An agreement has been reached to extend some OC homeless motel stays, recreational pot and the effort to make legal sales more competitive, "Space Barons" and cosmos colonization.
Some OC homeless could get extended motel stays
Legal pot sales are sluggish. Here’s how the industry hopes to compete with a cheaper black market
The sale of recreational marijuana has been legal in California since the turn of the new year. But almost three months in, legal pot is still struggling to establish itself.
That's because illegal recreational marijuana is so much cheaper to buy on the black market. Two state Assembly members are now proposing a reduction in taxes so legal marijuana businesses can compete.
Assemblyman Rob Bonta is co-author of the bill. He represents the East Bay in Northern California, and he joined Take Two to talk about the proposed legislation.
The price disparity between legal and black market pot
There's a number of taxes that apply to the legal market in California. The excise tax is 15% right now. The cultivation tax is $148 per pound, and sales tax starts at a base of 8.25% and builds up from there based on what local jurisdictions add on. Some counties and cities are adding their own taxes. In total it could be 30-35%, maybe even more.
What other states with legal recreational marijuana have done
Washington state is a really good example. They also implemented a temporary tax reduction to help spur along and incentivize the transition from black and gray market to regulated market, and it really worked. Many more businesses decided to embrace the regulated market. What happened is that the tax revenue generated in Washington more than doubled because instead of a smaller number of businesses moving over to the regulated market and paying higher taxes, many more came over and paid the lower tax level.
Death of homeless family forces OC to examine how families receive aid
Last week, authorities in Garden Grove were alerted to a tragic discovery. A family of four, including two young children, were found dead inside their van.
The family was homeless and had been living in their vehicle. The cause of death is believed to have been accidental carbon monoxide poisoning.
Orange County officials estimate that roughly half of the homeless are part of a family unit. Homeless families are difficult to accurately track, because they often find temporary refuge outside of plain sight.
Take Two’s A Martinez spoke with Elizabeth Andrade, Director of the Family Solutions Collaborative, an Orange County organization that works with homeless families.
“They fear having their children removed from their custody. There’s a large misconception that being homeless is neglect or abuse of a child... only if there was actual abuse or neglect happening would there be a reportable scenario,” said Andrade. More homeless families might seek assistance were it not for this fear.
While it may not be obvious from the outside, homeless families often opt to seek shelter in their vehicles, at least for a portion of the time because it is thought to be the more stable than going in and out of shelters. Andrade days homeless parents are simply “trying to build a sense of normalcy within that situation for their family.”
Andrade finds that many of the homeless families she encounters are working but are underemployed or earning minimum wage. In a financially unstable situation, families are forced to choose between buying food or paying rent. In some cases, it’s an unavoidable but unforeseen expense that’s the catalyst. “I’ve worked with families [whose] child was sick for a week, and that resulted in them losing their job and then spiraling into losing their housing,” said Andrade. “Other families, if they miss an hour or two of work, that really impacts their ability to maintain.”
Services are available for food and housing assistance but there’s no specific place where people can find all of the resources available to them. Instead, people have to reach out to individual shelters or service organizations to seek aid. That’s the missing piece Family Solutions Collaborative and their member organizations are trying to supply. The organization wants “to bring all of the resources that each unique agency offers and create them to be succinct and supportive to the family situation,” Andrade said.
Incidents like the family found in Garden Grove might accelerate efforts to find housing for Orange County’s homeless families, she said. “Part of it is that awareness and have the general public understand that this is a real issue in OC,” Andrade said. “There are children every night who are in their cars. It provides a sense of reality when we’re describing the problem...because it's not visible, it's not common to see families out on the street.”
Andrade believes that ending homelessness for families in Orange County is possible but until comprehensive change is instituted, she said, “we need the churches and the schools to help connect these families to the overarching system of care.”
To hear the full interview with Elizabeth Andrade, click on the media player above.
*Quotes edited for clarity and brevity.
The ups and downs in SpaceX's history and what's next for the company
Elon Musk and his company SpaceX were in the news last week. They won a multimillion-dollar contract with the U.S. Air Force to launch satellites, but that success has been a long time coming.
SpaceX and other privately operated space companies, such as Blue Origin run by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, have had plenty of ups and downs. It's all chronicled in Christian Davenport's new book, The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos, out March 20. Take Two spoke to Davenport about the backstory behind these companies.
What makes companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin different from their predecessors in the space industry?
SpaceX and Blue Origin look at the space industry and ask why we haven't achieved more, Davenport said. they want to see more missions to more remote destinations.
They [SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc.] decided if NASA's not going to be able to do it, maybe we should. I don't think they're blaming NASA. NASA gets its funding from Congress and during the Apollo era it got like 4% of the entire national budget. And since then it got cut and cut and cut. Now these billionaires, who in some cases have the wealth of entire nations, are saying we're going to put our own money into this. We're going to drive harder, we're going to find efficiencies and we're going to take over.
These companies are also less risk adverse than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Davenport said, which is partially due to the fact that NASA has had crashes that cost astronauts their lives.
SpaceX hasn't flown people into space, but that will soon change because they have a contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX may have been successful thus far, Davenport said, but flying a human being is a unique challenge.
How are these companies getting people excited about space?
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, during the Apollo program, the public was excited about space exploration, Davenport said. That enthusiasm dipped, but advances like SpaceX's digitally broadcast launches are bringing it back, he said.
They've adapted their companies for the Internet age, where you've got people on the beaches in Florida to watch these launches, but now you've got all these people tuning in to watch these live broadcasts on the internet.
