Fact checking the congressional budget talk headlines; What would the US economy look like if Congress passed a budget?; Why America's national health care efforts are so contentious; Public officials, activists await court ruling about oil drilling in Whittier hills, plus much more.
Fact checking the congressional budget talk headlines
As the possibility of a government shutdown looms larger, listeners should beware of headlines with phrases like "budget standoff," "showdown," "failure of leadership," or "partisan gridlock."
The Atlantic's James Fallows joins host Alex Cohen to fact check the budget talks.
What would the US economy look like if Congress passed a budget?
Imagine fairy dust fell over the nation's capital.
In this fantasy world, Congress passed an actual budget and rather than the sequestration, implemented a series of targeted spending cuts and tax hikes that began to tame the deficit and long-term debt.
There was no argument over increasing the debt ceiling, and the President signed a farm bill, an immigration reform package and a plan to give businesses incentives to hire new employees.
What would the economy look like in this rose-colored scenario?
Host A Martinez talks to Marketplace reporter David Gura about how the Congress and the White House might be the biggest stumbling block on the road to recovery.
Why America's national health care efforts are so contentious
The congressional back-and-forth over Obamacare has been contentious in recent weeks. The latest lob comes from the House of Representatives yesterday with a vote to link the funding of Obamacare to a budget deal.
The heated debate over health care is nothing new, going all the way back to when president Truman first proposed national health insurance.
Joining us to explain is James Morone, professor of political science at Brown University and author of the book, "The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office."
California's Obamacare insurance marketplace poised to launch Tuesday
A big part of the current effort at healthcare reform takes effect tomorrow. State- and federally-run marketplaces will open nationwide, and begin enrolling uninsured Americans into health coverage plans.
Many are looking to California as a leader in this process, and as KPCC's Stephanie O'Neill reports, there's a lot going on behind the scenes to make sure things run smoothly.
Nevada unemployment woes shed light on federal neglect
Five years into the recession, Nevada’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high. At 9.5 percent it’s the highest in the nation.
To make matters worse, a recent software upgrade caused the unemployment office’s computer system to be shut down temporarily, delaying payments for weeks. Many states are having the same struggles with outdated and overwhelmed unemployment departments. From the Fronteras Desk, Kate Sheehy reports.
Cherie Dubois is a 31-year-old single mother of two in Las Vegas. She has been going to the Job Connect center almost daily seeking information about the status of her unemployment benefits. Dubois has also been trying to use the state employment department’s new website.
“You have to enter all your information and accept the terms and agreement, then once you accept it, it should bring you to the new site which I’ve never seen a glimpse of because I keep getting a message to contact the unemployment system, “ Dubois said.
She said she hasn’t been able to get through to anyone on the phone either. Nevada began transitioning to a new system in late August and the state shut down services for a week. The program continues to have significant problems. As a result, tens of thousands of people like Dubois have been waiting weeks for their benefits.
“I’m like a month behind on all my bills, I’m pretty sure the gas is going to get cut next,” Dubois said. She had to borrow money from family to turn her electricity back on.
Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitaitonsays they expected to have problems launching their new software system and tried to let everyone on unemployment know they should file their claims early. Jeff Frischmann is the Chief of Unemployment Insurance Operations for Nevada.
“But when you’re trying to move 50,000 people, and asking them all to do something, not all of them follow your instructions,” he said.
The upgrade to Nevada’s 30-year-old system cost $34 million and has been in the planning stages for nearly four years.
Kelly Carch is the department’s Deputy Administrator. He said Nevada has been saving its federal allowance for years to put toward a new system.
“This is all federal money we’re using, no state money involved in these projects, but the feds don’t always give us a lot of money,” Carch said.
Nevada is not alone in its technology struggles. Last month, the Government Accountability Officereleased a study that found across the country most states’ existing unemployment insurance systems were 30 to 40 years old and were “incapable of efficiently handling increasing workloads.”
“For many years Congress has cheated the states out of significant funding to administer the program,” said Maurice Emsellum. He’s the Director of the Access and Opportunity Program at theNational Employment Law Project in California.
“They’ve been operating on shoestring budgets for the most part, and then you add on top of that a huge recession and states are really stretched to the limit financially,” Emsellum said.
He said employment offices in California and Massachusetts also recently faced problems with flooded phone lines and a backlog of unpaid benefits due to difficulties with system upgrades. Emsellum’s organization plans to release a report in the coming weeks on the disrepair of the nation’s unemployment programs.
