Cognitive therapy for the government shutdown; Rep. Mark Takano of Riverside on the status of the shutdown; Foster Farms chickens blamed for salmonella outbreak that sickened 300; Immigration rally to go on at National Mall despite closure; Hard time or inhumane? Solitary confinement in Corcoran prison's SHU (Photos); Study shows vets suffering from PTSD benefit from meditation, plus much more.
Couples' therapy for the government shutdown
The shutdown is now in its second week, and Congress doesn't appear to be any closer to a resolution.
President Obama called House Speaker John Boehner this morning to say he won't negotiate on reopening the government. He also said that there would be no negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, a vote that's expected to come next week.
Speaker Boehner has indicated he will push to raise the debt ceiling but that the House would not pass a budget measure without limits on the Affordable Care Act. So the standoff continues.
Now, if we were talking about a married couple, how would they resolve this? We turn now to Ben Karney, a social psychology professor at UCLA who studies marriage.
Rep. Mark Takano of Riverside on the status of the shutdown
House Speaker John Boehner says he's ready to sit down and talk with the President. But so far, the White House is maintaining its position that it won't negotiate over reopening the government, or raising the debt limit.
Joining us with some insight into what's happening — or not happening on — Capitol Hill, Congressman Mark Takano, a freshman Democrat from Riverside.
Immigration rally to go on at National Mall despite closure
The National Mall in Washington, DC is closed thanks to the government shutdown, but for proponents of immigration reform, the show will go on.
The Camino Americano Rally just got underway a few minutes ago, having been OK'd by the National Park Service. This follows weekend marches in different cities across the nation, including Hollywood where some 2,000 demonstrators called on Congress to do something to act on reform.
KPCC's Kitty Felde joins the show from the National Mall in DC.
Did the $100 bill really need a redesign?
Government shutdown or not, we're getting a brand new, state-of-the-art $100 bill starting today. It takes a lot of work, research, and art to produce a bill that spends most of its time overseas. So why is now the right time to redesign the $100? And why is it one of the most widely-circulated bills?
RELATED: A new $100 bill rolls out on Tuesday. Take a look at its new features
Ben Mazzotta, a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Business in the Global Context at Tufts University and co-author of a recent study on the cost of cash, explains.
Interview Highlights
Why redesign the $100 bill? What's wrong with it?
"There's really two reasons for that. The first obviously is to deter counterfeiting.You don't want whoever is trying to counterfeit money to get too good at it. You change the target for them and the second is to make currency easier to use for the visually impaired."
Is this redesign going to make the $100 more difficult to counterfeit?
"Absolutely. There are a number of features in here that are going to require a little bit more than a desktop printer and a stack of paper to counterfeit. There's no way to make a perfectly counterfeit-proof bill, but we can certainly raise the cost to buy and there's special presses, special paper and now there's new nano materials that will make it that much harder for anybody but the most determined criminals to have a good shot at faking it."
What do the new bills look like?
"They are not just green. There will be a little bit of a pinkish tint to it in places. There'll also be some large copper/gold-colored numbers in the corner, and there will be a couple of new obtrusive new things in the center of the bill that will look funny. If you look back 10 years, the pre-1996 bills had a portrait in the center. The portraits off center now and right in the middle of the bill, you can see this 3-D security ribbon and a bell in the ink well. Those are the two sort of headline, fancy new features on the current series."
How are the new bills designed to help the visually impaired?
"There are larger numbers in other countries, they actually vary the size of the notes. If you remember the movie 'Ray,' Jamie Foxx asked to be paid in $1 bills so he'd be sure exactly how much money he had gotten. You can imagine if the $20 was larger than the $10 and the $10 was larger than the $5. It would be a lot easier for the visually impaired to know how much money they were being handed. If you have some vision and the numbers are larger and the contrasts between the colors is higher, it's easier to tell what the denominations in currency front of you are."
How have the material the bills changed?
"The U.S. doesn't use the sort of most space-aged material in the world for its currency, but it still uses a secure paper that's made by a full supplier in the U.S. It's a very difficult stack of paper to get your hands on and it's actually one of the best safeguards, historically speaking against high quality counterfeit."
What is it made out of?
"It's made of a low-starch paper that's partly made out of cotton. It doesn't have certain material in it so for instance if you've ever seen in a grocery store or fast food restaurant, someone takes a pen and put a mark on a large denomination bill, it doesn't respond the same way. The chemical reaction doesn't happen the same way so the white pen stays white instead of blue."
How often do we redesign the $100 bill?
"The design currently seems to last about eight years, but the change in technology has gotten so much faster. If you remember, the idea that you have a laser color printer in your home in the early 1990s was extravagant. Now it's really something that a lot of middle-class families could have if they wanted to. Some of the things that used to keep the Secret Service up at night were the idea that people could get stacks of paper and Adobe Photoshop and a good inkjet printer and be able to try to knockoff bills from the comfort and privacy of their own garage. That's really no longer possible."
