05/04/04

LC040504

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Crisis at the courthouse. We find out how speedy justice is
falling victim to budget cuts.

Judge Robert Dukes>> We have done some drastic things. We
closed down twenty-nine courtrooms --

Val>> -- just closed down? Shut?

Judge Robert Dukes>> We had to shut down twenty-nine courtrooms
whose operation we couldn't support.

Val>> And then, running on empty. A Caltech scientist says
we're running out of oil and fast. Plus, a gem from our vaults.
Randy Newman's love song to L.A.

It's all 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>> I'm here at Los Angeles Superior Court in downtown Los
Angeles. This court system is the largest trial court system in
the country. It handles nearly three million filings a year
and, if you think our legal system grinds slowly, it could get
even worse if proposed state budget cuts take effect. In fact,
one judge says we could be facing a constitutional crisis.

Los Angeles Superior Court stands on Grand Avenue like a nine-
story magnet. At midday, a line of attorneys, court staff,
defendants, plaintiffs and witnesses are drawn through its
doors. Ten thousand people flow into its hallways filling
fifty-five courtrooms. All are expecting and entitled to
resolution of the myriad disputes that are part of our society.
This building is a kind of cap on conflicts, keeping big and
small disagreements from turning into chaos.

Judge Robert Dukes>> We have one-half of all the residents of
this county come into our courthouses every year.

Val>> Say that again. One-half of all the residents?

Judge Robert Dukes>> Yeah. Of twelve million residents of this
county, six million residents use our courts every year.

Val>> But the justice system that keeps peoples' feuds from
boiling over is itself strained to the limit and, under Governor
Schwarzenegger's current budget proposal, it would get worse.
Judge Robert Dukes is Los Angeles's presiding judge. He says
the cuts that are planned would put our legal system in
jeopardy.

Judge Robert Dukes>> Imagine what will happen if the
legislature passes a law and there's no way to enforce it
because that is what is, in fact, happening.

Val>> The total budget for the court system statewide is about
$2.5 billion dollars. The proposed cuts would reduce that by
about ten percent. A tolerable amount, if the courts had not
already been hit by the budget ax for the past two years.

Judge Robert Dukes>> We have done some drastic things. We
closed down twenty-nine courtrooms --

Val>> -- just closed down? Shut?

Judge Robert Dukes>> We had to shut down twenty-nine courtrooms
whose operation we couldn't support.

Val>> Judge Dukes says, for every million dollars in cutbacks,
twenty staff are lost and three courtrooms are shut down.

Judge Robert Dukes>> It costs us about $700,000 a day to turn
on the lights of all of our courthouses. Last year, we did not
end up with a month and a half in reserve. We ended up with one
day in reserve. That's how close we cut it.

Joe Dunn>> More cuts to the judiciary after three years of very
deep cuts will now not only hinder, it's really going to be an
absolute fatal blow to the courts.

Val>> State Senator Joe Dunn from Orange County is Chairman of
the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee. He's trying
desperately to save the courts from a fiscal meltdown.

Joe Dunn>> Unlike the Davis proposals of the past two years
which were deep and substantial in the cut category, they were
one-time cuts. The difference with the January budget proposals
this year is that they are supposedly ongoing cuts, meaning
permanent cuts. We will never see those funds restored again.

Val>> To see what the courts are facing, you have to go to
Sacramento first. Most people don't realize that only a tiny
portion of the entire state budget is discretionary, that out of
$100 billion dollars, only $17 billion is not committed to
something like transportation projects, federal health programs,
prisons, mental health or services for the elderly. Many times
these obligations come from voters who approve measures like
Proposition 98 that set aside money for education, money that
cannot be diverted. But the court system has no such
protection.

Joe Dunn>> The courts in that status as a third and equal
branch of government deserve their own protected funding source
so that, good times or bad budget-wise, the courts are fully
funded to serve their critical role in California society.

