11/17/03

LC031117

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

California swears in a new Governor and he wasted no time in
taking action.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> I will not rest until our fiscal house
is in order. I will not rest until California is a competitive
job-creating machine. I will not rest until the people of
California come to see their government as a partner to their
lives and not a roadblock to their dreams.

Val>> And then, the nation prepares to mark a tragic milestone.
We'll hear how some notable Americans remember the fateful day
when President Kennedy was shot.

It's all coming up next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Hello, I'm Val Zavala. He vowed to terminate
California's budget crisis and now Arnold Schwarzenegger is
about to get his chance. The new governor was sworn in today in
Sacramento before a standing room only crowd, but will the
applause that Schwarzenegger got today survive the next few
months when he'll have to make some of the toughest choices any
California governor has ever had to make?

Philip Bruce>> The planners called it simple and dignified, a
pared-down swearing in reflecting the campaign's down-to-
business promises, but there was still room for about eight
thousand of Arnold Schwarzenegger's closest friends and family,
plus a military band and four former California governors dating
back to Jerry Brown.

A year ago, few could have imagined this scene. Schwarzenegger,
one of the world's best-known movie actors trading the glamour
of Hollywood for the bare-knuckled politics of Sacramento. But
politics aside, it's also clear that the new administration
knows the value of a little Hollywood star power as witnessed by
Vanessa Williams' singing of the National Anthem.

[Film Clip]

Philip Bruce>> Schwarzenegger's well-known passion for after-
school programs was reflected by a group of children from
Special Olympics and other activities that he's supported. They
led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. But the thing that
added texture to this political moment was the so-called Kennedy
factor beginning with Maria Shriver and reinforced by the
members of her family, all Democratic icons who were part of the
cheering crowd. For her part, the state's new First Lady
promised her husband's administration will be more about people
than political parties.

Maria Shriver>> Here we are so united understanding that this
state belongs to each of us and, because of that, we rise. We
rise when we open doors for friendship. We invite fair play
into our boardrooms and justice into our hearts. We offer space
to mercy and ask humor to live with abandon in all of our lives.
Then and only then and forever, each one of us realizes that we
are made free and special and able to create our own proud and
enduring history.

Philip Bruce>> And then came the main event, California Supreme
Court Chief Justice, Ronald George, administering the Oath of
Office and Schwarzenegger stood with his hand on a two hundred
year old family bible.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> That I take this obligation
freely.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> That I take this obligation freely.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> Without any mental reservation.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> Without any mental reservation.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> Or purpose of evasion.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> Or purpose of evasion.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> And that I will defend the
Constitution against all enemies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> And that I will defend the Constitution
against all enemies.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> Foreign and domestic.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> Foreign and domestic.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> And that I will well and
faithfully discharge.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> And that I will well and faithfully
discharge.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> The duties upon which I am about
to enter.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> The duties upon which I am about to
enter.

Chief Justice Ronald George>> Congratulations, Governor
Schwarzenegger.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> Thank you.

Philip Bruce>> As the crowd applauded, the new governor made a
point to shake hands with the man he's replacing and he thanked
Gray Davis for doing his best to make the transfer of power go
smoothly without any of the infighting that often occurs after
such a tough political fight. Then it was time to hear from
Schwarzenegger himself as he stepped into what promises to be
the toughest role of his life.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> I am humbled, I am moved and I'm
honored beyond words to be your governor. To the thousands of
you who came here today, I have taken the oath to serve you. To
the others across this state, Democrats, Republicans and
Independents, it doesn't matter, I took the oath to serve you.
To those who have no power, to those who have dropped out too
weary and too disappointed at politics as usual, I took the oath
to serve you. I say to everyone here today and to all
Californians that I will not forget my oath and I will not
forget you.

Philip Bruce>> In his only clear reference to the bitter recall
that brought him to power, Schwarzenegger said the election
wasn't about personalities, but instead reflected an angry
electorate that's hungry for change.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> In recent years, Californians have lost
confidence. They felt that the action of their government did
not represent the will of the people. This election was not
about replacing one man. It was not about replacing one party.
It was about changing the entire political climate of this
state.

Philip Bruce>> Over the next few minutes, Schwarzenegger spoke
of the huge problems facing California and of his personal
confidence that all of them could be overcome.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> It is no secret that I am a newcomer to
politics. I realize I was elected on faith and hope and I feel
a great responsibility not to let the people down. As soon as I
go inside the Capitol behind me, I will sign my first order as
Governor. I will sign Executive Order Number One which will
repeal the three hundred percent increase in the car tax.

