The agency charged with regulating water levies a stiff fine against a water district, why more women are choosing to be childless, Tuesday Reviewsday
Mayor Garcetti takes on affordable housing and the minimum wage
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is more than halfway through his first term, and on his agenda: improving LA’s lack of affordable housing and increasing the minimum wage.
Mayor Garcetti says the city’s working poor can’t make ends meet, and hopes raising the minimum wage will put pressure on other cities to do the same. "The very best workers are going to go where the highest wages are. They are going to save those businesses money with lower turnover, lower training, and harder work. I think it helps everybody not to subsidize poverty. which has been very expensive for all of us."
The LA County Board of Supervisors is set to meet today to decide whether to raise the minimum wage from $9/hr to $15/hr. While some business owners are concerned that a higher minimum wage will make it more difficult to pay employees or sustain operating costs, Garcetti argues that as wages increase more money will be spent at the local businesses. "Raising the minimum wage on its own helps businesses. Folks on the lower end of the economic spectrum aren't going save this money, they are going to spend it. And when you put billions back in the main streets of our neighborhoods that helps those restaurants and stores."
LA is one of the least affordable counties in the country. As a way to help reduce inflated housing costs, Garcetti plans to build 100,000 affordable housing units for Angelenos by the year 2021. He says at this time, the city is a quarter of the way to reaching its goal.
As the city expands its public transit, Garcetti says it should also be expanding its affordable housing. "We really need to build these units or else people are going to be struggling with $3,000 a month rents for single bedroom apartments in certain places."
He says “it is not a question of growth or no growth, it's whether we build for it and add an infrastructure to the city to accommodate it."
Exploring the legend of ‘shorty’ Guzman
Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman Lorera is best known by his street name: ‘El Chapo,’ or, ‘Shorty.’ Over the past two decades, his name has instilled fear in the hearts of his rivals, law enforcement and even his jailers.
Chapo Guzman operates one of the largest drug empires in the world and rakes in billions annually. All that money gives him a lot of influence in Mexico. His payroll includes politicians, law enforcement and military personnel.
Filmmaker Guillermo Galdos attempts to tell the story of Chapo Guzman in his new documentary, “Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty,” airing on PBS. In it, Guzman goes deep into the criminal underworld, interviewing dealers, smugglers, growers, and even the mother of Guzman himself. He tells Take Two what it was like to visit Chapo Guzman’s home state, Sinaloa.
“It was amazing to be up there, because it really shows you where these people come from. You know, they don’t come from Harvard. They don’t come from the London Business School. Most of them hardly [finished] primary school. They grew up in the mountains, and now they run these multi-nationals that have presence in over 50 countries and move billions of dollars.”
Last week, Chapo Guzman escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico. Galdos tells Take Two that he believes the jailers were complicit.
“Why was he on the ground floor? Why was he not moved from floor to floor like all other high security prisoners are? Well, those are questions the Mexican government needs to answer … I doubt they’re going to get El Chapo.”
Galdos’ documentary airs on PBS tonight.
Press the play button above to hear more from documentary producer Guillermo Galdos.
California water district faces $1.5 million fine for taking water during the drought
The State Water Resources Control Board is proposing a first of its kind fine for taking water during a drought.
The culprit is the Bryon-Bethany Irrigation District, located in California’s Central Valley. The district, which serves three counties as well as 12,000 community members is accused of illegally taking water from a pumping plant after getting a warning that there was not enough water.
The proposed $1.5 million fine is not the district's first run in with the state, the district has sued the state in the past over water cuts. Dale Kasler, Reporter for the Sacramento Bee joins us to discuss why this fine is so large.
The search for extraterrestrial life gets a big boost
Physicist Stephen Hawking, along with an impressive stable of scientists, will be teaming up with a Russian billionaire to tackle one of mankind’s most pressing questions: are we alone?
Tycoon Yuri Milner and Hawking made the announcement Monday at a London news conference. Milner has pledged to inject $100 million into the search for intelligent life in our universe.
