04/09/04

LC040409

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The man behind Proposition 187. He's trying to revive the ban
on illegal immigration, but the crusade has cost him plenty.

Ron Prince>> With Proposition 187, we printed a million
petitions. It was a major ground effort to get those petitions
out. It was extremely difficult with not very much money. We
have less money this time.

Val>> And then, a driving force on the Red Planet. We'll meet
the JPL scientist who's at the wheel of the Mars Rover. Plus, a
Texas insider with some untold stories on George W. Bush.

It's all ahead 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>> A decade ago, Californians flocked to the polls to vote
for Proposition 187. You may recall that's the controversial
measure that promised to put a lid on illegal immigration.
Well, voters passed it by a wide margin, but it died later in
the courts, declared unconstitutional. Well, now the driving
force behind Proposition 187, a man named Ron Prince, wants to
try again. But as Toni Guinyard reports, this time Ron Prince's
crusade is a lonely affair with many of his former friends
nowhere in sight.

Toni Guinyard>> In California's ongoing struggle over illegal
immigration, there is a familiar argument from a familiar voice.

Ron Prince>> Nearly forty percent of all the illegals in the
United States are right here in the state of California, so we
would think that it makes good sense, good public policy, to
stop encouraging further illegal immigration by providing these
benefits.

Toni Guinyard>> Ron Prince is on a mission. He's out to save
the state of California from what he considers to be a problem
out of control, the influx of undocumented immigrants. His new
weapon is a proposed constitutional amendment that would bar
illegal immigrants from receiving public services and driver's
licenses. It would also prohibit state and local agencies from
accepting consular-issued identification cards.

Ron Prince>> This is, in fact, the spirit of Proposition 187.

Toni Guinyard>> Proposition 187, the 1994 voter-approved ballot
measure that barred undocumented immigrants from receiving
public school education and a range of government benefits, was
later ruled illegal by the federal courts. Prince is considered
the father of Proposition 187. He's reviving it with the Save
Our State initiative.

Ron Prince>> This isn't in conflict with federal law. This is
federal law, and we are allowed by that law to put it in our
state constitution, so the courts are not going to be able to
tamper with this one. The politicians also understand that and
that's why a lot of people are not very happy with me tonight.

Toni Guinyard>> Prince is not concerned about making his
critics happy and many of his critics aren't too concerned that
his initiative will make it on the ballot.

Rosalind Gold>> Our feeling is that this is just an effort to
try to sell Californians a very old product in a market that has
changed very much.

Toni Guinyard>> Rosalind Gold is the Senior Director of Policy
Research, an advocacy for the National Association of Latino
Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund.

Rosalind Gold>> The state is a very, very different place right
now. First of all, the tone and the tenor of the anti-immigrant
campaign during Proposition 187 really mobilized Latino
communities.

Toni Guinyard>> The Latino and other immigrant communities
struck back at the ballot box and threatens to strike again.

Rosalind Gold>> Both parties, both Democrats and Republicans,
realize that you cannot win an election in California, you
cannot win an election in this nation, if you do not have a
strategy to reach Latino voters. So the last thing you want to
do is the exact opposite, which is to implement a strategy that
will alienate Latino voters.

Toni Guinyard>> The point has not been lost on Prince. During
the Proposition 187 campaign, he enjoyed the support of then
governor, Pete Wilson, and other Republicans. Now few will even
risk commenting about the Save Our State campaign.

Ron Prince>> Are we getting support from those people who
publicly supported Proposition 187 back in 1994 and, of course,
no. I did not expect to get that kind of support.

Toni Guinyard>> Why?

Ron Prince>> Because back in 1994, the support was not genuine.
We're talking about people who, for political purposes, endorsed
the measure, but did not really support it and, as soon as the
election was over, they went back to the other side which is
where they came from. You have to remember that illegal
immigration involves a great deal of money and that money
affects both sides of the political aisle.

Dr. Raphael Sonenshein>> You can't step in the same river
twice. The river changes. Since 1994 when Proposition 187 was
on the ballot, everything has changed.

Toni Guinyard>> Cal State Fullerton Political Science
Professor, Dr. Raphael Sonenshein.

Dr. Raphael Sonenshein>> The Republican party is not putting
itself behind this the way they did in 1994 because they want to
win the votes of immigrant families who they think someday may
become Republicans, and they got burned terribly badly by
Proposition 187. In fact, they basically handed control of
California to the Democratic party for a generation.

Toni Guinyard>> Sonenshein believes the driver's license
component of the Save Our State initiative is the most likely
element of the proposal to strike a nerve forcing public and
political debate.