I will issue a proclamation convening a special session of the
legislature to address California's fiscal crisis. I will issue
a proclamation convening a special session to reform our
workers' compensation system. I will call on the legislators to
repeal SB 60 and I will work hard to reform government by
bringing openness and full disclosure to public business. I
enter this office beholding to no one except you, my fellow
citizens. I pledge my governorship to your interests, not to
special interests.

Philip Bruce>> For now, no detailed plans for overcoming the
state's record deficit, though it's assumed that Schwarzenegger
will ask state lawmakers to support a $20 billion dollar bond
issue which voters would then have to approve. Critics have
already assailed the plan as too much debt for the state to
bear. But even for a governor who's vowed not to waste a moment
in office, there's still time for a good wishes and a few
prayers.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> President Reagan spoke of America as
the shining city on a hill. I see California as the golden
dream by the sea. Perhaps some think that it is fanciful and
poetic, but to an immigrant like me who as a boy saw the Soviet
tanks rolling through the streets of Austria, to someone like me
who came here with absolutely nothing and gained absolutely
everything, it is not fanciful to see California as the golden
dream. My fellow citizens, I have taken the oath to uphold the
Constitution of California and now, with your help and with
God's, I will also uphold the dream that is California. Thank
you very much, and may God bless California. Thank you very
much.

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Val>> Governor Schwarzenegger not only promised to change the
political climate in California, he promised to change the
business climate. Now tops on his list, of course, is putting
the state's fiscal house in order, but there are other economic
challenges that he faces. I came to the Los Angeles Business
Journal and spoke with editor, Mark Lacter, to get the
perspective of business on the California economy and the
Schwarzenegger administration. Mark Lacter, editor of the Los
Angeles Business Journal, thank you for taking a little time
out.

Mark Lacter>> Good to be here, Val.

Val>> This is a big day for Arnold Schwarzenegger. A big part
of his ten-minute speech today dealt with the economy. He
talked about credit rating, workers' comp, the fiscal crisis.
What's the single most important thing he can do to make an
impact and to make California more business-friendly?

Mark Lacter>> Right now, I think workers' comp is probably what
he's going to be focusing on if for no other reason than it's
been sort of a lightning rod for the campaign and for this whole
push to make California a more business-friendly climate. The
special session starts this week. I'm sure that it's going to
be taken up. There are going to be efforts to improve upon the
legislation that was passed earlier this year, so that's a big
deal. We did a survey several weeks ago of southern California
executives showing that nine out of ten identify workers' comp
as the number one issue, the issue that really has to be dealt
with.

Val>> So these are the payments that companies make into the
insurance fund that are just terribly high, right?

Mark Lacter>> That's correct. In the last year or two, there
have been these horror stories of companies coming up with two
hundred and three hundred percent increases in their premiums.
A very, very bad situation that has to be rectified. So that's
a big deal for a lot of local businesses.

Val>> Now in a way, that's good because that doesn't raise
anybody's taxes. It just reforms something and saves money.
But he's also going to have to raise some taxes, yes?

Mark Lacter>> Well, that is the question. We've got $20
billion dollars that's part of his deficit package that they
need to somehow square off on. I'll tell you, they're throwing
around $20 billion dollars, but nobody really knows the number.
There was a $25 billion that came up earlier in one of the news
stories. The number seems to bounce around. It's a big number,
Val, and they somehow have to deal with this probably through
major bond financing on Wall Street that is now kind of taking
shape. That will be a starting point, but it's a lot of money
and they have to go from there.

Val>> Now the other thing he promised to do virtually I think
this afternoon, the same day he was inaugurated, is to roll back
the vehicle registration fee.

Mark Lacter>> That's right, that's right.

Val>> Smart fiscal policy or just politically necessary?

Mark Lacter>> It's politically necessary. Smart fiscal? I
don't think it's smart fiscal, but it's obviously something that
came up a lot during the campaign. He's got to do it and, of
course, that jacks up the deficit by an extra $4 billion
dollars. You've got to figure out what is he going to do, and
clearly spending cuts are in order. That's going to happen on
all levels. I think we're already seeing some effects of it.

There's a story in our paper this week talking about the number
of roads that are all beaten up, potholes and so forth, that
were planned for some improvement. All that has to be put out.
There was $180 million dollars that had been earmarked by the
Davis administration to do some of this road repair that has
basically been put on hold. So what that means is a lot of
chopped-up streets over the next several years that otherwise
would have been paved over.

Val>> So we save the money of a vehicle registration and put it
into new shock absorbers for our cars (laughter).