The initiative, called Breakthrough Listen, will give the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) unprecedented access to special radio telescopes, designed to detect communication signals in space. In the past, telescope use was limited to just one search a year, due to limited resources.
Berkeley scientist and SETI co-founder Dan Werthimer tells Take Two he’s hopeful the new funds will help researchers intercept alien transmissions.
“If we learn the universe it teeming with life, and we get on the galactic internet, and we talk to civilizations a billion years ahead of us, we can learn what’s in our future. People call it the archeology of the future.”
Press the play button above to hear more from Dan Werthimer.
Meghan Daum on being childless by choice in a parent-centric culture
More women than ever are choosing not to have children.
According to the latest population survey from the U.S. Census Bureau, 47.6 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 44 have never had kids— that's the highest number since the bureau started tracking that sort of data in 1976.
What the bureau doesn't track is why women (and men for that matter) are choosing a child-free life.
The are no universal answers, as writer Meghan Daum discovered.
Daum asked a bunch of fellow writers to share their thoughts on the topic for her new book "Selfish, Shallow and Self Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to have Kids."
"It really ran the gamut," Daum says. "Sometimes people were in situations like Michelle [Huneven]'s where they grew up with difficult parents and either didn't want to repeat the pattern, or were just turned off by childhood as an institution in general. Some people wanted to pursue their creative lives in such a way that they didn't feel parenthood was compatible."
But more than getting at the reasons why people decide not to have children, Daum says she wanted to change the conversation.
"What I wanted to do was invite people to sort of talk about what it means to make certain life choices. And then what it means to be in a culture that is, particularly in this moment, really emphasizing parenthood in a way that can be alienating sometimes for people who are not parents."
Author Michelle Huneven, one of the book's contributors, says that when she was younger she faced some pressure from her peers to have kids, but it was "a friendly kind of pressure, like 'You've never felt the kind of love that you'll feel when you first give birth,' or... 'I can't wait for you to have kids so we can do things together.'"
Daum says she's also had friends tell her that she'll never know the love that she'd feel if she had a child, but she doesn't mind.
Her response: "They're absolutely right. I will never know that sort of love. We all make certain choices and decide not to do some things and to do other things. And by definition, the things you don't do, you will not know what that experience is."
Daum says she just hopes parents and non-parents alike can be more honest about their life decisions.
"There's so much intellectual dishonesty on both sides," Daum says. "Just as the mom who says 'I love being a mom every second of the day, I never once have a thought of what my life would be otherwise,' that person is just as intellectually dishonest as the person like Michelle and myself who've chosen not to have kids who say 'Every second we're so happy we don't have kids!'"
"Nobody can ever be totally sure about anything," Daum says. "We just do the best we can."
To hear the full interview with Meghan Daum and Michelle Huneven, click the link above.
New music from Lianne La Havas, Forró in the Dark and Benjamin Clementine
Every week on Tuesday Reviewsday, our regulars bring us a selection of their favorite new music. This week, music journalist Steve Hochman joins Alex Cohen to talk about new sounds from Lianne La Havas, Forró in the Dark and Benjamin Clementine.
Steve Hochman
Artist: Benjamin Clementine
Album: "At Least For Now"
Songs: "Adios," "Nemesis"
Summary: Nina Simone, Edith Piaf -- those are not names to be tossed around lightly. But that's what we're aleady hearing with young London artists Benjamin Clementine, not because e sounds like them, per se, but because his sense of song and performance has the kind of distinctive individuality and emotional connection associated with them. With his debut album, let's add another, one who might seem more of a stretch: Glenn Gould. Yes, Clementine is an accomplished pianist, but it's the eccentricities of his playing, of his sense of time, something Gould was known for, that deepens the impact of his music.
