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Life & Times Transcript
05/27/05 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- Teenagers can legally have an abortion, but should the state force them to tell their parents? Mary-Jane Wagle>> Government intrusion into family communication is not the answer. Val>> And then, they laughed all the way to the bank. How Enron executives pulled of their brazen scam during California's energy crisis. It's all straight 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. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val>> It's a simple question. Should a teenaged girl be required to notify her parents before she gets an abortion? That's what a new initiative would require. But is notifying parents the same as getting their permission? And what about cases of rape or incest? Hena Cuevas takes a closer look at an initiative which, like all abortion issues, is bound to be contentious. Hena Cuevas>> The signatures are still coming in to Maria Elena Kennedy's home days after the deadline. Maria Elena Kennedy>> It didn't take very long to see that this issue resonated with the people. Hena Cuevas>> The issue she's referring to is parental notification, letting parents know before a daughter under the age of eighteen has an abortion. Maria Elena Kennedy>> To this day, a lot of people still aren't aware of the fact that their minor daughter can have something as serious as an abortion without them knowing. Hena Cuevas>> Kennedy is one of the many volunteers working to get the new parental notification act in front of voters. But to get it on the ballot, the group behind the initiative, Parents' Right to Know, needed nearly six hundred thousand signatures. Not a problem, says Kennedy. How surprised were you at the response? Maria Elena Kennedy>> I wasn't surprised at all because, early on in this process, I saw peoples' reaction. When I would talk to people, whether I was at a Little League game or the supermarket, about the fact that a minor girl can have an abortion without her parents knowing, someone as young as twelve years old, people were astonished. Hena Cuevas>> So astonished, Kennedy says, that on April 14, the filing deadline, the group turned in many more signatures than are required. Maria Elena Kennedy>> I would be surprised that it wouldn't make it to the ballot, given the fact that we've turned in over a million signatures. Hena Cuevas>> And some more are still coming in? Maria Elena Kennedy>> Yes, they're coming in on a daily basis. People are still calling our 800 number and they're still asking where can they sign the petition. Hena Cuevas>> But with such a divisive issue like abortion, there are those who think this measure isn't such a good idea. Katherine Spillar>> And the average person thinks that sounds good, but what you don't know is how dangerous these laws can be. Hena Cuevas>> Katherine Spillar is the President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, an organization that works for women's rights. She says that taking away the privacy that pregnant girls request is dangerous. Katherine Spillar>> When people come to understand that you can't mandate the behavior of teenagers and that if they're determined not to tell their parents because they're afraid of disappointing them or they don't want to let them down or they're afraid of violence in the family, for whatever reason they don't want to tell their parents, they're going to find a way not to. Hena Cuevas>> She's worried that it might lead to unsafe abortions or, worse yet, force girls to go to Mexico. Katherine Spillar>> By putting yet another obstacle up that may prevent her from getting the access to the medical care that she's seeking, then you're endangering her health. Maria Elena Kennedy>> For minor girls to have a dangerous abortion, she doesn't need to go into Mexico. She can have an abortion here in the United States and it can still be very dangerous. Hena Cuevas>> This isn't the first time California has tried to have a measure letting parents know when their children were going to have an abortion. There was a law in 1987 which required permission, but it was challenged many times and, ten years later in 1997, it was overturned by the Supreme Court who argued that it violated the minor's right to privacy. This time, to make sure the law can't be challenged in court, the group wants to make it a constitutional amendment. Maria Elena Kennedy>> A lot of the different propositions that have been passed in California by a clear majority of the voters have been overturned by the courts, so we want to ensure that the peoples' will is upheld. Hena Cuevas>> Also, the initiative requires only that parents be notified, not that they give their permission. But to amend the Constitution, supporters needed 250,000 additional signatures. They say they have them. Mary-Jane Wagle>> Government intrusion into family