Plans to expand California's health insurance programs, Measure S "eviction notice" mailer under Sheriff's cease-and-desist, Styled Side: movie merchandise sales
Immigration action looms large for Catholics this Lenten season
Today is Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of a period of introspection and penitence called Lent. But during this particular season of reflection for Catholics, there might be a little bit more to consider, including President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
So how do Catholics make sense of their faith in the current climate this morning?
Take Two put that question to Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu. She's a Roman Catholic and an associate professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University.
Highlights
Today is one of the most important days in the church calendar, and it comes at a difficult time. The political climate impacts undocumented Latinos, and they make up a significant portion of Catholic congregations here in Southern California. How are people coming to terms with this tension today?
Religious rituals make us into communities. They nurture the making of communities. So I think that right now, to be able to come together at this very important time as we begin Lent, it's crucial because it does nurture us with each other. It reminds us that we are not alone. It can be a very fruitful time for us in terms of helping us to sustain our strength and sustain our resolve as we face this very difficult time for us.
Los Angeles is one of the biggest Catholic communities in the country. How much of a difference does it make that so many people are reflecting at the same time?
It makes a wonderful difference in many ways. One is that because we are such a strong Catholic community in Los Angeles, we are able to reach each other and help each other and create networks and train each other for how to help at this time through our churches. That's something that we saw Martin Luther King and his movement do very well during the civil rights movement, and I think we've taken a page out of that here in Los Angeles.
Our archdiocese here and even our neighboring archdioceses are all involved in reaching out through their parishes because we don't want our community to feel alone or feel like they are not prepared. So we need to do that preparation, and we need to create that solidarity.
The ashes that many people have on their foreheads this morning represent grief — grief that sin has divided God and man. Now, politics divide man and man. A Pew survey after the election revealed that 52 percent of Catholics voted for Donald Trump. How do people who claim to believe in the same god come up with such different views on what their role is right now?
I think that this is a lot on us. By 'us' I mean on the church leadership, that we have not formed our communities sufficiently enough. I do feel like I need extra ashes as a professor of theology.
When we have people claim to be Christians while at the same time they are hurting their neighbor and carrying out actions against their neighbor, that is completely incoherent with their faith.
To Catholics who voted for Mr. Trump, this is a time when I would hope that they would realize that they have done great harm to their sisters and brothers. It's a time for repentance; it's a time to get down on our knees and say, "Okay, I made a mistake, I listened to someone's fancy stories, not realizing what's behind this, and what's behind this is something that will hurt a lot of people—
But for a lot of Catholics, Cecilia, there's a lot of things that they might find agreeable: Maybe what happens with abortion rights, maybe what happens economically. There are a lot of things [to which] a Catholic might say "I don't like that, but I do like this."
Right, except Jesus is very clear. He doesn't give us wiggle room. There's one commandment and one commandment only, and if you follow this, everything else takes care of itself. It's "Love God above all and your neighbor as yourself."
The moment we turn away from the love of neighbor, we have completely turned away from God. We can't just pick and choose who our neighbor is. We can't just pick and choose what it is life means. We can't just say 'I am pro-life' but let 11 million people's lives be destroyed.
But is supporting tougher immigration laws not loving your neighbor?
I think that we need to have caring, compassionate immigration laws that will allow us to all live together in a way that allows everyone to flourish.
Like our Pope says, when we create walls, it's always to the detriment. It's never to the good. So, of course, we need to reform our system, and that will lead us to a good place. But creating walls or removing people whose entire lives have been built in this country is absolutely suicidal for a country that depends so heavily on this community.
Click on the blue bar above to listen to the entire interview.
(Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Can California expand health care insurance programs without the ACA?
Since election day, the words "repeal and replace" have become a familiar refrain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCCOnBPLAZM
But almost as soon as it became clear that Donald Trump was heading to the White House, supporters of Obamacare started on plans to protect and expand California's health insurance options.
A lot of different approaches have been considered, all tracked by Dr. Robert K. Ross, President and CEO of The California Endowment. He joined Take Two's A Martinez to talk about the future of health care in California.
The California Endowment — a health care advocacy foundation has, by it's own account, spent upwards of 100 million dollars supporting health care reform in the state.
Interview Highlights
4 ACA provisions that are tough to part with
- Before Obamacare, insurance companies could discriminate openly against people with chronic health conditions. Obamacare did away with that. So, you're no longer penalized for getting sick.
- Bankruptcy: one of the leading causes of Bankruptcy among families was out-of-pocket health care costs. Obamacare fixed that.