Judge Robert Dukes>> We are not the DMV. We're not Caltrans.
We are not an agency of the state. We are the third branch of
government, the co-equal branch of government, and we should be
treated the same as the other two branches. We're only two and
a half percent of the entire budget of this state.

Val>> Without the protection, the courts must draw their funds
from that small slice of discretionary money and the math is
daunting. Remember the discretionary fund at only $17 billion
dollars? Well, from that, lawmakers must find at least $16
billion in cuts. Senator Dunn admits there will be hard choices
to make in Sacramento this year.

Joe Dunn>> Well, wait a minute. You mean we either accept the
cuts or we close some inner city health clinics? That's a very,
very difficult spot for the courts to be placed in.

Val>> On the first floor of the Superior Court Building, the
paperwork is endless. Everything from divorces, family and
juvenile cases, adoptions, probated wills, traffic infractions
and corporate disputes. These are all civil cases. The
criminal cases are in a different building. But if the cuts
occur, the criminal cases by law must take priority.

[Film Clip]

Val>> That means civil cases like this trial over an estate
would be delayed, as would many other cases big and small.

Judge Robert Dukes>> We have a huge array of small claims
cases. At some point, we're going to have to say, I'm afraid,
if you have a dispute with your mechanic or the mechanic has a
dispute with you over a bill, take it out on the street. We
don't have a way to address it. We won't have that court
available anymore.

Val>> Another area that would suffer would be security. With
ten thousand people coming into the building every day, security
is crucial, especially in a place where emotions over divorce
and family disputes run high. Despite strict rules, officials
still confiscate about one gun a month.

Judge Robert Dukes>> One of the husbands brought in a gun -- we
did not have security at that time -- and shot his spouse out on
the escalator.

Val>> And then there are basic costs like salary increases.
The courts contract with the county for many services and union
contracts call for three or four percent increases, but the
state is only budgeted for two percent. A few years back, our
courts were part of the county government and budgeting was
easier.

Judge Robert Dukes>> With the five supervisors across the mall
from me, when we had funding issues, we could walk across the
mall, talk to them and they understood the need for a strong
trial court.

Val>> But in 2000, a major change occurred. Voters approved a
unification measure that put all the courts under state control.
Senator Dunn has held hearings in various cities to bring
attention to the courts.

Joe Dunn>> Because the legal community, although very
sophisticated in legal matters, tends to be rather a sleeping
giant in the political arena. But it's one of those issues
where the legal community, in my belief, needs to come together
and speak with one voice.

Val>> The governor's current budget will be revised in May.
Senator Dunn is hoping that, by then, they can convince the
governor and lawmakers that our courts must take priority.

Joe Dunn>> Domestic violence, child protection services,
mediation services, landlord-tenant law, consumer law, all
around the same goal and that's the goal of the courts is to
resolve our disputes in society so we don't in essence take our
resolution out into the streets. Then we start to crumble as a
society and we lose our stability.

Judge Robert Dukes>> With the closure of the courts, we will no
longer be able to resolve many types of disputes and there's a
question whether we're going to be resolving them with justice.
That, to me, is a constitutional crisis. That means the third
branch of government is not doing what we are mandated under the
Constitution to do. The Chief Justice has phrased it in that
manner and I think all of the trial judges realize and are
living it every day and are very, very concerned.

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Val>> You don't need an oil industry newsletter to know that
gas prices have reached all-time highs in California this year.
Experts say it's a simple matter of high demand and shrinking
supply. Unfortunately, the long-term picture isn't very
promising. Experts say that our oil supplies have reached their
peak and it's all downhill from here. Among them is Caltech
Physics Professor, David Goodstein, who says a fossil fuel
crisis is inevitable. He's written a book called "Out of Gas:
The End of the Age of Oil". He talked with Saul Gonzalez about
the laws of nature that can't be avoided.

Saul Gonzalez>> Our civilization obviously runs on oil,
Professor, but you argue in your book that we're far closer to
the end of the petroleum age than most of us might think.
Explain.