Dr. Raphael Sonenshein>> People aren't sitting around talking
about the Save Our State initiative. They're talking about how
the governor is going to manage to keep his Republican base
happy on this driver's license issue and still keep his word
about crafting a new bill with the Democrats on this issue.

Ron Prince>> Governor Schwarzenegger used his opposition to
driver's licenses for illegals to get elected. Early on in that
campaign, he used his "support" for Proposition 187 to get
elected. He did certainly take advantage of the driver's
license issue. As soon as the recall election is over, now he's
working with Senator Cedillo to make sure that we have a
driver's license bill for illegals.

Toni Guinyard>> In a strategic move, Prince included the
driver's license issue in his ballot initiative. He's also
reaching out to supporters online via the Save187 website. He's
urging them to print a petition, circulate and sign it, and then
mail it back to him.

Ron Prince>> It enables us to reach more people for a lot less
money. With Proposition 187, we printed a million petitions.
We had to mail them out. We passed them out. It was a major
ground effort to get those petitions out. It was extremely
difficult with not very much money. We have less money this
time.

Dr. Raphael Sonenshein>> They're in range. I mean, I think the
odds are against it, but the way the initiative has changed in
the last three or four years, they are much closer than you
would imagine because the fact is that you can gather tremendous
numbers of signatures online with the help of conservative talk
radio. That's what we now know.

Rosalind Gold>> So we're really optimistic for the future of
the state, but we can't completely ignore something like this
initiative and we're going to keep a close eye on it.

Toni Guinyard>> One hundred thousand petitions have been mailed
to Save Our State supporters.

Ron Prince>> When you're a volunteer operation such as we are
and you tell people here are the petitions, get them back to us
by that date, they generally speaking will get them back by that
date if they have them. The question for us is, do they have
them? We don't know and there isn't any way of knowing until
they actually mail them to us.

Rosalind Gold>> They do not have support of either of the
political parties. Both of the political parties did learn
their lessons from the 1990's, so it's going to be an uphill
battle for them. But at the same time, you know, as I said, in
California we always do like to keep an eye out on what public
attitudes are toward immigrants and those forces that want to
blame immigrants for the woes of the state.

Toni Guinyard>> A state that was left divided when Proposition
187 was on the ballot a decade ago, a state now being asked to
consider putting a similar initiative on the ballot in November.

Dr. Raphael Sonenshein>> I don't see the Republican leadership
coming in the way Pete Wilson did with Proposition 187 and
grabbing onto this and making this their signature issue unless
they're suicidal.

Rosalind Gold>> Mr. Prince is just trying to raise a boogie man
when there's no reason to do so.

Toni Guinyard>> Ron Prince thinks otherwise and is prepared for
round two in what has become a very long and personal fight.

Ron Prince>> The problem for politicians is that, when a
volunteer campaign like mine succeeds, they know where it's
coming from. They know that this really is the voice of the
people and they're going to have to listen to it.

Val>> Ron Prince admits that he's far short of the signatures
he needs to put the measure on the ballot this November, but
he's confident that he and his supporters will be able to close
the gap by the deadline later this month.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Val>> No one knows President Bush better than the veteran
political reporters who covered him in Texas. Back then,
President Bush wasn't engulfed in the bubble of the White House
and journalists got to know the man and the people around him
quite well. Now James Moore is sharing some of what he knows in
a new book that's highly critical of the Bush presidency. It's
called "Bush's War for Reelection" and tonight the author goes
one-on-one with Philip Bruce.

Philip Bruce>> Jim Moore, I have to tell everybody up front
that you and I are old friends. We've known each other since
our days as Texas reporters and I know you as a veteran
political reporter from Austin who knew George Bush very well.
The question is, why are you so critical of the Bush presidency
right now?

James Moore>> The reason I'm so critical, I think, is because I
saw the potential that the president had as a governor and as a
person in public life. Look, he came into office in Austin and
he built these coalitions that were phenomenal. You know,
sometimes in politics, common sense passes for genius, but this
guy comes in and he brings in all the Democrats and all the
Republicans -- 181 of them individually -- and says what can we
do to work together? What's on your agenda? Here's what's on
my agenda.

He built these coalitions. He was moderate as a governor. He
governed from the middle and then, when he became president, it
was almost as if the real George Bush had been hiding in the
weeds, a guy who lived out on the right-hand edge of the
cracker, and he's taken the country in a very almost radical
direction.

Philip Bruce>> You raise some questions about the priorities of
the Bush administration as the transition was being made from
Clinton to Bush. Tell me about that, how the priority list came
about and what it was and who had what to say about it.