The new bill has a PR firm. Why would it need a PR firm?
"Well you can imagine that people might be reluctant to accept things that didn't look just like money to them. With $100 bills, it's important that the public know that the change is coming and they also need to know what to expect from the real bills. People have to understand how to train their cashiers to use the security features to help us validate that the currency is real. If anything that looks reasonably like the new $100 bill, it has an inkwell, but the bell doesn't move in the right way... all those security features don't do anyone any good unless the cashiers know what they're looking for. So really, the PR firm is help the private sector train employees to tell the difference between the real deal and fake new $100.
Check out the bill's new features:
Tuesday Reviewsday: Jonathan Wilson, Vienna Teng, Jon Batiste & Stay Human
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday our weekly new music segment. Joining the show is music critic Steve Hochman.
Artist: Jonathan Wilson
Album: Fanfare
Release Date: Oct. 15
Songs: “Future Vision,” “Dear Friend”
Take a look at the album cover. God’s hand reaching to Adam’s, though further apart than on the Sistine Chapel. Arrogant? Might appear so. But it also bespeaks of a sense of glory. And the music on “Fanfare” is, often, glorious.
Wilson has had a lot handed down from the rock firmament, having been mentored by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, David Crosby, all of whom are on this album. There are moments when the influences are clear — Crosby, Stills and Nash, Browne, some John Lennon and, more than you might expect, Pink Floyd. But in each case those touchstones are launching pads for some vibrant flights of musical fancy. These aren’t songs so much as mini-pop-symphonies.
Wilson originally came to L.A. from North Carolina, lured by the old Laurel Canyon scene, only to find it didn’t exist. So he started a new one, hosting jam sessions that brought the old masters and new acolytes together. Relocated to Echo Park a few years ago, he’s continued as a catalyst figure, producing and collaborating with a span of musicians and expanding his own circles, having played a lot with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir of late, as well as producing English eccentric Roy Harper — the voice of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar,” and the Roy of Led Zeppelin’s “Hat’s Off to Roy.”
His 2011 album “Gentle Spirit” seemed more vibe-driven than anything else, but won him slobbering praise in England and elsewhere. “Fanfare” justifies that, the vibe having blossomed into the masterful, colorful, soaring journeys, the songs “Dear Friend” and “Future Vision” taking off in multiple directions at once — hints of Lennon and “Dark Side of the Moon” and Graham Nash all mashed up together in a melange that ultimately is all Wilson’s.
“Cecil Taylor,” referencing the avant garde jazzman in lyrics if not music, is very much in the Crosby/Nash mode. The opening title song starts with a lush, Beatle-y instrumental prelude, circa “Abbey Road,” serving as an overture. “Love to Love” is relatively straightforward country-rock, but even that elaborates on and personalizes the template with Wilson’s brand of, well, glory.
Artist: Vienna Teng
Album: Aims
Release Date: Sept. 24
Songs: “Close to Home,” “Level Up”
Don’t you just hate people who can do anything, or everything? Well, then you’ll really loathe Vienna Teng. She was a software engineer for Cisco Systems when she started her recording career in 2002. And after four rather bracing albums, she quit in 2010 to go to the University of Michigan for a masters degree in sustainability. With that done, she’s back with an album that, believe it or not, brings that all together in another bit of pop glory.
Her real name is Cynthia Yih Shih, Taiwanese-American, born in Saratoga, CA, but has remained in the Detroit area after getting the degree. The Aims album cover is a map of Detroit plotting populations shifts there from 2000 to 2010, looking at the implications in terms of socio-politics, economic and environmental impact and both the collapse and tenacity of the city’s core character and structure.
Takes on various issues — “In the 99” is about disparity, the layered vocals of “The Hymn of Acxion” looks at digital surveillance and privacy and “Close to Home,” which overlaps musically with Radiohead, is about Body Image Integrity Disorder.
If that doesn’t sound like the basis for great music, somehow she manages to make it happen anyway. The trick is that this is all done in ways poetic, not pedantic. And she has a gift for melody and musical construction, reaching toward the ambitions of Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Radiohead and such, never losing sight of the power of a good hook and a lush tone.
Artist: Jon Batiste & Stay Human
Album: Social Music
Release Date: Oct. 15
Songs: “Let God Lead,” “San Spirito”
JONATHAN BATISTE and the STAY HUMAN BAND | "LET GOD LEAD" from EDEN, UTAH from 31 Squirrel on Vimeo.
In recent months we’ve talked about younger generations of New Orleans musical royal families, with Ivan Neville and Troy Andrews. Here’s another: pianist Jon Batiste, who took his multi-generational legacy to Juilliard in New York and has become a very creative force, moving the traditions in several directions.