- The provision to make sure that young people in the ages of 21-26 could be added to their parents' heath coverage, giving a lot of people comfort around their children as they make the transition to adulthood, and making sure they still had coverage.
- The fact that 22 million Americans now have insurance that didn't have insurance before.
A public opinion conundrum
The polling for Obamacare has always been pretty dismal. But when you ask people about specific provisions of Obamacare– the preexisting conditions, the prevention, the capping out-of-pocket cost– the polling for those individual provisions are terrific. So, they love the provisions, they just hate Obamacare. Now, Republicans are figuring out, this thing isn't so bad.
The whole picture: Covered California vs. Medi-Cal
The other big issue which is going to be, I think center stage is Medicaid. What is going to happen with Medicaid.
In the state of California, we have reduced the rate of uninsured Californians from 25% in 2010 (pre Obamacare) down to 9%. Tremendous improvement. That's what we stand to lose in a scorched earth approach that pulls the rug from under Obamacare without an adequate replacement in place. I think even Republican governors across the country are figuring out, they have constituents that benefited from Obamacare no matter how much they hated it.
Right now in California, along with those 5 million recently insured Californians, 2/3 of them on from the benefit of the Medicaid expansion which is what we call Medi-Cal in California. About 1/3 from the health insurance exchange called Covered California which provided subsidies to working families. And then the other 2/3 got insurance from Medicaid expansion. So, there is a way to torpedo the beneficial affect of Obamacare through the congressional budget action. If they take an axe to Medicaid by block granting to the states or some other ways where you put some kind of per capita imposed reduction on Medicaid spending, you really can do damage to the health coverage expansion by cutting the dollars to Medicaid So, Medicaid is center stage in this big debate and is a big problem for Republican governors.
Challenges on both sides of the aisle
The Republicans have their problem which is deciding among these replacement plans. You have the Ryan plan, the Price plan, the Cassidy plan. So it'll be entertaining watching them thrash around figuring out which plan to get behind.
On the progressive side, those of us that have been in support of Obamacare, we have a political problem as well. In the state of California, if you say, now's the time for a different kind of plan, let's say single payer as an example, it doesn't mean politically, you've raised the white flag of surrender on protecting Obamacare. So, do you get too quickly out in front of the debate that still has to play out in Congress? So that's the tension that we have on our side of the fence. Should we sit and watch and see what happens in Congress? Or, should we move ahead with planning for plan B now?
Without the ACA, can California create it's own health care system?
Theoretically, yes. Pragmatically, where's the money going to come from? That's the problem. Let's go back to Medicaid for example. If we know that California has benefited by virtue of 20 billion dollars from Obamacare. The combination of subsidies and Medicaid expansion. If the Republicans pull the rug out on that, then where does that 20 billion dollars come from? Even if you want to do, let's say, single payer which may have a price tag of 30 billion, now you're down 20 billion from the repeal of Obamacare, and now you've got to find 30 billion dollars in state, general fund revenue or some other revenue source to pay for the implementation of single payer. So in theory, it's wonderful to wax loftily around, now we can do single payer or some other proposal. But now you've got to find another revenue source to pay for it and that becomes probably the next governor's problem. And that'll be a big, big headache.
Quotes edited for clarity.
To hear the full interview, click on the blue Media Player above.
How an Inglewood teacher is creating a safe space for black people to talk
On a recent Saturday morning in Culver City, a young woman recounted her experience as an African-American working in the restaurant industry. She explained she often felt singled-out by mostly white and Latino coworkers.
"I remember when they finally hired someone else that was also black, all my coworkers coming up to me and saying, 'there's another black girl, but don't worry, she's darker than you,'" she told a group of about 20 people sitting on sofas and chairs in a meeting room at SHARE! The Self-Help and Recovery Exchange. "As though we're immediately against each other."
The young woman was not alone in recalling incidents of racism. People come to this meeting twice a month to share and listen to similar stories.
"I see the need for a safe community for African-Americans to get together and talk for real. To emote," Rosalind Henderson explained.
Henderson is a leadership trainer who founded what she calls the African-American Self-Improvement Group. Henderson is also a teacher in Inglewood. She's been an educator in inner city schools for 27 years.
Henderson said high profile cases of police killing unarmed black men motivated her to finally get her self-improvement group underway last year.
She guides each meeting through a series of discussions on a theme. This week they tackled discrimination in the workplace.
"To be in isolation and to deal with the stresses, for example, of continued racism on the job, is a lot for a person to bear," Henderson said. "It's kind of nice to be able to come to a group that says, 'I get you. I'm going through the same thing.'"
One man who works in film production described being the only black person on set and feeling like he had to eat lunch in his car.