Mark Lacter>> (Laughter) Yeah, exactly. And, you know, this
is just one small example of situations that are going to come
up. Education, healthcare, you name it, stuff that involves the
state, it's going to be a very difficult period. It is
interesting, Val, during his speech, he sort of alluded, he sort
of threw in the notion that the pain may actually increase
before things get better.

Val>> He said it might get worse before it gets better, yes.

Mark Lacter>> Exactly, and I think that gives you an idea of
what we're in for for a while.

Val>> He also mentioned that we have the worst credit rating
ever. Now is the credit rating improved after you've done this
other thing? You can't go directly to the credit rating. The
credit rating is a result of having solved these other larger
problems?

Mark Lacter>> The credit rating is determined by Wall Street
and it's really a basis of a state's condition or a company's
condition. Obviously, the way California is these days, the
credit rating is going to be very low. The credit rating may go
up if Schwarzenegger comes up with a game plan that includes
spending cuts and a plan for realistically making up that big
shortfall that we face this year. But I don't think that's
going to happen any time soon.

Val>> Now the business community. They always talk about
California being unfriendly toward business and they're going to
move to Utah or Mississippi or something. Are they just calling
a bluff or trying to put pressure on or are companies really
leaving?

Mark Lacter>> Some companies are leaving, but business owners
have a way of moaning and groaning a lot when it comes to this
kind of thing. Clearly, there are some very real reasons and
concerns about things like workers' comp. However, as part of
the survey we did a few weeks ago, we found that seven out of
ten local executives are expecting increased sales next year and
I think somewhere around half expect a boost in their
employment. They're going to be hiring more people.

Val>> And that's a key thing, right?

Mark Lacter>> A very key thing and I think you saw some example
of that in the most recent jobless numbers for the state of
California for October which actually looked pretty good. So
there is clearly a turnaround in that area. I think what you
see is this sort of disconnect between the fiscal problems in
Sacramento, which are very real, and the way Main Street
performs. Businesses like to be in California. It's a good
place to do business. They don't really want to leave, so I
suspect there's probably more bluster in those threats than
anything else.

Val>> Final question. How much can Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Governor Schwarzenegger, or any politician really do to turn the
economy around?

Mark Lacter>> He can do a certain amount. I mean, obviously in
things like workers' comp, he can play an important role in
that. But at the end of the day, the economy is going to grow
or slide on its own and that's a confusion, I think, sometimes
voters have about what politicians can do and can't do.

Val>> So limited power, a machine that's huge and, hopefully,
he -- I guess they can always mess it up pretty easily, but
turning it around is another challenge.

Mark Lacter>> Yeah. It's even hard to mess up. We've found in
the last couple of years, you know, between energy crisis and
all the other things we've had, we're still doing pretty well.
So that's a pretty amazing testament to the strength of what we
do.

Val>> Well, that's encouraging. Mark Lacter, thank you so much
for taking time. We really appreciate it.

Mark Lacter>> Val, a pleasure, always.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on life and
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Val>> California's new First Lady, Maria Shriver, is having a
memorable week. Not only is her husband, Arnold, now officially
governor, but as part of the Kennedy family, this week marks a
milestone. It is the fortieth anniversary of President
Kennedy's assassination and among the many books marking the
event is one written by two television producers. The book is
called "We'll Never Be Young Again", a compilation of memories
about the assassination from more than a hundred notable people.
I talked with the co-authors, Chuck Fries and Irv Wilson, in
Beverly Hills. Chuck Fries and Irv Wilson, thank you first of
all for taking a little time on Life and Times.

Irv Wilson>> Oh, thank you.

Val>> You've put together a very interesting collection of
memories called "We'll Never Be Young Again: Remembering the
Last Days of John F. Kennedy". Tell us what the premise is and
how you got the idea for it.

Chuck Fries>> Well, many years ago, Irv had the idea that days
like FDR's death, December 7, were things that people always
remembered, so we tried to generate a project out of that.
We've worked together on and off for thirty years.

Irv Wilson>> Yeah, we've done a lot of television producing.
It's one of those days that certainly changed my --

Chuck Fries>> -- the publisher and I have a luncheon group and
one day he came in talking about a book he was doing called
"1936" which was published on the "Nation Lost and Found".
People were writing to find Pearson who's now the president of
the Academy, giving their thoughts about the depths of the
Depression. So I said, hey, this is a perfect idea for the JFK
concept. I called Irv and said I think we have a place, we have
a platform. It's just a wonderful celebration of JFK. That was
our intent here, to celebrate the man.

Val>> What are some of the memories, including your own?

Irv Wilson>> Well, you know, the memories to me were really
enormous because he was almost cathartic in a way that I kept
thinking about why would anybody do this, you know? The effect
it can have on this country. Then it brought back memories of
my father because I was the boy who told my father that FDR had
died. So the connection between these two men, in my lifetime,
was so strong and the connection with my father as a result of
Kennedy's death just started all over again, so I never forgot
that.