Maybe you’ve seen YouTube videos of Batiste and his band Stay Human hitting the streets and subways of Manhattan after gigs, the leader playing melodica (since a piano is hard to parade) and captivating pedestrians and transit riders. And perhaps you’ve seen him as a regularly featured musician in “Treme.” He’s played with Wynton Marsalis, Lenny Kravitz, Lauryn Hill, even Prince. And he’s just 25.
This album is a breakthrough, though.
Can entice with jazz-soul with vocals or dazzle with a reinterpretation of “The Maple Leaf Rag,” “St. James Infirmary” — or “The Star Spangled Banner,” a bonus track to this fine set. With “Naima’s Love Song,” a ‘90s piece by pianist John Hicks, he uses the melodica to give a Stevie Wonder feel. And on “Let God Lead” he marshals his New Orleans street sense for a little gospel, anchored by Ibanda Ruhumbika’s pumping tuba.
The title of the album is “Social Music,” which would seem to be a commentary on and reaction to so much modern jazz being viewed as art music and intellectual music. So this, along with his the band’s Stay Human name and the excursions outside the clubs to play for the people are all about it being social. Hey, as we said, he is from New Orleans where that is what it’s all about.
Foster Farms chickens blamed for salmonella outbreak
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foster Farms raw chicken products made at three California sites since March may have sickened nearly 300 people in 18 states.
The USDA has not directly linked the outbreak of illnesses to a specific product or production period. The USDA mark on suspect packages would read: P6137, P6137A and P7632.
The timing is unfortunate, as many of the federal workers who track food-borne illnesses are currently furloughed because of the government shutdown.
Wired's Maryn McKenna joins the show with more.
Hard time or inhumane? Corcoran prison's SHU - Security Housing Units (Photos)
This summer, thousands of prisoners in California went on a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement in what's known as Security Housing Units, or the SHU.
Inmates say the isolated conditions in the SHU are intolerable, and the strike — in part — prompted the legislature to hold hearings tomorrow to look at solitary confinement. But prison officials say the harsh punishment is necessary to deal with the worst of the worst.
KPCC's Rina Palta recently visited the SHU at Corcoran State Prison in the Central Valley, and brings us the debate going on inside the prison walls.
Research shows vets suffering from PTSD benefit from meditation
For military veterans struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, medication and counseling can be a first line of defense, if they can get an appointment at the V.A., that is.
But now research by the VA and others is showing that relief for PTSD symptoms like depression, anxiety and anger can be found in the ancient practice of meditation. Simply slowing down the mind and carefully breathing can help, and that's exactly the goal of a program sponsored by the San Francisco Zen Center. It's called Honoring the Path of the Warrior.
The California Report's Scott Schafer has the story.
How the debt ceiling showdown could worsen the 'Great Gatsby Curve'
Income inequality has been rising steadily for decades, and the weak recovery is causing the gap between rich and poor to widen even more. White House economist Alan Kruger dubbed it the "Great Gatsby Curve" after the novel's farm-to riches protagonist.
Now a looming showdown over the debt ceiling in Washington could stretch that gap even further.
Reporter Victoria Stilwell of Bloomberg joins the show with more.
Do you think the Dodger Dog needs an upgrade? (Poll)
Los Angeles is celebrating an exciting win last night for the Dodgers, who beat the Atlanta Braves 4 to 3. The team seems to be on a winning streak, and now fans can look forward to watching the team play in the National League Championship Series.
The iconic Dodger Dog, however, has recently come under the scrutiny of L.A.'s most culinarily opinionated critics. L.A. Times food writer Chris Erskine recently wrote a piece calling for a serious upgrade to the "bland" dog that currently bears the Dodger name.
On one side were people who crave something more than just the same old steamed or grilled hot dog and traditional condiments. On the other, those who can't deny the nostalgic appeal to the game day snack that hasn't changed much since the 1970s.
"I'd say 90 percent of our readers that rode in said that they were disappointed with the Dog," said LA Times food blogger, Jenn Harris. "Our columnist Chris compared it to what a dog would taste like if McDonalds served a dog. We had a couple of readers write in saying they were fans of it, but most of the comments said it really needed a revamp."
While the old-fashioned Dodger Dog itself might be something that could use an upgrade, there are options beyond the simple mustard, ketchup, relish and onions concoction. They're just made in 10-inch Dodger Dog form.
"They've come out with something called the Doyer Dog, which is a hot dog they put chili on, salsa, jalapeños. You can get a Polish sausage, get a vegetarian dog now. You can get a Brooklyn Dodger dog which is an all-beef hot dog, with natural casing," said Harris. "They are spicing it up a little bit and getting creative with the toppings. But it's still kind of basic compared to what you can get everywhere else in L.A."
What do you think? Answer our poll below:
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