David Goodstein>> Well, in the history of any mineral resource,
the supply starts at zero. It climbs to a maximum, to a peak,
and then it declines forever after that. The point where we get
into trouble is not when you pump the last drop of oil. It's
when you reach the peak because that's when the supply starts
falling behind the need, the demand for it. That means, crudely
speaking, that you're in trouble when you use up about half the
oil that nature made for you and that alone will put us much
closer to the crisis than most people would believe.

Saul Gonzalez>> Are we there yet? Have we used half of the
supply?

David Goldstein>> It's possible. It will be a while before we
really know. There was a story in the New York Times a couple
of weeks ago saying that Saudi Arabia had peaked. I've always
thought that would be the signal of the worldwide peak because
Saudi Arabia has used its excess pumping capacity to control
world oil levels for decades. So if Saudi Arabia has peaked,
that might be the signal that it's happened.

Saul Gonzalez>> What exactly happens once we reach that peak
and we start down the other end?

David Goldstein>> Well, anybody who was alive in 1973 knows
what happens because we had a dry run then. The United States
supplies had by then peaked and the Arabs took advantage of
that. The OPEC countries took advantage of that by embargoing
oil and we immediately had mile-long lines at the gas stations
and panic and despair for the future of our way of life, to say
nothing of the four times increase in the price of gasoline.

Saul Gonzalez>> How much time do you think we have left?

David Goldstein>> I can't answer that question because the
numbers on which these predictions are based are much too
uncertain. They're based on what are called proven oil reserves
which are numbers basically invented, made up by various
countries around the world, heavily influenced by economic and
political considerations. They're not terribly believable. As
I said earlier, it may have already started or it may not happen
until later in this decade or it may not even begin to happen
until the next decade, but it's hard to imagine pushing it off
much further than that. After all, ten years on the scale of
human history really is nothing.

Saul Gonzalez>> Certainly you see by the middle of the twenty-
first century, we're knee-deep in this crisis?

David Goldstein>> Oh, yeah, certainly.

Saul Gonzalez>> What does this world look like in another fifty
to a hundred years? Worst case scenario.

David Goldstein>> Not only will gasoline cost more, but all
petrol chemical products. It's more than any of us realize.
Anything that has to be transported will cost more, so there
will be an economic crisis. In the worst case, we won't be able
to fill in with other fossil fuels fast enough to keep the
civilization that we know going. The civilization will start to
deteriorate. People will be forced to burn coal for warmth, for
house heating and cooking and for primitive industry. Burning
all that coal could put enough carbon dioxide into the climate
to change the climate into one that we can't live in. Then
that's the end of the story. That's the worst case. The worst
case really is worst case.

Saul Gonzalez>> Are we prepared to meet this challenge? Are
there any leaders out there who are looking that far out ahead?

David Goldstein>> No. Have you heard any of the politicians
campaigning in this year's race even mentioning this problem?
No, we're not prepared.

Saul Gonzalez>> So what do we do? What are some of the
solutions? What do you say to those, first off, who say you're
being too pessimistic, too dark, too bleak? That there are
oceans of oil to be found out there and exploited, be it in the
South China Sea, be it in Northern Alaska, be it on the West
Coast of Africa, and you, sir, will be proven wrong?

David Goldstein>> It's extremely unlikely that any major finds
of oil will occur. There are a few unexplored places, as you
say, the South China Sea, Central Siberia, the deep oceans.
Those are places with big problems of various kinds. It is true
that you can substitute other fossil fuels for the missing oils,
but the sheer magnitude of the problem is overwhelming. We use
twice as much oil as we use coal, for example. So if you wanted
to substitute liquefied coal for oil -- that's physically
possible. It's been done in Germany and South Africa in years
past -- you can do that, but it would mean expanding the
coalmining industry to an almost unimaginable level. It's
extremely inefficient.