James Moore>> There's a tradition on inauguration day when a
new president comes into office and he meets the outgoing
president. They're in the Oval Office, they shake hands, they
say hello. There's this sort of gentlemanly -- and someday it
will be a gentlewomanly -- sort of thing where they say here's
what I know and this is the advice I can offer you as you take
over.

Bill Clinton listed five things he thought that George W. Bush
should concentrate on. He said, top of the list, Osama bin
Laden. This guy is crazy, he hates us, he's coming after us.
We've had all sorts of intelligence. You've got to concentrate
on him. He said India and Pakistan are pointing nukes at each
other. Be wary of that. There's North Korea, they're
developing a nuke, they've got a crazy leader. And then there
is Saddam Hussein.

George W. Bush shook Bill Clinton's hand and said, thank you
very much, Mr. President. I appreciate your advice, but I think
you got your priorities wrong. I'm putting Saddam at the top of
the list. From the day they went in, they were planning on
going in. In fact, I think it was even during the campaign,
there was something they had in the back of their minds that
they were planning.

Philip Bruce>> From the cover on your book, the picture of
George Bush there in that flight suit, we get a pretty good
impression of what you think of this whole issue, of him running
as a war president and presenting himself as some sort of
military leader. One of the things you raised early on was
Bush's service in the National Guard and how that all came
about. I mean, is that issue still alive or do you think it's
gotten enough attention?

James Moore>> No, it's completely unanswered. There's a reason
that it's relevant and there's a reason that I've been obsessed
with it, as you know, since 1994 when he ran for governor and I
asked the question in the debate against Dan Richards. It
hasn't been answered because documents are still missing. He
was grounded and, for some reason which we don't know, he was
not allowed to fly an airplane after taxpayers had spent
$900,000 training him to fly a fighter jet.

There is a document which is a Board of Inquiry report, a
Commander's narrative, explaining why he was grounded. That has
not been released and it never will be released until the
president authorizes it with his signature, just as John McCain
did in South Carolina when he was being accused of being
mentally unstable. The last thing I would say about this is
that I think this is relevant for a very important reason.

Our current forces in Iraq, or a large percentage of them, are
composed of National Guard soldiers who were called to active
duty. George W. Bush's behavior, his disappearance from Texas
to Alabama without permission and not showing up for duty in
Alabama, goes to the heart of his moral authority to call up our
kids and send our kids into combat. Where would we be in this
alleged war on terrorism in Iraq if these kids that he has sent
over there had all been off in Alabama and had been as
capricious or irresponsible about their oath as he was about
his?

Philip Bruce>> I have to say, for some of your critics who've
tried to paint you as an attack dog in the Bush administration,
I don't remember you that way when you were covering George Bush
back in Texas. In fact, you had a pretty friendly relationship
with him. Now you're clearly upset about what he's doing as
president and what he's doing in Iraq. What are your thoughts
about what's going on now in Iraq as you see this?

James Moore>> It's a horror and it's a horror that didn't have
to be and it gets worse and worse every day. We went to Iraq
for all the wrong reasons and we keep saying that, well, we're
going to bring democracy into Iraq. We're going to stabilize
the Middle East. The truth is, if we leave tomorrow or we leave
ten years from tomorrow, that country is going to turn into a
theocracy. It is going to have an Islamist government. A
powerful cleric, whether he be Shiite or Sunni, is going to
control the government and, if he's a smart cleric, he'll build
coalitions between the two sects and the country will be
stabilized.

Philip Bruce>> We pointed out in the introduction to this
interview that you're in the rare position to have known George
Bush before he got in the bubble of the White House. That let
you get a sense of what the man is like. Would you have ever
anticipated George Bush as president would be the president he's
turned out to be?

James Moore>> No, no. I absolutely didn't. I mean, in fact, I
reported on him way back in 1978, Phil, when he was running for
congress in west Texas and I was a beginning TV reporter. You
know, I knew him then. I interviewed him in Iowa when he was
campaigning for his dad, as you know, when he became the
managing general partner of the Texas Rangers and, you know,
spent all of that time running as governor. He and I used to
run around town late together and he's a very affable, likeable
person, fairly smart, but not at the top of the class.

But he was a guy who seemed to be very moderate in all things
and he always talked about compromises. I interviewed a bunch
of people through the years who knew him in his days when he was
hanging out in Austin after he got out of college. He was
always talking about compromise, bringing people together,
getting in the middle. He has presently divided our country in
a way that I think is worse probably than anything that's
happened, even Vietnam, since the Civil War. Families are being
divided now.

