The high turnout of Latino voters this election cycle may renew interest in immigration reform on Capitol Hill. Plus, San Diego elects a Democrat for mayor for the first time in two decades, NPR's Ari Shapiro joins the show to talk about his year covering the GOP presidential campaign, does the failure of Prop 37 and a soda tax in El Monte signal a shift away from the healthy food movement? and much more.
The impact of high Latino voter turnout at the polls
Immigration reform has been on Congress' back burner for months and it barely came up during the Presidential campaign. However, heavy Latino voter turnout may renew interest on Capitol Hill.
For more we're joined by Maria Echaveste the former deputy chief of staff to Bill Clinton who now teaches law at UC Berkeley.
San Diego elects a Democrat for mayor for the first time in 20 years
San Diego has elected its first Democratic mayor in two decades, signaling yet another sign of changing demographics. Congressman Bob Filner defeated Republican City Councilman Carl Demaio by just three percentage points.
Joining us to talk about the shift in one of California's few Republican bastions is Liam Dillon, reporter for the Voice of San Diego.
NPR's Ari Shapiro reflects on a year of covering Mitt Romney's campaign
In recent months, you've heard a lot of stories on our air about Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Many of them were told by NPR White House Correspondent Ari Shapiro, who covered the GOP candidate for more than a year.
He'll be talking about his experiences on the campaign trail at an event Monday night at University of California Riverside, but he agreed to give us a sneak peak this morning.
Plus, we'll talk to him about his not-so-hidden talent, singing:
Interview Highlights:
Romney has described the campaign team as getting along well, was it really the well-oiled machine he made it out to be?
“There was far less inner turmoil than there has been with other campaigns… we had drinks to catch up the night after the election and someone was telling me that they did the same thing after the McCain campaign in 2008 but the McCain staff were all too angry at each other and nobody showed up. Here everybody from the Romney campaign showed up, almost, and there really was much less in fighting and finger point than in other campaigns, but that’s not to say that there was none, there certainly was some finger pointing, some blame, some people feeling like the admittedly flawed candidate was not helped by a campaign staff that in some ways failed to address those flaws and didn’t necessarily serve them as well as they could have.”
What were some of your favorite moments on the campaign trail?
"There is this weird sort of delirium inside the bubble that sets in especially in the last few weeks of the campaign where you might be in 5 states everyday. The way you drop into these states is the campaign plane will pull up to a huge plane hanger that has been set up for a rally, you get off the plane and into the hangar, thousands of people are cheering, Romney gives a twenty minute speech, you get back on the plane and then you are in another state… in one day you might be in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire Ohio and Wisconsin, and that’s not an exaggeration. By the end of these 18 hour days you can get a little ridiculous and slap happy, there was one moment when we were doing Romney Mad libs on the plane, and you get to know the candidate and the nuances of the campaign very well, at some point somebody suggested that the press core should do a drinking game, where every rally begins and ends with the Kid Rock song “Born Free” played again and again, so they were suggesting that we should do a drinking game where each person should have to say the next word in the lyrics to “Born Free” and if you miss a word than you have to take a drink.”
Did you get a sense of what he was like off of the camera?
“The crazy thing about him as a candidate that I think was his most fatal flaw is that when the cameras were not on him is that he was a funny, personable genuine likeable guy, and the minute the cameras turned on, that disappeared and was replaced by this sort of robotic guy that we all saw looking awkward all over the country. And one of his campaign aids joked to us that he was going to tell Romney that he was coming to the back of the plane for an off the record chat with reporters and tell all of the reporters that it was on the record because that was the only way that we were going to be able to catch this elusive authentic, genuinely likeable guy…he is a likeable guy in an old fashion beaver cleaver kind of way… he was a child of the fifties who happened to be born a decade or two later than that. In person he was very genial but it just didn’t come across the camera.”
In your free time you have done some singing with the band Pink Martini, is there any more of that in your future?
“I’m happy to say that a couple of days after my talk at UC Riverside I am going back to Portland Oregon where Pink Martini is from and I am going to record a couple of tracks for their next album…the songs that I am singing are in Hindi and Spanish.”
What does Measure B mean for porn industry in Los Angeles?
Voters in Los Angeles County approved Measure B, which requires adult film productions to obtain health permits before shooting and the use of condoms in sex scenes. The measure passed with 56 percent of the vote.
Supporters say it will protect performers from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, but porn industry producers say the precautions they already take are working and, they warn, the measure will cause economic hardship.
Steven Hirsch is the founder and co-CEO of Vivid entertainment, one of the largest adult film companies in the world. He stopped by the studio to tell us what Measure B means for porn production in L.A.
Interview Highlights:
What about this law presents problems for the adult film industry?
“If you go into the actual law and look at it, we will now be treated as if we are in a hospital, like nurses in a hospital. Any time there are bodily fluids being passed there are certain things that need to take place like goggles, gloves, etc. There needs to be a nurse on set; there are so many requirements that are a part of this law that there is absolutely no way, after this measure is implemented, that any adult company will be able to produce movies in the county of Los Angeles.”
