Today on the show, Patt Morrison interviews outgoing LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about the ups, downs and legacy of his mayorship. Plus, Sumo oranges make a big splash in California, the LA Times brings back its Homicide Report blog and much more.
Whole Foods, Trader Joe's vow not to carry genetically modified salmon
A technological creation that has consumers swimming the other way. This week, several large grocery chains, including Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, agreed not to sell genetically modified salmon.
The salmon has yet to be officially approved by the FDA, but if it is, it will be the first transgenic animal to enter the food supply.
Some international tech workers in Silicon Valley ask, why stay?
Whenever there is talk about immigration and immigration reform, there's usually an understanding that there are two classes of immigrants: Low skilled workers - who might work in the service or agricultural industries, and highly skilled tech workers, many of whom end up at places like Google, Apple and other Silicon Valley institutions.
But many of those immigrants aren't sticking around for very long. Instead, they're taking their skills and going home to places like India, China and Brazil. From the California Report, Aarti Shahani has more.
LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the highs, lows and legacy of his mayorship
A little more than three months remain in L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's final term in office. All this week, we've been examining what his legacy might be as he approaches the end of his eight-year tenure.
RELATED: See all of KPCC's coverage of Villaraigosa's legacy as LA Mayor
KPCC's Patt Morrison sat down with Mayor Villaraigosa to talk about his leadership — and his love — of Los Angeles.
Interview Highlights:
PM: How would do you think you will be graded on your time as mayor:
"I think the way this works is over time people will assess what you've done. It's hard to grade yourself, frankly, I think that's something the people get to do and I think they've done it. They reelected me once, I was voted in the first time. We've had the worst economic crisis since the '30s, so I'll let them make that assessment."
PM: On matters of substance where would you put yourself?
"We're safer than any time since 1952. There's been a 40-percent drop in violent crime since I've been Mayor. We've kept our promise and grown our police department to an all time high of 10,000 police officer.Gang crime is down markedly, and in Watts, an area that's seen it's challenges, there's been about a 48 percent drop in violent crime. I think in the area of education I had the audacity to say the Mayor should be involved in our public schools and in the last seven years we've doubled the number of schools at 800 and above in the academic performance index.
"In the area of the environment, a little-known fact, I signed on to Kyoto in July 2005 when I became Mayor. We're at 28 percent below Kyoto levels (reducing greenhouse gas level) that means that Copenhagen, London, Berlin and Toronto are ahead of L.A. We've created 650 acres of parks in the last seven years, so that you understand, in the 12 years before that we did 350 acres of parks.
We've got the most far reaching effort to clean up a port in the world, 80 percent reduction in diesel emmissions from trucks. In the area of transportation, we're on track to double the number of rail lines in our County as the result of the passage of Measure R which I spearheaded. Downtown and Hollywood are back, in fact back to levels we haven't seen probably since the 1950s."
PM: The mayor in L.A. has a big title, but not the kind of power that mayors have in Chicago and New York. So what about that performance quality in office?
Whoever's the next mayor, I'm going to try to give them as much support as I can. Part of the challenge of leading this city [is that] we're not a city and county both. like New York. We have a very powerful city council […] We don't run the schools the way they do in New York. And our transportation system is a county transportation not so much a city one. So it's herding cats all day long and using the bully pulpit, and not being able to push these things by edict.
I think for our future, we're going to have look at whether we shouldn't be a city and county both.
I think in order for L.A. to work better, the mayor should run the schools. Without question. Look, people defend this notion that we ought to elect school board members; we had a 14 percent turnout for this last school board election, and for the last mayor's race. I mean the fact is, the only person who has the wherewithal, if you will, to really push through these changes is a mayor.
PM: So the mayor needs more power
I really believe that. I think the mayor should run our schools. I think that we should be a city and county both. Measure J passed in the city of L.A. by more than 70 percent. But in the county, by a lower level. And so even though we had overwhelming support for Measure J, which would have accelerated our transportation program from 30 years into 10, we got 66.11 [percent of the vote] and it didn't pass.