communication is not the answer. Hena Cuevas>> Mary-Jane Wagle is the President of Planned Parenthood, one of the places teens go to get information on sex, contraception and abortions. She says whenever minors go to Planned Parenthood for help, they're always encouraged to talk with their parents. Mary-Jane Wagle>> Sometimes we're able to persuade kids that they should go talk to their parents and then decide what to do, but there are most definitely cases where the teens simply can't do that. Katherine Spillar>> But if she doesn't want to, now what is the clinic going to do? Are they going to tell her that, I'm sorry, you either have to tell your parents or, you know, you're out of luck? Better that she makes a responsible, safe decision for her own future than be forced to carry a pregnancy because she's too scared to talk to her parents. Hena Cuevas>> The law requires a forty-eight hour waiting period from the time parents are told to the time an abortion can be performed. Maria Elena Kennedy>> Who's going to care about this girl more? Her parents who have raised her her entire life or an abortionist who has an economic interest at heart and who's going to maybe be with her for five minutes? Hena Cuevas>> So what about kids who are pregnant because of sexual abuse or fear of violence at home? Mary-Jane Wagle>> The problem with this law is that it puts the teens who can't talk to their parents at great risk. Those are the most vulnerable teens. Maria Elena Kennedy>> She has a constitutional right to an abortion. She can go to a judge and say, look, my parents are very abusive and I have to have this abortion, and there is a judicial bypass in the initiative. Hena Cuevas>> Even though the signatures haven't officially been counted, those against the initiative are getting ready to fight it. What happens if it does make it on the ballot and eventually it is approved? Katherine Spillar>> Well, we'll challenge it. We'll challenge it legally. California has a very strong right to privacy in its Constitution, but we're going to try and keep it from getting passed. Hena Cuevas>> Governor Schwarzenegger has until June 13 to declare a special election. If he does, then the parental notification initiative will likely appear on the ballot in November. If not, it will have to wait until the election in June 2006. In either case, it seems parental notification for abortions is headed for a very public debate. I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times. 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>> It's been called the biggest corporate disaster in United States business history and every Californian, directly or indirectly, has been impacted. We're talking about Enron where a few top executives walked away with more than a billion dollars, scamming consumers, employees and investors. Well, now a new documentary takes us inside the world of Enron. Vicki Curry talked with the director of "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room". It's based on a book by the same name, written by two reporters from Fortune Magazine. Vicki Curry>> Where do I begin? Why don't you tell me from your experience how this Enron thing happened in the first place? Alex Gibney>> I think it was a fraud that started off with the best of intentions, but it got out of control because there was such a wide gulf between the money that was actually coming in the door and the profits they were reporting and they became increasingly desperate. It was a human tragedy. It was a human drama. I mean, it's almost a classic Greek tragedy in that sense. Here are guys who are so arrogant and so full of hubris, you know, that they tried to fly so high and then they came crashing down. It's a story about how the mighty have fallen. Vicki Curry>> There's so much to cover in the Enron story that a big part of your film, which is obviously of interest to us, is the California story. Once you put it all together, what did you learn about it? Alex Gibney>> The California story is really like pulling the curtain back on the ugly face of ruthless capitalism. What you see is, you see people who are in effect laughing while they're gaming the California market in the midst of rolling blackouts. >> "During the height of Wednesday's blackout, fire crews had to free people trapped in elevators." >> "All that money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?" >> "(Laughter) Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. She's the one who couldn't figure out how to [blank] vote on the butterfly ballot." >> "Now she wants her [blank] money back for all the power you've charged right up her [blank] (laughter)." >> "Oh, I can't help myself. You know what the difference is between the state of California and the Titanic? This is being web cast. I know I'm going to regret this. At least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on (laughter)." Alex Gibney>> What