Another woman said working in the medical field in Orange County as an African-American gave her the sense she was being stared at like an alien from Mars:
"There's this sense within me that's even stronger now, that I have to work harder, be better, you know, be stronger, be more accurate, be more thorough with every single thing that I do, especially in the workplace."
The group also voiced concerns about the direction of the country under the administration of President Donald Trump, and what the new political landscape could mean for black people.
One worry: "How much [Trump] belittles groups of people," Henderson said. "There's a historical trigger Trump is hitting. I think this pushes us together to come up with strategies to learn how to stand politically, emotionally, economically as groups of people, as African-Americans," Henderson said. "We need each other."
For more information on the group, Henderson can be reached by email at rosalindhenderson1@gmail.com.
Measure S mailers are probably protected free speech, law expert says
You might have gotten a nasty surprise in the mail recently that read, "County of Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. EVICTION NOTICE."
It's not real, though. It's a political mailer.
And Los Angeles County officials were not happy.
"The political mailer depicted in the photos attached to this message is counterfeit and could mislead members of the public to believe they are subject to legal action by the Sheriff’s Department," the Sheriff's department said in a statement.
Sheriffs then sent a cease and desist order to the campaign behind Measure S.
But then the campaign shot back that officials were trying to "censor the free speech rights of the proponents."
Could a misleading mailer like this be protected by the First Amendment?
"It probably is," says Rick Hasen, election law expert at UC-Irvine. "It's really a First Amendment problem to try to limit what people say in campaigns, even if it's false."
Hasen says that, on this matter, courts have said the best answer isn't censorship.
"The proper remedy is to respond and explain why it's false," he says.
But there is a risk in trying tactics like this recent one.
"It doesn't mean it's a smart thing to do. It could backfire politically," says Hasen.
Listen to the full interview by clicking the blue audio player above.
Sports Roundup: UCLA's Lonzo Ball, better than Michael Jordan?
Adidas gives prospective NFL players pretty big incentive to break a record: their own island. And there's been speculation that UCLA’s Lonzo Ball will be better than Michael Jordan when he goes pro. Well, at least his father thinks so.
A Martinez gets the latest with Take Two contributors Andy and Brian Kamenetzky.
UCLA guard Lonzo Ball is one of the best players in college basketball. He's projected to be a top 5 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. He also has two brothers, LiAngelo and LaMelo, who play at Chino Hills High School, and who have both committed to UCLA.
People that follow college basketball know how good the Ball brothers are. Their dad LaVar was always sure his sons would good. In January he appeared on TMZ:
It's great to be a supportive dad, but is boasting a risky strategy?
The NFL draft combine was topic no. 2 today with the Kamenetzky brothers. It's where college football players get evaluated for the draft. Prospective players are weighed, measured and tested on skills that might translate to pro football.
But the one that gets the most attention is the 40-yard dash. And this year Adidas is offering a unique opportunity to anyone who can break the record of 4.24 seconds set in 2008 by Chris Johnson.
So we had our our mini version of this race here at KPCC. Here's Take Two producer Leo Duran:
And Lori Galarreta:
Calls made to Adidas have not been returned.
(click on the blue arrow above to hear the entire segment)
The Styled Side: Beauty and the Beast...and the merch
The live-action version of "Beauty and the Beast" debuts on March 17, and many of the merchandise tie-ins are made for adults, too.
"We’re talking about fashion and beauty collaborations," says Michelle Dalton Tyree of Fashion Trends Daily.
SoCal-based Hot Topic has a limited-edition line that includes a retro Belle bikini in her signature yellow and Beast’s suit jacket in velour with gold embroidered vines and roses.
LA-based nail line Morgan Taylor has a nail polish collection with cheeky names like Potts of Tea, Be our Guest and Gaston And On and On.
Adults are snatching up these items because many of them resonated with the original 1991 animated film as children.
"I love all things fantasy and whimsical," says KPCC producer Lori Galarreta, who owns shoes with a "Beauty and the Beast" print. "I think that all started with 'Beauty and the Beast.' So when I feel that vibe translated into the merch, it's almost an instant buy."
HSN worked with Disney, too, to create some luxury items.
Women's footwear designer Ruthie Davis made a red strappy heel that ties up the front, has leather rosettes and also tiny thorns all down the 4-inch heel.
"I think actually that adults are more excited than children about these shoes," she says. "People get very emotional when it comes to things they love like Minions or a Disney Princess.”
We should mention that those shoes come at a princely sum of $399.
But you still might still need to cast a spell or two if you hope to snag any of these pieces, because they’ll go quickly.