[...]
PM: Why, in spite of all this that you've said, the shorthand sense of L.A. [is that] it's a city that's broke, that's broken. The pension system's in the red. The trees are trimmed once every 50 years. Our water system is 100 years old. Why, still, does it not function the way people think it should?
Look, I'll be honest. And I know you work for that paper. But the newspaper of record in this town doesn't cover City Hall the way that you see in most towns.You know, I was with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker. They couldn't believe that the mayor of L.A. is almost never on the front page of this newspaper. Good or bad. The fact is, you hear a lot of talk about how bad things are; there's a lot of great things that are happening in this town, and that's one of the things that contributes to the malaise and the lack of participation. It's an abomination, an absolute abomination that we had a 14 percent turnout for mayor. When I ran, I thought it was a pathetic turnout -- I think it was 36 percent. But 14 is unacceptable.
On pension reform:
You probably don't know and you work for that newspaper of record, that… when we went from 6 percent to 11 percent [employee pension contributions], that's the most far-reaching effort in the nation. There is not another city that went for current employees from 6 percent contribution from employees to 11. We passed the most far-reaching new pension reform -- much further than what the governor did at the state level...
PM: Yet why was that necessary in the first place? There were raises in mid-2005, mid-2006. So...
Yes, I've said I wouldn't have done that if I had known that we were going to go into the worst recession. But let's correct the record here. The biggest reason that pensions are a problem — not just in the city of L.A., not just in California, but in virtually every city, every school district around the country — was that the economy went southward. And because, the truth of the matter is, they're no longer sustainable. Employees have to pay a lot more. I've had the courage to tell our employees that.
When we passed our new retirement system, there's no other city — not New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco — who have done that. Only San Diego and San Jose have tried. And everybody says that they're going to get overturned in the courts because they did it by initiative and not in the way that we did it.
PM: Why are you here right now instead of getting ready for a Senate confirmation hearing on a cabinet post?
[Laughs] You know, can I tell you something? I really want to finish this job. I want you to understand. Your listeners can't look me in the eye the way that you can. I'm so grateful to the people of this town that gave me this job. I never thought in my wildest dreams — When I was growing up in this town, I didn't even know what was in City Hall, much less that I'd ever be the mayor of this great city. I want to finish my job.
Some people think I'm doing a good job; some people don't. But I want to finish it. I want to finish as much of what we started as we can. I want to make the tough decision to balance our budget, particularly now after the sales tax [Measure A] didn't pass. I want to be around for a number of things.
We're focused on working as hard as we can until I'm out of here. And then I'm riding into the sunset, my friend.
'Kinder' mark their escape from Nazi-occupied homelands
This year marks the 75th anniversary of "kinder transport." The program brought Jewish children out of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland before the Nazis tried to wipe out the Jewish populations there. Many of those "kinder," now mostly in their '80s, eventually ended up in California.
For the California Report, Susan Valot caught up with a couple of them at a recent reunion in Irvine.
Researchers use mobile tech to better understand heart disease
Researchers in California are launching a major study that hopes to gain a lot more information about heart disease, but they won't be conducting clinical trials in a lab. Instead, they'll be using, among other things, your smart phone.
The project, called the Health eHeart Study, will use apps, sensors and other devices to gather data on things like blood pressure, physical activity, diet and sleep habits.
The hope is that they will develop new and more accurate ways to predict heart disease
The LA Times resuscitates its latent Homicide Report blog
When it debuted in 2007, the LA Times' blog The Homicide Report was a breakout hit. Reporter Jill Leovy meticulously wrote about every homicide victim in L.A. County.
The posts weren't long, but she would include personal details normally missed by a police blotter: where the victim was headed, nuggets of information about their family, or maybe it started rain when it happened. These narratives gave people new life beyond just being a name or a "victim," but as a human being.