Advancing space exploration isn't just about adventure for Musk and Bezos, Davenport said. they want to reinvigorate young people's interest in space and pursuing careers like engineering.
Was there ever a point when SpaceX thought it might not be able to continue?
With one of their first rockets, SpaceX had three unsuccessful launches in a row, Davenport said. As the fourth launch approached, the company wasn't sure it would be able to continue if the next launch was unsuccessful.
Elon had invested $100 million of his own money and they were coming up on the fourth flight and said if this doesn't work he was out of money, that was going to be it. They were able to pull it off, the very last flight. They made it; they made it to orbit.
Davenport said SpaceX has plenty of critics. But overall, the success the company has been able to achieve is beyond what most people expected.
How has the competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin impacted the two companies?
The competition is a key part of pushing advancement in space exploration, Davenport said. Back during the Cold War, competition with the Soviet Union pushed the U.S. to achieve accomplishments like getting a man on the moon.
Now competition between companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin is creating a new kind of space race, which is something these companies see as a positive motivator.
Elon told me when I talked to him for the book, he said, 'If I had a button and I could make Blue Origin, that's Jeff Bezos's company. If I could press that button and make them go away I wouldn't.' He knows he needs to be pushed, he needs a rival, he needs competition to make sure his costs are in line and he's continuing to push and push.
What's next from these companies?
Putting people in space is the next step, Davenport said. Different companies have different schedules and goals, but human space travel is the next step and it could happen this year.
The end goal of these companies, which makes them different from NASA, is making space accessible to average people, not just trained astronauts. Blue Origin is planning suborbital trips to the edge of space, which would take space tourists up about 62 miles into the sky.
Blue Origin actually had a job posting the other day for, essentially, a space flight concierge -- someone to do sales and then prep folks. They are already advertising how big their windows are. They'd be the biggest windows that would ever fly into space and you'd see the curvature of the earth and you'd see the thin line of the atmosphere.
Snap disappears from Venice, a community that loved and hated it
Snapchat is a locally grown success story that came out of a small Venice beach house seven years ago. But Snap -- the parent company of the popular messaging app -- has grown so big it's gobbled up real estate all over the neighborhood.
For some of the people who live in the area, the company's success has become a headache, prompting a movement that has seen protesters occasionally pop up near Snap-owned buildings.
But the tides have turned. The company recently announced it's moving half of its employees out of the area by the end of this year and relocating them to its Santa Monica campus.
Snap has struggled lately, recording a $720 million loss in 2017, though it doesn't attribute the move to a financial decision. Last fall it mentioned transition plans to make Santa Monica its new headquarters.
"We love Venice and have been very fortunate to build a business here, but we have simply outgrown it," it said in a statement. (Snap declined an interview for this story.)
There is no love lost among some people in Venice.
"They're basically culture vultures," says Gavin Dogan, owner of the men's store General Admission. "They basically came to Venice to be a part of the Venice culture, but in a sense they partially destroyed a part of it."
Dogan says he saw many of his neighbors pushed out by rising rents, and himself crowded out of his favorite restaurants and bars by hordes of Snap employees.
"You don't need to build a corporate campus in a quiet, beach Bohemian community," he says, "spread out with golf carts running all over the place and security guards trailing employees."
Photographer Robert Lang met many more people like Dogan in the course of his project 11:11, which captured Venice as it changed during Snap's ascent.
He noticed that despite other tech companies nearby, most people targeted Snap for their anger.
"They're the ones taking over the majority of the beach," he says. But others, he says, were better neighbors to Venice. "Google came in and worked with the people and the community."
Other businesses were disappointed to hear Snap would shrink. Extra customers boosted sales, especially since the company worked with some businesses to create a "benefits card" where employees could get free or discounted food.
And Va Lecia Adams Kellum with St. Joseph Center liked how Snap worked with her non-profit to help local poor and homeless people.
"We would always like to take a picture and post and make people aware of Snap's generosity," she says, but the company kept a low profile about its work. "People in the community don't realize how generous they've been."
But with Snap's shrinking footprint in Venice, there is some hemming and hawing about the future of the neighborhood.
"A part of what they've done has potentially, permanently changed things," says business owner Gavin Dogan. "Change was inevitable in Venice. Tech was moving here before Snapchat came here."
It may be unclear whether locals believe that the "old" Venice, pre-Snapchat, can return. But some think that the Bohemian spirit of the area is too strong to be in the shadow of Silicon Beach again.
Why ‘Black Panther's’ 5-weekend box office rule is such a big deal
What do blue aliens and black panthers have in common?
Five consecutive weekends at the top of the box office.
"Black Panther" is still ruling the box office — for the fifth weekend in a row. The last time that happened was "Avatar," back in 2009. Part of the reason is that there haven't been any big releases in February or March to give it much competition. But still, it's pretty big deal, says Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan.
I think this is potentially the most important record that "Black Panther" has broken because staying at the top of the box office for this length of time represents a movie that has mass appeal and an extraordinary quality that is compelling people to see it multiple times.
Keegan also pointed out that a big reason behind the "Avatar" hype was its technological lore. It was heavily marketed as the first time 3D was used in an innovative way, which fueled ticket sales. Meanwhile, "Black Panther" has been marketed as a well-made movie that has quenched a thirst for representation.
Plus:
- One of the big barriers to more inclusive movie sets is the lack of representation in Hollywood unions. One group, Women in Media, is aiming to get more women their guild cards.
- Just weeks after the Academy instituted its new policies for reporting member misconduct, Academy President John Bailey has been accused of sexual harassment.
On The Lot, Take Two's weekly segment about the business of entertainment and Hollywood, airs every Monday.