How will this affect your bottom line?
“It will increase our cost of production if we have to move outside of the state that costs money. If we move outside of the state like to Nevada, then we will hire people who live there and people who live in California unfortunately will lose their jobs.”
If you need to relocate, what options are you looking at?
“One thing we will not do is anything that is illegal, we will shoot outside the county, if we shoot just right outside the county that is still outside the county, so we wont do anything that is illegal and we will look to shoot in places that we are more welcome and able to produce movies that people want to watch…people have talked about Las Vegas, we have had some preliminary conversations there about that happening, there are other people that have produced in Florida, and other places around the country. Let me make it clear though that all things being equal we would much rather stay here. This is where we are headquartered and most of our performers live here, but if that’s not possible we will pick up and move.”
How many different jobs will this affect?
“I think we are talking primarily about the production arm. We shoot about 60 movies a year and depending on the budget there are between 10 and 30 people on the set so certainly it will have a wide ranging impact”
Have you considered any way of making the use of condoms more exciting to the audience?
“We do think that all of our performers on set are safe and very safe. The testing that has been in place for the last 8 years has worked and worked well. There has been over three hundred thousand adult scenes shot in the past 8 years and there has been zero transmission of HIV. So I think that what we have done has protected the performers. The performers don’t want condoms mandated, neither do the producers and neither do the viewers. So to be forced to do something, to be forced to produce a product that people don’t want to see is not going to happen.”
With more free pornography available online and now the measure, how is the industry faring?
“Our industry has been hit by the perfect storm, declining DVD sales, struggling economy, and free adult content online. You add this on top of everything and certainly it makes it difficult. But pornography has been around since the time of the cavemen so I don’t think we’re going anywhere, and we will figure this out and we will move forward.”
What's behind the self-funded Congressional candidate phenomenon
In Connecticut, Republican wrestling magnate Linda McMahon lost her second try for the U.S. Senate after spending more than $40 million of her own money. She spent nearly $50 million on another losing Senate run two years ago.
In Pennsylvania, GOP Senate challenger Tom Smith dropped more than $16 million in personal cash, but lost to Bob Casey. In a House race in Colorado, Joe Coors, of the famous beer family, lost after spending $3 million of his own money.
Why do these, and so many other rich folks, pour vast amounts of their fortunes into their own political campaigns? Arizona State University political scientist Jennifer Steen has been studying this phenomenon and details her finding in the book "Self-Financed Candidates in Congressional Elections."
OC teacher wins Santa Ana City Council seat with $200 campaign budget
People like Molly Munger spent tens of millions of dollars on their campaigns, but money doesn’t always have to drive politics.
In a local race in Santa Ana, a city council seat wasn’t won by someone with tons of campaign cash and publicity, but just $200 and a handful of signs.
Elementary school teacher Angelica Amezcua took the lead in a six-way race, and she explains how her shoe-string campaign ended up on top.
Mark Bittman explains why California's GMO labeling proposition failed
If Prop 37 would have passed, it would have forced food producers to label products containing genetically modified organisms. It lost at the ballot box by 6 percentage points. A tax on sugary drinks in El Monte also failed to gain enough support to pass. What do these defeats mean for the healthy-food movement?
New York Times food writer Mark Bittman was an outspoken advocate for prop 37, he explains why he thinks the measure failed.
Interview Highlights:
Why do you think prop 37 failed?
"I think that there was a little bit of perhaps disorganization among the coalition that was supporting California Right To know. But mostly I was thinking that the propaganda and, quite frankly, the lies that were spread by the No vote people and the fact that they could get their message out so well because they were spending so much money was largely responsible for the failure of the measure. If the money that was spent had been roughly equal it would have passed, but none of the big food producers, producers of hyper-processed foods are going to let that happen without a fight. Whatever the arguments against this was I think its a good and legitimate first attempt to really let consumers know how their food is produced”
When big food corporations have so much money to prevent measures like these from happening, do you think there ever will be chance for them to pass?
“The problem is there is not natural wealthy constituency for pro-labeling. It’s people. It’s consumers. And consumers don’t have a billion-dollar organization that can say, "OK we are going spend $40 million to get this passed in California cause if we do, as California goes, so goes the country. So what Michael Pollan said in the Times a month ago is that beverage companies, when fighting the soda tax, and hyper-processed food companies, when fighting the labeling, are playing a game of whack-a-mole. Every time something like this comes up they will do their best to knock it down. So maybe if there are 10 or 15 or 30 of these kinds of initiatives on ballots in different cities in a given year then maybe it could just kind of overwhelm the resources of these big food companies.”
For the Yes-vote campaign on prop 37, do you think they made a mistake in using the method of scaring people about what might be in their food?
“I don’t know that I think it is a mistake in general to scare people about what’s in their food but I think there is very little evidence that eating foods that contain GMOs is dangerous, it doesn’t mean that its not I just don’t think that its something you can categorically say at this point. I do think that GMOs are overrated and I think that they have done more damage to the environmental landscape than they have helped it. Having said all of that I think it was a mistake to sink to the level that the yes vote had sunk to saying ‘GMOs are going to kill you GMOs are bad for you,’ because the science isn’t there and you want to be right, and if the right is on your side you might as well tell the truth and not exaggerate. GMOs themselves, it’s not clear that they are evil. Being not so great or not as good as promised or being somewhat damaging or problematic is not the same as being evil or carcinogenic.”