Philip Bruce>> That gets to an issue that I know you've heard
before. A lot of people will say this guy is saying all those
bad things about the president because he just doesn't like him,
and I've never known you to personally not like George Bush.

James Moore>> I've always liked him. I've always thought he
was a good guy. He was always accessible. He was always able
to explain his positions. He knew where he was going. He knew
what he wanted to do. I've been baffled as somebody who knows
him and as somebody who found him a likeable person about what
he's doing now. I want to say that I voted for the guy three
times, twice as governor and once as President of the United
States. I think, like a lot of people in this country, I feel
like I've been sucker-punched.

Philip Bruce>> Well, Jim Moore, thanks for your time on the
book. The book is called "Bush's War for Reelection". Good
luck to you.

James Moore>> Phil, thanks for having me.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> We all know what it's like to navigate the freeways in
Los Angeles. Can you imagine being an earthbound driver of a
vehicle that's on the planet Mars? Well, we all recall the
spectacular images from the Mars Rovers as they cruised across
the Red Planet. Now we're about to see what it takes to steer
those Rovers from a computer terminal near Pasadena. Saul
Gonzalez takes us to JPL headquarters for a talk with one of the
men behind the wheel.

Saul Gonzalez>> Scott, you have what to me is one of the most
interesting jobs on the planet. That is, you come in to work
every day and you help to drive and navigate a vehicle on
another world. What is that like?

Scott Maxwell>> It's a lot of fun and very stressful at the
same time. What I really like about it, I think, the best part
about it, is that every day is something new. Just as soon as
we get to the point where it's something routine, oh, we've been
driving this terrain for a while, the terrain changes, there's a
new challenge, they want to do something with the vehicle like
dig a trench that we haven't done before or something like that.
So every day, you know, there is something that we just haven't
done before. It's a great challenge and it's just a lot of fun
to do.

Saul Gonzalez>> Now I use the word that you "navigate" the
vehicle on another world, but it's not really done in real time,
right? The driving isn't done. How do you do that?

Scott Maxwell>> Well, you're right. Since Mars is roughly
fifteen light minutes away now, if we were trying to drive
interactively, then by the time we turned the wheel, it would be
thirty minutes later before we saw the results. I mean, you
just can't drive with that kind of delay. So instead, we use a
model where we plan the whole Rover's day in advance and then
uplink those commands to the Rover.

So basically, we come in at the late afternoon as far as the
Rover is concerned, put together a whole list of things we want
the Rover to do for the next day overnight and then uplink those
to the Rover the next morning for whoever carries out those
commands through the day. Then we come in later that day and
start the process over. To help us do that, we've written some
software that does simulation and visualization of the driving.
So we can look at a 3-D model of the terrain similar to what you
would see on video games and put a 3-D model of the Rover within
that terrain and then --

Saul Gonzalez>> -- try it there. Try it first there.

Scott Maxwell>> Exactly. We put together that list of
commands, have the Rover kind of drive through the model and,
when it's doing what we want it to do, then we send those
commands to the real vehicle and it does that. So this is the
Rover following a course that we laid out for it a couple of
days ago, day before yesterday, driving from its starting
position here in between an obstacle, a basketball, to the left.
It was just a little bit too big for the Rover to climb over.
These rocks here called Three Amigos on the right which were way
too big for the Rover to climb over, so going out to where you
see these comically oversized lawn darts here, and heading out
more or less directly to the target, Route 66, and then doing a
final correcting move.

Saul Gonzalez>> And how far is that from its start point to its
end point?

Scott Maxwell>> It's about seventeen meters, so about fifty
feet, more or less. We also move this around and kind of see
from overhead, kind of fly down and kind of examine the Rover
from different vantage points to kind of make sure that it's
interacting with the terrain the way that we would like, that
kind of thing. Unfortunately, as it gets further out, the data
gets kind of rattier and so the Rover, in the simulation, is
doing things the Rover in the real world will not do. But we're
aware of kind of those limitations and take those into account
when we're doing our planning.

Saul Gonzalez>> And comfortably speaking, you can plot how many
feet out in the Rover?

Scott Maxwell>> Typically, we can do a drive where we
micromanage the Rover's drive out to about twenty or thirty
meters away from a starting point and then, after that, we
pretty much -- the data that we have isn't good enough for us to
safely plan a drive for the Rover in advance, so we would, after
that, tell the Rover to find its own way until we have the next
day's images to start planning with again.

Saul Gonzalez>> Now do you and your colleagues already have the
knack of just sort of looking at something like this and just
eyeballing what it can do or what it can't do? Just by looking
at this image, which rocks are too high, which rocks it can
comfortably handle?