You'd have to mine coal at least ten times as fast as it's being
mined now in order to replace the oil with the coal, and coal is
the dirtiest of all fuels. It's all carbon. It means
everything you burn becomes carbon dioxide and goes into the
atmosphere. It comes mixed with arsenic and sulphur and mercury
and other nasty things. You could fill in with other fossil
fuels. It's possible that you can get a little bit more out of
any given oil field. It's called heavy oil, but the more you
get out, the heavier it gets. There are oil sands in Canada
that people talk about, but oil sands are solid deposits. They
have to be mined and the oil is extracted from the sand. So
even though Alberta is doing it profitably now, nevertheless it
comes out slowly enough so it's not a major player in the world
of oil equation.

Saul Gonzalez>> So can we retrofit society to use something
else as a fuel, whatever that something else turns out to be?

David Goldstein>> It's a huge problem. For example, our
president and our governor here in California have both embraced
the idea of a hydrogen economy car. Hydrogen today is made from
fossil fuel. Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It's just a
way of transferring energy from one thing to another. So you
can turn fossil fuel, which is coal or oil or methane, into
hydrogen. It's inefficient. You lose a lot of the energy in
doing that. In fact, the technology today is such that it takes
the equivalent of six gallons of gasoline to make enough
hydrogen to replace one gallon of gasoline. So what our
president and our governor have chosen to do is not a big
winner, at least not in the short run.

Saul Gonzalez>> Knowing what you know or knowing what you've
studied, do you remain optimistic or are you pretty bleak about
the future?

David Goldstein>> I hope that when the crisis comes -- and
there will be a crisis. It will come -- it will serve as a
wakeup call, that we'll be able to get alternatives into action
fast enough to keep things going so that we keep muddling along
as best we can, that is, natural gas based or other fossil fuels
and so on, so we can get the nuclear industry going again and we
can start building large efficient plants to make use of solar
power and perhaps even solve the nuclear fusion problem which
would really solve the problem because then there would be a
virtually endless supply of energy.

Saul Gonzalez>> And we're talking really about a national and a
global challenge as great as fighting the Nazis?

David Goldstein>> Yes, yes. I simply don't think that we can
depend on our leadership to be imaginative enough and courageous
enough to lead us now while we still have fossil fuel into the
non-fossil fuel economy that we will have to learn how to do.

Saul Gonzalez>> Well, Professor, on that note, I will think
about you the next time and every time I go to my local filling
station and fill up my tank. Thank you very much for joining us
on Life and Times.

David Goldstein>> Well, thank you for having me.

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Val>> If Los Angeles has a theme song, it is without a doubt "I
Love L.A." It was written by Randy Newman and Newman is himself
about as L.A. as you can get. He comes from a family of
composers who have lent their talents to movies for two
generations. A couple of years ago, I got a chance to sit down
with Randy Newman at his studio and we thought we'd open up the
Life and Times vault to bring you our profile of this frank and
funny songwriter.

[Musical Clip]

Val>> Randy Newman has been writing for nearly forty years,
everything from satirical songs to movie scores.

Randy Newman>> Musically, I do a lot of different stuff. I'm
glad. You know, I mean, it's the most important thing in my
life that I'm writing well when I'm trying to write.

Val>> He's won a Grammy, an Emmy and thirteen Oscar
nominations. Do you say, wow, I've got it good, I've really --

Randy Newman>> -- no, I don't, but I know that I got a job in
show business, you know? I mean, I know that basically I've
been very fortunate, but it doesn't seem like it when I can't
think of something to do.

[Musical Clip]

Val>> For Randy Newman, music is in the blood.

[Musical Clip]

Val>> Born in Los Angeles in 1943, Newman grew up in a family
of motion picture composers. His Uncle Alfred wrote the theme
for 20th Century Fox. The young Newman began studying music at
age six. By his twenties, he was cranking out hits for singers
like Jackie DeShannon, Judy Collins, Gene McDaniels, and the
Fleetwoods. In 1968, Newman made the transition from songwriter
to singer. One of his early hits is "I Think It's Going To Rain
Today". Beautiful song. How did that one come about?