The soda tax in El Monte failed, what does this say about how the public feels about the government telling them what they can and can’t eat?
“In El Monte the soda tax got 23 percent of the vote, in Richmond it got 33 percent, the fact that 33 percent of these average California cities have voted in favor of taxing themselves in order to try to protect their children to reduce their consumption of beverages that most people are beginning to see as harmful, I’m not sure that’s a failure. Because something is going to happen to limit soda consumption and something is going to happen to allow people to be more aware of what they are eating. Ten or 20 years after that happens we are going to say, "Oh we fought that change but now we are living with it and indeed life is better.'”
LA cartoonist depicts imaginary world of Barack Obama
Comic strip artist Steven Weissman is back to work. That's because the main character in his most recent book of comic strips is sticking around for four more years.
That character – and the surreal, darkly humorous strip – have the same name: "Barack Hussein Obama."
The strip began with an oddball comment by Weissman’s 8-year old son as he and his dad watched an old Charlie Brown TV special.
"'Charlie Brown is a Jew.' And I was like, 'That’s a peculiar thing to say!'" remembers Weissman.
"Charlie Brown’s a Jew? We were like, 'What are you talking about?!' I'm the most Jewish person in the house. Maybe he just perceives me as moping around all the time like Charlie Brown," says Weissman.
"In the end, I was like, 'This would be a lot funnier if Barack Hussein Obama said it.'"
And so he does at an imagined news conference that baffles at an imagined White House press corps - and begins Weissman's four-panel comic strip plunge into a White House netherworld.
The confusion deepens when the president meows like a cat. "I'm trying to trick my dog into coming over!" he tells reporters.
In the strips that appeared online after Obama took office, Weissman's characters have the smarts and sass of “Peanuts.” But he transforms each into something darker.
Hillary Clinton: "She just expanded and suddenly all of these veins and arteries started popping under skin, her eyes would pop and her teeth got sharp."
Vice President Joe Biden: "You know, he loses his head and it grows back much smaller. That worked from my idea of him as kind of a diminished person."
And Barack Hussein Obama? Weissman turns him into a bird and sticks him in a tree: "He gets frustrated, he gets lost and turning into a bird ends up being a way of portraying someone trying to kind of free themselves of a situation they are in."
This president also communes with dead presidents and orders Joe Biden to make him blueberry French toast and tuck him in at bedtime.
Weird … and childish, right?
But Weissman’s previous work revolved around children in a "Peanuts" meets 1950s monster movie comic called "Tykes." It centered on Pull-Apart Boy - a kid stitched from body parts - and his wisecracking, bloodsucking sidekick Lil' Bloody. That strip helped set up his "Barack Hussein Obama."
"With this strip, I wanted it to be about real people and have it happening right now," says Weissman.
"Have it be about grownups rather than the children I was working with before. And if I just pay attention to what’s happening right now, it'll be sort of a document of this period of time."
This isn't some kind of polemic for or against the president and his policies. As with any caricature, Weissman takes strands of the real persona and distorts them. His President Obama can come off as a cool, but jerky high school kid who’d rather peep over his sunglasses than answer a question.
He’s a grown-up kid in over his head that gets under the skin of Secretary Clinton in a scene borrowed from "Peanuts."
"Don't talk to me I’m not talking to anyone today!" barks Clinton as Obama saunters into her office.
"And Obama's like, 'I can talk if I wanna talk!' and that's the relationship between Lucy and Linus," says Weissman, referring to the comic strip "Peanuts."
"It didn't start out being that way for them but she is kind of a Lucy!"
Weissman focuses on Obama, Biden and Clinton with cameos by the First Family, the British Prime Minister and a few others.
Notably absent: Republicans.
"I did think about trying to bring them in, but we're in such a partisan America, they don't deal with each other anyway," he says. "And I think it would bring it out of where I like it. I like writing about groups of people working with a level of intimacy. Then you can start making it interesting.”
Joe Biden’s head grows back. And the president eventually returns to human form – although he remains perched in a tree.
"I'm not up this tree," he tells a furious Michele Obama. "I am this tree."
Steven Weissman promised "Barack Hussein Obama" would return as a weekly comic strip only if the American people re-elected the main character.
They did – and so it’s back to the drawing board for Weissman.
Remakes Market festival mines foreign films for US adaptation
In recent years, the movie industry has largely relied on sequels and franchises to drive movie goers to the box office. Now, Variety reports that the remakes market is branching out internationally and attracting a growing number of documentary story lines.
One L.A. company is hosting a two-day remakes festival to try to pair U.S. production companies with promising projects from overseas. We'll talk to Patrick Jucaud-Zuchowicki, president of Basic Lead, about the festival and how the remakes industry is evolving.