously looked at banning certain weapons or limiting ammunition.
But some researchers suggest that the problem of gun violence could be addressed from a public health perspective. The California Report's Health Reporter, Mina Kim, looks at this approach in the third part of a series examining gun violence and communities.
Hollywood Monday: SAG Awards, Sundance, and more
L.A. Times film writer Rebecca Keegan joins the show to discuss the latest industry news coming out of Hollywood.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards took place over the weekend, but is it a good predictor for who might be going home with an Oscar next month? Then, a risque Sundance party thrown by the Creative Arists Agency shocked clients and guests alike.
New book explores how 'Tinkerers' made America great
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Dad in the garage with his tool box. America is a country known for it's tinkerers, people with a passion for fixing, improving and inventing useful objects.
But today's high-tech gadgets may be harder to crack. We'll speak with Alec Foege, he's written a new book called "The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers and Inventors Who Make America Great."
The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers and Inventors Who Make America Great by
Farmers and advocates want guest worker reform
The immigration reform plan being proposed later today calls for legislation to help the agricultural industry find more workers. Last summer, farmers in California said the labor shortage was so bad they had to let fruit fall to the ground.
They say one reason is that the nation's current guest worker program makes it hard to bring in foreign workers. Adrian Florido from the Fronteras Desk reports.
As talk of immigration reform heats up, overhauling the nation’s guest worker program as part of an immigration reform package has become a top priority for the nation’s farm lobby. They say making it easier to bring in foreign labor is more important than ever as domestic farm labor has become scarce in recent years.
Noel Stehly said his organic farm is an example. It’s at the end of a winding country road an hour north of San Diego. It’s 200 acres, but his crops, mostly orange and avocado groves, stretch out in rows across just 110 of those acres.
“I’ve had to cut back on what I plant in my fields. I’ve decided not to harvest some things because I couldn’t get the labor to do it,” he said.
It’s been a common complaint among farmers for the last three to four years: The economy and tougher immigration enforcement have sapped the local workforce dry.
In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem. A federal guest worker program called H-2A allows Stehly, or any farmer in the nation, to bring in as many temporary foreign workers –- say, from Mexico –- as they need.
But Stehly hasn’t even considered it. Instead, he relies on a core team of longtime employees to recruit friends and family for seasonal labor when it’s harvest time. He said the H-2A program is cumbersome and expensive.
“Sure the H-2A program says go ahead and bring farm workers in, but the H-2A program doesn’t work,” said Eric Larson, director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, which represents San Diego farmers.
To participate in H-2A, farmers have to prove to the Labor Department that they tried to hire U.S. workers but couldn’t. They have to transport guest workers from their home country, provide housing and three meals a day. They also have to show their guest workers won’t depress local wages, among other requirements.
All this means lots of money, paperwork and often, attorneys.
“Consequently nobody uses it,” Larson said. “I think we have one farmer in San Diego County that uses the H-2A for about eight workers, where in reality we have 10,000-12,000 farm workers in San Diego County.”
Nationally, farmers recruit about 55,000 H-2A workers each year, mostly in Florida and the Midwest.
But farmers want to make bringing in guest workers easier. What Larson wants is simple: a card that would let Mexican farm workers cross the border when needed, and return home when farmers’ seasonal needs end.
But that proposal is meeting resistance, largely from groups concerned that a liberalized guest worker program could hurt workers.
They point to stories like a farmer in Oceanside, north of San Diego, who wouldn’t give his name so as not to jeopardize his chances of getting hired to pick tomatoes next summer.
He’s picked fruit in San Diego since he arrived illegally in the 70s. He became a citizen when Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty, and for years he’s picked on a large tomato farm that has used temporary H-2A workers.
He said working alongside guest workers has increased pressure to pick fruit quickly. The contracted guest workers are young and expected to work fast, for long hours, and he said that puts pressure on older, local workers like him.
“The bosses tell us, ‘move it, move it!’” he said. “We have to keep up with the contract workers.”
But he said it’s impossible for older workers like him to keep up, and he worries that because of that, his working days on that farm may be numbered.
Cynthia Rice is an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, which provides legal aid to farm workers. She said that worker’s story highlights the threat H-2A poses to both guest workers and U.S. farm workers.
“The H-2A program still creates a second class of workers,” Rice said.