“We have an infrastructure that’s falling apart at the seams. And it’s the responsibility of the federal government, they hold the purse strings, to put the system back together."
Nevada’s unemployed faced a double whammy this month — delayed payments, and for many, a severe cut. That’s because as Nevada planned its system upgrade, it delayed the implementation of federal sequestration cuts for people who received long-term unemployment.
Most states put those cuts in gradually, but Nevada squeezed it all into the month of September, forcing 20,000 people to take a 59 percent cut in their benefits.
Jeff Frischmann from Nevada’s unemployment office wants people to know they are trying their best to work out the glitches in the new system.
“I mean the biggest thing we’re asking for is some patience from our customers, we feel their pain, those people who are not getting paid, trust me, I go home at night, I go to bed at night and I think about them,” he said.
But Cherie Dubois is losing sleep at night, too, and she wants some relief.
“It’s a humbling experience, I can tell you that much, you find a way to make it work. I mean it could always be worse, it could always be worse, but right now it feels pretty unbearable,” Dubois said.
On The Lot: LGBT actors, female directors, and 'Gravity'
Time for On The Lot, our weekly look at the business of entertainment with Rebecca Keegan of the LA Times
We start with a survey by the actors union, SAG-AFTRA. Gay members of the union say they face discrimination in Hollywood. One thing that is interesting is some performers said once they had played roles as a LGBT character, they found it harder to get the more available roles playing straight characters.
Meanwhile, news about another group that's had a hard time making it in Hollywood: female directors. Women wanting to make films might soon have a new source of funding. Only about seven percent of mainstream Hollywood movies are directed by women, and that's actually less than it was 15 years ago. Why aren't studio executives hiring more women to direct?
A group is funding small, independent films with budgets under $5 million. Can it make a difference for women who want to direct big Hollywood movies?
LA's new mayor, Eric Garcetti has said he wants to do more to combat runaway film production and make it easier for film and television productions to shoot here in LA. Now he's named a "film czar." Who is he?
There are so many other places offering big tax breaks to filmmakers. Right now, everyone seems to be shooting in Atlanta, because Georgia is offering movie companies big breaks. How can LA compete against what amounts to cash rebates from these other places, and can one guy really make any difference?
Let's talk about an actual movie, one that opens this weekend and is getting the early Oscar buzz. It's called "Gravity," a space thriller starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.
Odd Hollywood Jobs: Gaffer
Time for another installment of our series on Odd Hollywood jobs, which looks at the gigs behind the scenes that help make movie magic.
Chances are you've seen the word "gaffer" scrolling by on movie credits, but what exactly does a gaffer do?
In the film and TV industry, a gaffer is an electrician in charge of lighting for a production. In addition to working closely with the director of photography on achieving the desired lighting set up, they often contribute as lighting designers, planning the look of the whole film.
Jim Plannette has worked as a gaffer for more the three decades, on films such as "Young Frankenstein," "Legends of the Fall," and "The Fisher King," to name a few. Though we once planned on becoming a lawyer, he was bitten by the Hollywood bug while on a break from college.
"My father was a gaffer. He started in the business in 1919," Plannette said on Take Two. "I left school during the semester to earn some money, and the quickest way was in the movie business, and I never looked back."
Plannette talked about what he loves about his job, what the biggest challenges are and which of the scenes he's worked on was the most memorable.
Interview Highlights:
On the most difficult part of being a gaffer:
"Outside the biggest challenge is to balance to the background. If you have a very bright sky and you don't want the actors to be silhouette, and you don't want the sky to be blazing white, you need to light them so that the balance is correct. You need to do that and make it invisible. We do that a lot with big white bounces that bounce the sun back into the face, and its very soft and invisible, so then you can see the faces, but it doesn't look like it's on a movie set."
On working on "Young Frankenstein," which is in black and white:
"It's an unbelievably memorable experience. That was the first black and white that I'd done, and it was great fun. My father did a lot of black and white movies, so it was great fun. You have to be sure that the grays aren't the same. You can have things blend into the background so you can't see them, so you have to make sure you can separate it from the background."
On where he's at in his career:
"I'm at a point that I only do the movies that I want to do, so I don't work as much as I used to, which is fine. My wife and I see three movies a week, and then sometimes I get interrupted by doing a movie. I just did one called 'Million-Dollar Arm,' where we shot for six weeks in India and then in Atlanta, Ga."