the Enron traders who were actually operating out of Portland did was they looked at the California deregulatory system and they saw that it was flawed and that it was prone to gaming and they could make a lot of money by gaming it. So they came up with these strategies to probe and take advantage of the weaknesses in the new system and that's exactly what they did. For example, in the film you hear Enron traders calling power plants and asking them to shut down and the power plants agree to shut down. You're thinking, well, that doesn't make any sense. If they're shut down, they're not going to make any money. But what happened was, by shutting down, they reduced supply and that drove up the price so much that they then made tremendous amounts of money when they came back online. That only works if different businesses are working together. >> "Hey, this is David up at Enron." >> "Uh-huh." >> "There's not much demand for power at all and, if we shut it down, could you bring it back up in three or four hours?" >> "Oh, yeah." >> "Why don't you just go ahead and shut her down then if that's okay." >> "Okay." >> "Those guys, at the flip of a switch, could just yank the California economy on its leash whenever they wanted to and they did it and they did it and they did it and they made so much money." Alex Gibney>> So it was a very conscious strategy. I mean, they knew they were playing with the market and they did so deliberately, both to make money and I think their rationale was, if we poke and play with the market, the market will reform itself. That's always the kind of free-market rationale, but in this case, it was also fundamentally about greed. Vicki Curry>> Something in your film that I had never heard about before was a secret meeting that Enron executives had here in Los Angeles in the midst of the power crisis. Can you tell me about that? Alex Gibney>> Sure. It was in the spring of 2001. Ken Lay flew out here and he was very much trying to beat the drum for deregulation, both in California and throughout the rest of the country. So he convened at the Peninsula Hotel here in Los Angeles a number of influential people, one of whom was Mike Milken, Richard Riordan and also he had the foresight to include Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think the reason he included him was because he knew, and a number of other people knew, that he was an up and coming political figure. The pitch to these people -- and we really don't know exactly what was said at the meeting -- but I think that the pitch was, look, deregulation is where we want to get to. We've got to have more deregulation in California. You people are politically influential. Help us get there. And I think the implication was we can tag this on Gray Davis. He'll take the blame and then we can take political advantage of that which will be good for all of us. Vicki Curry>> So they had the foresight to invite Arnold Schwarzenegger to this meeting. Who would have known that, two years later, he would be the next governor of California? Alex Gibney>> Exactly. I mean, I think that's how it works. I think Schwarzenegger -- a light bulb must have gone off in his head when he saw this issue and he also saw that Gray Davis was extremely vulnerable and he could take advantage of that. That, I think, is what led him to the governor's office. >> "Ladies and gentlemen, the Governor of the great state of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger." Vicki Curry>> Another thing that I found very surprising to learn in your film is the complicity of all the major banks in America in what was happening at Enron. Tell me about that. Alex Gibney>> I think the most remarkable part of the Enron story and what makes it so contemporary and so relevant to today is the fact that the Enron story is a story of synergistic corruption, meaning that there were a lot of people who were supposed to say no in terms of the schemes that Enron wanted to pull off. >> "I've thought about this and thought about this and it couldn't have just been a few executives at Enron that made this happen. If you think of the banks involved, Chase, Morgan, Citibank, the billions in loans. Arthur Andersen. What about Vincent & Elkins, the lawyers that represented us? There had to have been complicity across the board because it was all too easy, all too easy." Alex Gibney>> What the film says and the important lesson of the Enron story is, ask why. Keep asking why, which was their corporate motto. Keep asking why and demand more of our society that it behave in an ethical fashion. That means you not only have to look at Enrons and banks, but we also have to look at us. We have to look at ourselves and wonder are we doing the right thing? Vicki Curry>> Alex Gibney, maker of the film "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room", thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about this. Alex