Under H-2A, guest workers are bound to the employer that recruited them, and aren’t allowed to seek work elsewhere if they’re mistreated, overworked or underpaid. They’re legally protected against abuse, but in practice, Rice said, most workers have little recourse in such cases except to endure or go home.
“The H-2A worker can’t really vote with his feet,” she said.
She said that captive work force makes it easy for an employer to impose grueling production demands on guest workers, who have no choice but to meet them. That’s also bad for older, slower workers like the one from Oceanside, who fear being replaced for not keeping up.
Concerns of abuse and displacement of local workers are driving some advocacy groups across the country to oppose any kind of guest-worker program. They say that contrary to farmers’ claims, labor is available, and their focus is on legalizing the millions of undocumented people already in the U.S. so they can fill these jobs, and possibly demand higher wages.
But industry and farmers say they have to remain competitive, and say their ability to bring in efficient guest workers is key to that.
A reformed and expanded guest worker program is widely expected, which is why some advocates are pushing for more worker protections.
Noel Stehly, the citrus and avocado farmer, says what’s clear to him is that he needs the work, and the proof’s in his farm operating below capacity.
“How come that’s so tough? Because our politics doesn’t want to do it,” he said one recent afternoon.
Now, for the first time in a long time, it looks like politicians are serious about tackling the issue.
OC reporter offers peek into the world of immigration detainees
Throughout the country, about 32,000 immigrant detainees are living behind bars, with no legal right to a visit from family or friends. Most of them have no legal representation at all.
1,000 of these detainees are jailed in a detention facility in Orange County, which has been named one of the ten worst facilities in the nation by one advocacy group. We'll speak with reporter Rex Dalton, who's been writing about this facility for the site Voice of Orange County.
Is the political climate right for immigration reform?
The last time Congress tried to pass comprehensive immigration reform was in 2007, and that was, well, a failure. Many of the measures proposed that time around are resurfacing, now, in a new plan, but under a much different political environment.
Joining us to look at the lessons of past efforts to reform immigration policy and what that could mean this time around, is Lisa Garcia-Bedolla, professor of political science at UC Berkeley who specializes inimmigrant issues.
Jane Austen's classic novel 'Pride and Prejudice' turns 200
Jane Austen's classic novel "Pride and Prejudice" turns 200 today, and people around the world are donning their bonnets and lacing up their bodices to celebrate.
The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England is hosting a 24-hour read-a-thon, and the BBC recently recreated the lavish Netherfield Ball scene for a TV special that will air later this year. In the two centuries since its publication, "Pride and Prejudice" has spawned countless screen adaptations and spinoffs, from Bridget Jones to Bollywood to zombies.
"Elizabeth Bennet is a strong heroine. She was strong for her day and I think she's still strong," said Audrey Bilger, who teaches a seminar on Jane Austen at Claremont McKenna College. "Many of the key scenes in the novel are about Elizabeth defying people…We root for that kind of strength in a character, particularly in a woman."
Bilger says the 1995 "Pride and Prejudice" mini series starring Colin Firth as the haughty Mr. Darcy, pushed the story into the chick lit realm by turning the sex symbol focus from the Elizabeth Bennet character to Darcy.
"The Colin Firth Darcy did more to spin Austen off into the chick lit universe than anything else... Before Colin Firth, we had lots of men who read 'Pride and Prejudice' and fell in love with Elizabeth," said Bilger. "After Colin Firth you start to see him as the sex symbol and it gets identifying with swooning women and this whole genre of chick lit."
Bilger also says Austen's novel is still relevant today because it spotlights female strength, intelligence and comedy, much like well-known female comedians of today, like Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig.
"Elizabeth Bennet is herself a humorist...This is a sort of thing women comedians do today, they take on situation that could be painful and even sometimes discriminatory and they make comedy out of them," said Bilger. "Jane Austen was really the first to do this in that sort of sitcom setting."
Austen was also very modern for her time, when it came to depicting married couples in her novels, including in 'Pride and Prejudice.'
"She's very much about couples that like each other and respect each other and there's a kind of equality in these relationships even though in the society at large men still have so much more power than women," said Bilger.
RELATED: Read Bilger's article on Pride and Prejudice for Ms. Magazine and in the LA Review of Books
Illustration by Jen Sorensen.
Children's book authors celebrate Newbery and Caldecott medals
The Newbery and Caldecott medal winners were announced today. They're the equivalent of Pulitzer prizes for children's books.