On the most memorable scene he's worked on:
"I worked on a movie called 'The Fisher King,' directed by Terry Gilliam. My favorite scene of all time was in Grand Central Station, where they're waiting for this woman that Robin Williams is in love with, Amanda Plummer. She came in, and as she entered the main floor of Grand Central Station, all of a sudden everyone started to waltz around the information booth. There was a mirror ball on top, and the light hitting it and spinning around, and it's just an unbelievable scene."
On his contribution to that scene in "The Fisher King":
"While we were prepping, I kept going to Grand Central Station and being amazed at how huge it was. We'd had kind of a plan that was designed by a previous gaffer, and the DP and I decided didn't think was going to work, so I came up with a lot more lights, which turned out to be important, because it is such a huge place."
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Public officials, activists await court ruling about oil drilling in Whittier hills
Lawyers for land conservationists, the city of Whittier, an oil company, and Los Angeles County will pile into a county courtroom Tuesday. They’re all anticipating a judge’s ruling about whether oil can be drilled on 30 acres of open space in Whittier — land that was purchased with money that county voters set aside for conservation.
What happens in that courtroom, and in Whittier, could have ripple effects well beyond this small patch of hills.
That’s what activists like Whittier resident Roy McKee say. McKee calls his town of 85,000 a suburban paradise, largely due to the acres of rolling, undeveloped conservation land smack in the middle of it.
“You know what, it’s the hills, the hills,” he says. “On my street there’s skunks, coyotes. There’s deer. So we’ve got all this wildlife. It’s the hills.”
Chevron once tapped these hills for oil. That stopped in the early ‘90s. The wells were abandoned, and talk turned to development. Then something unexpected happened: LA county voters passed Proposition A in 1992 – a parcel tax to raise more than half a billion dollars to preserve stretches of open space – including 1300 acres of land in Whittier known as the Puente Hills.
“It's very rare to have a wilderness area right in the middle of an urban area, and you can see it's beautiful,” McKee says. “Why would we want to change it?”
The City of Whittier has sought to do just that. In 2011, city leaders decided Proposition A land could be opened for oil drilling if the city compensated the county. Whittier granted a company called Matrix Oil the drilling rights for 30 acres of these hills in exchange for 30% of royalties.
McKee, his neighbor Nick Donovan, and other activists in a group called Whittier Hills Oil Watch say that’s not what they voted for when they punched their ballots in favor of Prop A. Donovan thought the land would be preserved in perpetuity.
“In perpetuity to us meant forever,” he says. “I think that’s what the taxpayers thought was going to go down. We’ve been sold out.”
When he says sold out, he’s not just talking about the city. A couple of years ago, anti-drilling activists were running out of money to fight Whittier’s deal; Donovan and McKee say they asked the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a state-funded open space group, to take up the cause.
The MRCA agreed. It, along with the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy, sued Whittier to block the drilling plans.
Then last month the groups dropped their opposition. They settled their claims against Whittier and the oil company, clearing the way for drilling.
MRCA’s Chief of Natural Resources and Planning, Paul Edelman, denies claims the about-face is a betrayal.
“You know, when someone’s painting the MRCA as a villain, that’s kind of wild,” he says.
Edelman is unapologetic about what his group is poised to gain from the settlement -- a chunk of drilling revenue, up to $11.25 million a year. He says that money can go toward buying more open space.
“There’s this great new source of money, that probably just would have gone to the city or some other source, or maybe wouldn’t have happened at all,” he says. That could enable the MRCA “to do great things on a countywide basis that never would have existed.”
Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina’s district includes parts of Whittier, and she questions that logic. A legal advisor to Molina, Martha Jimenez, says the supervisor feels blindsided by the MCRA’s settlement.
“You have an entity that was established for the sole purpose of establishing open space, actually allying itself with the city and with the oil company opposing the county efforts to protect open space,” Jimenez says. “It is frankly incredible.”
In October of last year, Los Angeles County decided to join the fight against the drilling plans, filing its own lawsuit against Whittier and Matrix Oil.
Neither the company nor the city would comment for this story. But back in February, Jim Markman, a lawyer for Whittier, criticized the county for waiting so long to oppose the drilling plans.
“This was studied environmentally for over two years with the county not complaining about the project, not objecting to it,” he said during an appearance on KPCC's "Air Talk."
Superior Court Judge James Chalfant issued a tentative ruling in the dispute in June. It suggests that, while some claims against Whittier have come too late, the city violated the public trust when it failed to seek approval for drilling from the county’s open space district.
“During the trial the judge said three to four times that his understanding of the law was that if you enter into something without the approval of the district, it’s void,” says Scott Kuhn, senior deputy county counsel. “So that’s what we’ve asked the judge to do.”