However, the blog only lasted for a year before Leovy left, and since then readership has dropped off as posts became infrequent. Now the paper is reviving it by looking for a dedicated reporter. Assistant managing editor Megan Garvey explains that it's a difficult job.
"The idea of having to talk to families at one of the worst moments of their lives," she says, "it's difficult to do that."
Sumo: The citrus world's latest contender sprouts in California
If you are trying to stay heart healthy by eating lots of fruits and vegetables, may we recommend the Sumo orange?
It's a large, bumpy fruit with a knob on top. It's not the prettiest citrus on the block, but inside you'll find one of the sweetest oranges you've ever eaten. In recent months, you might have seen it at your local farmers market or at a high-end grocery store.
For more on the Sumo orange and its fascinating backstory, we're joined by David Karp. He writes a weekly farmers market column for the Los Angeles Times, and is a citrus researcher with the University of California at Riverside.
City Hall Pass: City attorney race, mayoral endorsements and more
It's Take Two's ticket to all the latest political news coming out of downtown Los Angeles with KPCC's political team of Frank Stoltze and Alice Walton.
Gabrielle Ludwig, transgender college basketball player, pushes boundaries
California Assembly Bill 1266, proposed by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, would allow transgender students play on sports teams. Opponents of the bill worry that allowing transgender people to play on sports teams will create co-ed locker room situations.
Gabrielle Ludwig isn't waiting for the outcome of that legislation. Instead, the transgender 51-year-old took matters into her own hands.
Ludwig joined the Lady Saints basketball team at Mission College in Santa Clara last fall as a mid-season walk on. She spent most of her life as Robert Ludwig, a towering Desert Storm veteran who was born in Germany and grew up in Wyoming and New York. She has been living as a woman since 2007 and underwent a gender reassignment surgery last summer, but Ludwig says she knew from a very early age that she was meant to be a woman.
"Sometimes you just can't understand what's going on, you feel somewhat different, but you just kind of put it aside," said Ludwig. "I think that I first became aware of it when I found that there were others like me. When the Internet was accessible to me back in 1990, and the more research that I had done on people like myself, made me feel kind of better, knowing that I wasn't alone."
An opportunity at work spurred Ludwig's decision to become a student at Mission College, but her experience as a youth basketball coach and a good relationship with the school's team coach pushed her into trying out for the team.
"The next thing I know I'm on the basketball court trying out with a group of women who were clearly in much better shape than I was," said Ludwig. "I was having a very difficult time keeping up with these women, who, you can see the definition of muscle in their bodies, and they're so quick, I had to say to myself, 'What am I doing here?'"
Ludwig also wanted to address her status as a transgender woman with her teammates, to make sure she'd be a good fit and be welcomed to the team. She remembers speaking during a team meeting.
"I gave them a brief background who I am and I asked them, 'Me being on this team is going to cause some issues, it's going to be negative and it's going to be positive, and I'm just here for the love of the game. Do you guys have any problems with a transsexual woman on your basketball team at the age of 51 and all the things that come with it?'" Said Ludwig. "I remember the team captain, she says, 'Look around, Gabby, you'll fit right in here. Just go hard, give 100 percent.' It was water under the bridge at that point and it was just up to me to get in shape."
Critics of allowing transgender people on sports team argue that it may give an unfair advantage, but Ludwig disagrees.
"The length of time that you have to live as a woman, with all the hormones that have literally changed your body and put your strength at maybe just a little bit above a genetic woman, my age, that is balances out," said Ludwig. "Muscles atrophy, lots of things change. I'm not walking on the court as a man, I'm walking on the court as a woman."
'Heat' examines the effect of heat on humans and the world at large
Writer Bill Streever's new book "Heat: Adventures in the World's Fiery Places," looks at the effect of heat on the human race and on the world at large.
Streever traveled throughout the world to experience the effect of heat in its many forms firsthand. We'll talk to him about the book, and his thoughts on global warming.