Randy Newman>> Oh, I don't remember. You know, I was young and
depressed. I don't know. I was like twenty-four or twenty-five
then.

[Musical Clip]

Val>> And while love songs are the staple for most songwriters,
for Newman, they were too confining.

Randy Newman>> I started writing about the world outside of
"relationships". It wasn't me anymore saying I love you, I wish
you loved me, this is breaking me up.

[Musical Clip]

Val>> In the early seventies, Newman made another transition.
He got into the family business composing for television and
movies such as "Ragtime", "The Natural", "Parenthood", "Toy
Story", "A Bug's Life" and "Awakenings".

Randy Newman>> When de Niro meets his mother in "Awakenings",
when he sort of came alive and they see each other, I worked
very hard on it. It's good, but could probably be better. I
don't know why.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Newman says movie music should always enhance, but never
dominate, a scene.

Randy Newman>> It's supposed to make you think that
"Awakenings" is maybe a better picture than it was, or make you
feel something where maybe it isn't there on screen, to enhance
something that is there on the screen.

[Film Clip]

Randy Newman>> I intended to work for the film one hundred
percent. I don't care whether the -- I do care, but I mean it's
incidental whether it has a life outside of it.

Val>> Aspiring songwriters often send their work to Newman. He
tells them, if they love it, keep doing it.

Randy Newman>> I'm not going to say you've been wasting your
time. You know, go into textiles. I mean, if you love to
write, that's a great thing. I don't love to write.

Val>> You don't love to write?

Randy Newman>> No. Never have.

Val>> Tell us a little bit more about when you're at the piano,
you start a song, is it in your head? Does it come from your
fingers?

Randy Newman>> No, it comes with (at the piano) some kind of
figure on the piano. You know, and I'll sing [at the piano] you
know, nonsense syllables like that. I mean, if that would -- if
I had to write something, I might start like that, but I didn't
have it in my head. I'd just play it.

Val>> Because a lot is in -- the tunes are in their head, they
just have to write it, but not you?

Randy Newman>> Remind me to copyright that. It could be very
valuable.

Val>> (Laughter)

[Musical Clip]

Randy Newman>> When I'm writing, I get up in the morning and
put in songwriting for four hours and that's the most I can do.

Val>> Still today?

Randy Newman>> No, all my life, yes. I set aside time and have
to show up.

[Musical Clip]

Randy Newman>> I have a little bit of palsy.(laughter)

[Film Clip]

Val>> In the last few years, Newman has found a new love,
theater. In 1995, he wrote the musical "Faust" and his latest
production is "The Education of Randy Newman", a collection of
over forty of his songs.

Randy Newman>> I think if I could do theater all the time, I
might like that better because I can do everything I know how to
do. I could write for orchestra, I could write songs, I could
write dialog, but it's not the right time for a person like me.
That field. They're not doing comedy much.

Val>> I do recall reading you didn't have many kind words for
"Cats".

Randy Newman>> I didn't have any words. I just went pfft
(laughter).

Val>> At age fifty-six, after about a dozen albums and hundreds
of songs, Randy Newman isn't worried about leaving his legacy.
His satire has even earned him comparisons to Mark Twain.

Randy Newman>> I've yet to see anything mention Beethoven in
connection with me, but I think that day is fast approaching.
When that happens, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for
"Not Since Beethoven," and then a story about me.

Val>> And 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.

We didn't invent freedom, although our fighters help preserve
it. We didn't invent democracy, although our missile systems
help defend it. We don't create the peace, although our
satellites and network systems help ensure it. At Boeing, we
break the barriers of technology every day to make our nation
and the world more secure because we can't predict the future,
but it is our honored privilege to help protect it.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, Fess Parker strikes a big
land deal with the Chumash Indians and it sparks a nasty war of
words in Santa Barbara County.

>> I think that the only entity that is playing the race card
in all of this discussion are the tribes and I think that's very
unfortunate. I think they should be very careful about that.

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