Scott Maxwell>> This is sad, but I've gotten so much in the
habit of doing that, this is absolutely true. I was walking
across the JPL campus the other day. I saw a rock out of the
corner of my eye and said, oh, that's a mobility hazard. We
can't go over that (laughter). So I'm just kind of doing it
automatically.

Saul Gonzalez>> You take your work home with you (laughter).

Scott Maxwell>> Yeah, yeah, I'm afraid I am. But not only are
we doing it all the time when we look at these images, I'm just
doing it all the time anyway. Yeah, when we started the
mission, I wasn't really as confident in doing that, but now
we're getting the data back from the Rover and the first thing I
do is, when I look at it, I'm like, okay, that's a hazard,
that's a hazard, we can't go there, okay, we can go through
there, yeah, we can get where you want to go, and I can kind of
make those assessments much more quickly than I used to be able
to just from all the practice we've been getting.

Saul Gonzalez>> How do you choose where it goes? Who makes
that decision? How is that done between scientists and
engineers?

Scott Maxwell>> The raw scale sort of planning is mostly done
from the scientists. You know, when we landed, they kind of
took a look around. They said, oh, there's this cool crater,
Bonneville Crater, we'd really like to go there. There are also
these really cool hills, Columbia Hills, off to the east. We'd
really like to go there. The long-term objectives were set by
the scientists to say basically, okay, we want to go to
Bonneville, then we want to go to the hills.

The day-to-day kind of tactical planning comes down to the
engineers to take a look at the terrain immediately around us
and say what path from where we are leads us as close as we can
get to the next objective. Sometimes that means going a little
bit away. When we were finished at Bonneville Crater and we
were going to the Columbia Hills, the hills were at the east,
but the best path out was to go to the southwest actually and
kind of get out into a terrain where it was a little less rocky
and the vehicle could make better time.

That was a decision, for example, that was up to the engineers.
The long-term plan didn't change, but the short-term, the daily
plan, was up to us to say, well, we can kind of get where we
want to go by going a little bit away from it first and then
kind of zooming around.

Saul Gonzalez>> What is it that the vehicle can do on its own,
that Spirit and Opportunity can do on their own, that you don't
really even have to be a part of? And what are the things that
only you can do by sending up instructions?

Scott Maxwell>> The vehicles have little eyes kind of mounted
on the front of the body, kind of the main gold box of the
Rover, the electronics box, that let it see a world around it
just ahead of it. The goal of those cameras for navigation is
to spot any hazards that are in the Rover's way. We can tell
it, for example, you're here, we want you to go here, go.

The Rover will kind of look at the world in front of it, kind of
take a step forward, look at the world in front of it, take a
step forward, see a hazard, kind of back up and kind of go
around and figure out a path on its own. Very much like
exploring kind of a cluttered room, if you imagine exploring a
cluttered room with a candle where you can kind of only see a
zone that's kind of a little way around you.

Saul Gonzalez>> Creeping forward, checking the position and
creeping forward.

Scott Maxell>> Yeah, exactly. You'll see an obstacle, backing
out, and kind of going around, so the Rover has the facility to
do that. However, it can't always do those kinds of things on
its own. If, for example, -- there was one rock, Humphrey. It
was a big rock, way too big for the Rover to climb over. The
Rover's autonomous software wouldn't let it go near that rock
because it was a hazard that could damage the Rover. So final
approach drives like that, well, we say, okay, kind of get
yourself close to this rock, but we'll take care of getting you
the last couple of meters or so that you're kind of too scared
to drive on your own. We'll plan that part out for you. Those
parts kind of come down to us as well.

Saul Gonzalez>> Having now been involved in exploring the
Martian surface now for three months, do you feel like an
explorer? Do you feel like you have some kind of a link to, you
know, Lewis and Clark or Amelia Earhart or Neal Armstrong?

Scott Maxwell>> I wouldn't put myself in that category, but I
might put the Rovers in that category. Certainly one of the
cool things about these Rovers is that they give you a sense of
being there. They're kind of your height and they move around
in the terrain, so you're kind of seeing through their eyes.
It's very different from being in an orbiter mission where you
have this kind of, you know, global overview of a planet.
You're really kind of down there on the surface and you feel
like you're there. It's just been a great experience. I mean,
I'm having the time of my life now.

Val>> And there are no parking meters on Mars. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

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>> Next time on Life and Times, Professor Michael Dukakis.
He's traded politics for the classroom, so why are Republicans
still picking on him?

Michael Dukakis>> We now have the greatest gap between rich and
poor of any advanced industrialized nation in the world and it's
doubled in the last twenty-five years.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.