Chuck Fries>> I was sitting in my office at Columbia, Screen
Gem. I'd just had a new television set installed in the wall,
some little things up on the roof, no cable or anything in those
days. Somebody came running down the hall. They'd heard it on
the radio, so for the first time, I switched on my television
set. It was a little fuzzy, but there it was. Walter Cronkite
and the whole thing just unveiled in front of us.

Val>> And what kind of response did you get when you asked
people to give you their memories?

Irv Wilson>> Well, a lot of people just didn't want to go back
to that day. And others couldn't wait to tell us because it's
so vivid in everybody's remembrance. I think, the thing about
it is, it also changed America forever, you know? I just think
it was the most traumatic events of this country and I think
it's been a difficult period ever since in the anger of the
1960's and the Vietnam War and all of that, I think, was
festered by this assassination. The hope that he gave us, you
know, as a young man and he being a young man in that family was
something that we've lost. The innocence ended and I think it's
the most traumatic thing we've ever been through.

Chuck Fries>> A few people thought they would save it for their
own memoirs. I said, wait a minute. This is too great. Then
some people we got excerpts, like Liz Smith gave us an excerpt
from her memoir and she was working for Allan Funt on "Candid
Camera" at the time, who was a tyrant and who wouldn't let them
stop working. She resigned a few days later. Then Alfonso
Bell, Jr., who's father founded Bel Aire here, also had a memoir
and he told about being in Washington at the time. They'd shut
off all the telephones and just kept the lines open for the
White House in case something was going to come down because
everything thought, well, maybe there's a real conspiracy.
Maybe there's something lurking, maybe it's the Russians, maybe
it's the Cubans, who knows what it is?

There's a new book out right now about a potential conspiracy
that they claim was started in Texas, so it's never ended. LBJ
wanted to end it. He wanted closure. He wanted a lone
assassin. He didn't want any of those things explored on his
watch. He wanted it put away and the Warren Commission, he made
some regular calls to them saying, hey, this is it. This is the
guy. That's who we want to nail. I don't want to hear about
the guy on the grassy knoll, that type of thing.

Irv Wilson>> I guess we'll never find out.

Val>> But this, in a sense, is an oral history.

Irv Wilson>> Yeah. The characters from the book are just -- I
mean, everybody was moved by it. It didn't matter what your
politics were. It was so traumatic -- again, I keep using the
same word over and over again, but it's true.

Chuck Fries>> Young people like the book because this narrative
that we put together with our editor of the events that were
taking place like from the beginning of the twenty-first when
they first got to Houston and they had a big dinner for
Congressman Al Palmas through the internment. We kind of
bundled all of these letter together with this narrative of what
was happening and below that is kind of a timeline of events
that were taking place in other parts of the world.

Irv Wilson>> The narrative puts the letters in proper context,
you know, so some young person who had no idea what was going on
will get, you know, a pretty good history of what the events
were that led to this thing, what the problems were with him
going down there. You know, when Adlai Stevenson went down
there, they threw stones at him. When he went to Texas on some
mission for the President, he came back and said to Jack Kennedy
don't go there. When Jack was down there, you know, he sensed
the problem of Texas and how dangerous it was. As a matter of
fact, one of the poems we quote was from -- one of Jack's
favorite poems was "I Have a Rendezvous with Death".

Chuck Fries>> A woman wrote him from Dallas. She said don't
come down here. You're going to get killed. She really did.
But another connection that I think is interesting from our
business is that John Hendricks, who's the CEO of Discovery
Networks, wrote that probably he wouldn't have founded Discovery
Networks if it hadn't been for Kennedy because Kennedy really
supported the space program which eventually ended up with the
satellites up there which you are using every day at your
station to broadcast your signal.

Val>> Wonderful connection --

Chuck Fries>> -- people have these kind of unusual connections.

Val>> Well, there's a wonderful collection of those connections
and memories and I thank you very much for delving out of your
normal field and putting it in book form.

Irv Wilson>> Thank you.

Val>> If you have any doubt about whether memories of the
assassination would be of interest to young people, consider
this: fifty-seven percent of the American population today was
not alive when John F. Kennedy was killed. That's our program.
I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Tomorrow on Life and Times, a new community for southern
California, but can Playa Vista put its troubled past behind and
will a former candidate for mayor make a difference?

>> God said you got one mouth and two ears so you can listen
twice as much as you talk, and that's what we did.

Val>> That's tomorrow on Life and Times.