Judge Chalfant's final decision is expected Tuesday. Open-space activists like Nick Donovan worry the judge could set a precedent if he decides in favor of the city's oil deal. Donovan says if drilling is deemed OK on the Whittier land, other Prop A-protected sites are vulnerable to development too.
“If I was living in Malibu. I’d be very concerned. If I was living in the Palisades, I’d be concerned. If I was living in PV, you name it, you’re next,” he says. “So watch out.”
Davidson and other activists say they’d be reluctant to support any new open-space tax: evidence of a newfound skepticism that could pose political obstacles for publicly-funded conservation efforts in the future.
Corrections: An earlier version of this story indicated that a judge would rule on this case on Monday. In fact, the court date is set for Tuesday. Paul Edelman's title with the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority was inaccurate. The copy has been corrected.
Lessons learned from the Yarnell Hill fire investigation
A report released Saturday looks at the circumstances that lead to the tragedy of the Yarnell fire. From the Fronteras Desk, Lauren Morales has more.
The investigation into the deaths of 19 firefighters in Arizona’s Yarnell Hill Fire concluded with several recommendations. Many hope that the report released Saturday leads to wildland firefighting policy changes.
The report showed a combination of decisions and circumstances led to the tragic loss of 19 lives on the last day of June. There was a 33-minute drop in communication with the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew. It was during this gap the men tried to hike from the ridge down into a box canyon thick with unburned chaparral to another safe zone. No one knew where they were.
The investigators showed reporters gathered at the Prescott High School Theater on Saturday a video that mapped out the fire’s progression in relation to the crew’s likely route.
"As they start to drop down from the saddle, their view of the fire was rapidly cut off until it disappeared completely," the video explains using Google Earth images.
The investigators said when the Incident Command last communicated with the Hotshots they were safe on the ridge. So they turned their attention to the resident evacuation and pulling other firefighters out. As the crew moved down into the drainage, the winds changed direction, increased speed and drove the fire toward the men.
"The fire’s extreme speed of 10-12 miles per hour eliminated the crew’s options of reaching a safety zone or returning up to canyon rim," the video went on to explain.
This left the crew less than two minutes to try to burn out brush, use chainsaws to clear a refuge and radio out that they were deploying their shelters, before the fire overtook them. An air tanker was standing by to drop retardant but didn’t know the crew’s location.
Arizona State Forester Scott Hunt said the report recommends equipping firefighters with GPS tracking devices and improving radio communication with crews.
"Do we have enough channels?" Hunt asked. "Do we have enough repeaters? How do we use those at a fire line? What kind of plans do we have in place? So we’ll be reviewing that."
Other recommendations included doing more to reduce hazardous fuels around communities. Yarnell was overgrown with chaparral and hadn’t seen fire in 45 years.
Florida State Forester Jim Karels led the investigation. Karels said the report is also meant to be an educational tool.
"The report is designed really on that learning end of trying to put you in the boots of those firefighters, what kind of decisions you make under those situations, and then discussing different questions that deals with the firefighters that deals with the incident management part of it and deals with agency administrators," Karels said.
Karels said he thinks policy change should come from this report. David Turbyfill, a father of one of the men who died in the Yarnell Hill Fire, would like to see a complete overhaul of wildland fire policy.
"And how we attack fires, when we attack fires," Turbyfill said. "Secondly I want to see equipment changes."
Turbyfill has tested some fire-proof materials and believes there could be improved fire shelter technology. The current shelter was developed 13 years after firefighters died in Colorado.
"I know without a doubt that a fire shelter could be created, a survivable fire shelter could be created," Turbyfill said.
Fire investigator Mike Dudley of the U.S. Forest Service said you could improve a shelter to withstand greater heat but that material is probably too heavy to add to the already 40 pounds of equipment a hotshot firefighter carries.
"And we’re talking about temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees," Dudley said. "It would be difficult to understand what kind of protection you would need to develop."
Families of the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew also received the report Saturday. Reporters were not allowed at that briefing. But we’re told there was a lot of anger over the lack of communication with the crew and how incident command lost sight of the men. And many family members are still left with unanswered questions.
New policy could make it easier for Cuban baseball players to play abroad
Cuba has produced some of Major League Baseball's hottest stars, like the Dodgers own Yasiel Puig. But to get to America, players like him have had to defect before they can suit up.
A new policy in Cuba, however, could open up the country's ranks to recruiting.