As a singer, he's once conversationally straightforward and poetically dramatic. "Adios" could almost be Sondheim, an inner monologue right through a mid-song digression into a bit of spoken explanation, which gives way to a quasi-operatic passage (Piaf again), before a return for a coda of the song itself. "The decision is mine! Let the lesson be MINE!" he sings, perhaps addressing just himself, with insistent staccato.
There’s a certain feral quality to it, perhaps traceable to his time as a teen busking in Paris after a rough split with his family (Piaf again), but it’s never unapproachable. And then just when you least expect it, as in the middle of "Nemesis," and Iberian waltz with forceful strings behind his piano, he reins it all in and offers a soaring, moving, classic soul chorus.
Whatever comparisons one might make, let’s not toss the name Benjamin Clementine around too lightly either. It’s one to be reckoned with.
Artist: Lianne La Havas
Album: "Blood"
Songs: "What You Don’t Do," "Unstoppable"
Summary: How good is Lianne La Havas? Well, last year Prince did a command performance for her — in her London living room. He then featured her as special guest in his "Saturday Night Live" performance in November, reprising her role on his "Art Official Age" album.
Seeing her recently in a Troubadour showcase previewing the release of her new, second album "Blood," it was easy to see the connection — her music and her presence have a dynamic that shows considerable Princely inspiration. But the concert, and the album, make it clear that she is a force in her own right. For one thing, she’s unguardedly charming, bubbly in her youthful enthusiasm and effusive in her joy of performing. "I played the TROUBADOUR!" she exclaimed, with an impossibly big grin, as she closed that show.
Those same qualities mark this album, her followup to the acclaimed arrival of her 2012 debut, "Is Your Love Big Enough?" But where that had a earthy, folky soul quality, the new one carries at once more sophistication and more confidence in its guilelessness. It’s art, without artifice. A lot of the feel reflects much of it being inspired by a visit to her mother’s native Jamaica, where she immersed herself both in family and the local music scene.
A lot of songs on this album, largely produced by Jamaican star Stephen McGregor, start with acoustic guitar giving an almost bossa nova feel, but from there they go in multiple directions: smooth soul, exuberant funk, story-song balladry, a range as diverse as her heritage (her father is Greek) but always with a strong, modern London accent. The opening song "Unstoppable," produced by Adele collaborator Paul Epworth, sends the message: While we may think of Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill or Erykah Badu with some of her music, she’s got sounds and styles all her own. And "What You Don’t Do" is a sonic and emotional tour-de-force that’s hard to relate to any other artist. That’s the kind of thing that likely impressed Prince the most.
Artist: Forró in the Dark
Album: "Forró Zinho — Forró in the Dark Plays Zorn"
Songs: "Shaolin Bossa," "Sunset Surfer"
Summary: "John Zorn’s Brazilian Beach Party"? That's pretty unlikely, at least without heavy doeses of irony. The New York composer-saxophonist is best known for music that is more often than not difficult, challenging, even prickly, not music that would lend itself to the engaging lilt of North Brazilian forró. Well, that’s just what we get here, as Manhattan’s Forró in the Dark, an ensemble that has merged that folksy music with an art consciousness, gets some quite winning takes of Zorn pieces in performances that at times evoke, of all things, sunny beach days, be it Ipanema ("Shaolin Bossa") or Malibu ("Sunset Surfer").
The group was formed in 2002 by Brazilian ex-pats Mauro Refosco (zabumba, percussion), Guilherme Monteiro (guitar) and Jorge Continentino (pífanos, flutes, saxophones) and has made two sparkling albums of original material. It was Refosco’s idea to explore the Zorn catalog and he reached out to the composer, who not only took the lead role in selecting pieces, but put the album out on his Tzadik Records label.
The result is something that stands out for its engaging charm even in Zorn’s long, varied history of interpretation — both his music interpreted by a wide range of artists and in a wide range of settings, and his own recasting of music of others. Of course, it you didn’t know this was Zorn music, you might not know it was, uh, Zorn music. The performances stand on their own and the source is almost incidental. Knowing that source, though, just makes it better.