For more we're joined by Adrian Burgos, professor of history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, and author of, "Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line."
Epilepsy study reveals the brain in action
People with serious epilepsy are debilitated by seizures. Surgery can cure the problem, but only after doctors learn exactly where and how seizures are triggered. That requires watching the human brain in action.
The California Report's Amy Standen found one patient that has volunteered to let scientists study his brain by opening it up.
'War Play' and the importance of video games in armed conflict training
These days, basic training isn’t all about doing push-ups and pull-ups, training also includes playing video games.
For more we’re joined by Corey Mead, author of the new book "War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict."
Report: CA's school truancy level could cost state billions
About a million elementary school students in California were truant during the past school year.
That's according to a report released state Attorney General Kamala Harris today, her first annual study of elementary school truancy. Harris warns this rate deprives schools of needed dollars and puts the future of these young pupils in jeopardy.
For more on the report we're joined by KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez who has just attended a press conference on this report.
LA's Last Bookstore looks to keep the page in the digital age
Downtown's Gallery Row district is an example of what's happening to downtown these days: New restaurants, expensive luxury lofts, and like the name implies, art galleries. But there's one business that's at the heart of the neighborhood: The Last Bookstore. Reporter Colin Berry has more.
For years Josh Spencer made a decent living selling books on eBay. In 2009, however, he decided to open what he named the Last Bookstore in downtown L.A. at Fourth and Main -- a modest shop of just 1,000 square feet. The neighborhood has been enjoying a renaissance lately, particularly its Gallery Row district where, besides new lofts and restaurants, a thriving creative community has sprung up.
“I’ve always been into science fiction and post-apocalyptic things,” Spencer says, “so I always wondered what a cool ‘last bookstore’ would look like for some future civilization.”
But in 2011, at a time when five big bookstores were closing in L.A., Spencer was offered a new location a couple blocks away: the ground floor of a 99-year-old Art Nouveau building at Fifth and Spring — the original headquarters of Crocker Citizens National Bank. With its 25-foot ceilings and massive columns, the new space was 10 times bigger than his existing store.
“I’ve never really paid attention to the book industry before, because I never saw myself as a bookstore owner,” Spencer explains. “So when this opportunity arrived, I didn’t think about the economy or how bookstores were doing. It was like, ‘Oh, well there’s a space, I can do something with it.’ ”
The result could be out of a neo-Victorian sci-fi novel. As Spencer has imagined it, the Last Bookstore is more quirky than stuffy, with bicycle-wheel chandeliers, a huge mural made of paperbacks, and sculptures made of books that literally fly off the shelves. The store trades in new and used titles, and upstairs you’ll find a massive labyrinth made from used books that sell for $1 apiece. One section is organized inside one of the bank’s old vaults.
“I kept getting images of Indiana Jones at his university in the 1920s, and like fantastical movies like ‘Hell Boy,’ ” Spencer says.
Store manager Katie Orphan says the plan to open a new store at a time when others were closing was actually one of the smartest things they could have done. “There’s still a lot of people who want the physical experience of holding a book, of smelling a book, of reading from pages instead of an e-reader,” she says.
Besides hosting live and community events and offering a selection of zines, small publishers and vinyl records, the store draws customers with the breadth of its inventory. Alexei Calvin, a student, believes it’s the best bookstore in L.A.
“The depth of selection is amazing,” he says. I’ve been here for a total of several weeks and still haven’t delved into everything I’m interested in.”
Wendy Werris is a West Coast correspondent for Publishers Weekly. She says that, besides its setting, the store’s choice to specialize in previously read titles was one of its keys to success in a down economy. “Josh saw the potential in selling used books not only because of the lower prices, but because the good indies can’t afford to keep a well-stocked store anymore,” she says.
Since the heyday of great writers such as Raymond Chandler and Joan Didion, things have been pretty quiet on the Southern California literary scene. But with a handful of new journals and small presses appearing on shelves and the increasing visibility of Latino and Asian writers, the Last Bookstore seems to be bringing it back to life.
“It’ll be a while before we can fully challenge New York to the literary crown,” says Orphan, grinning. “But it’s great to be a bookstore that encourages and participates in that.
'Best of Craigslist' show turns online classified ads into art
Ever read those wants ads on Craigslist? From those seeking to sell a baby stroller to those seeking a date, the postings run from the ridiculous to the sublime.
One enterprising band of entertainers in L.A. has now built a live show around the ads and all the actors do is read them aloud.
We talk to actor and producer John Pick.