Gibney>> Thank you. My pleasure. Val>> Are you tired of the classic detective in a trench coat always being a man? Well, now imagine a cross between Sam Spade and Jennifer Lopez or Humphrey Bogart and Selma Hayek. The detective is Romilia Chacon and her creator is writer, Marcos Villatoro, poet, teacher and graduate of the most prestigious writing program in the United States. It's a Tuesday afternoon at Mount St. Mary's College, an all-girls university on a hilltop overlooking Brentwood. It's not hard to spot Marcos McPeek Villatoro. He's the writing teacher with the trademark hat. Today he'll be giving his students a lesson that every serious writer has to learn, usually the hard way. Marcos M. Villatoro>> "It is a packet of rejection letters." Val>> Villatoro is the author of four novels, two books of poetry and a memoir, but to get here, he had to run the gauntlet of rejection. Marcos M. Villatoro>> "While I found this to be intelligently written, evocative, lyrical, atmospheric, poignant, I did not feel it would work for Stepping Stone. The large cast and unwieldy convoluted plot made for a tough read. I missed a clearer, stronger plot in exposition. Very intriguing, though. Best of luck. Katherine Sandy, I think, Acquisitions Editor. Okay, what's your reaction to that?" Marisa Smith>> "I think that what she's saying is she liked the actual story line, but what she doesn't like is the way you present your characters and that maybe you should cut down the amount of characters, then that would make it less confusing and a more enjoyable read rather than one you're trying to study." Marcos M. Villatoro>> "You think you got too many characters here? So instead of making them alive in the first ten pages, seventeen people and killing them all off in chapter two, I just got rid of them completely and just started out with one man and his son. I turned around and I sold the novel and then they published it, all right?" Val>> Villatoro's genre is the gritty crime novel, but his main character is not your conventional gumshoe. She is someone who students can relate to, a Latina detective named Romilia Chacon. Marisa Smith>> Being Mexican, I think that's really cool. I mean, to me it's great. I think that it's great that he makes her not only a detective, but a good one and a smart one. Val>> Romilia is a modern character who emerged from an old-fashioned typewriter. No computers here. Villatoro prefers the feel of an old Royal. Marcos M. Villatoro>> I'm one of those writers who goes into the dark stuff more. My crime fictions are not cozies. They're much more dark, so in many ways I follow in that Los Angeles tradition of the noir. "I didn't get along with the other soccer moms on the field. They talked differently than I did. They worried about Kellogg's commercials that their children were in." Val>> Romilia is an FBI agent who's also a single mom raising a young son in Van Nuys. Her fellow agent and lover is murdered the night he proposes to Romilia. Now she must delve into his past and Los Angeles's criminal underbelly. Marcos M. Villatoro>> She's always very suspicious about the drug world and its presence wherever children are or wherever anybody is. She says, "You know, in the glove compartments of the cars, of all the nice cars that are parked right over to the side, or underneath the caps of certain men who are wearing baseball caps, just how much meth could you find? I don't know. Something I said to the soccer ladies about the lacerations around the girl's neck. It didn't look like it had been done with a wire, but rather a hemp cord which wasn't our boy's M.O. And besides, she was fifteen, not twelve, which was another red flag, so we handed it to the blues. The other moms never asked me under the umbrella again." Val>> Villatoro knows about living in two cultures. His father was from Appalachia, his mother from El Salvador. It was love at first sight. Marcos M. Villatoro>> My mother said, oh, those green eyes that man had. Green is a very loving color in Central America and my dad had those green eyes. Dad didn't speak Spanish and mom didn't speak English, so they got married. Within a year, they were married and, within the year, they were married and got on the back of a Harley Davidson and rode across back to Tennessee. One of nine trips across the country on the back of a Harley Davidson. Val>> And like his parents, Villatoro has meshed two cultures in poems like this one called "The Holy Spirit of My Uncle's Cajones". Marcos M. Villatoro>> "He broke all the sacred laws, drinking Jim Beam from the bottle and smoking homemade joints thicker than his electrician's thumb." Val>> Villatoro started his formal writing training late in the game in his mid-thirties. By then, he was married with four kids, but he decided to apply for a coveted spot in the most competitive and prestigious writing program in the country, the one every aspiring writer dreams of, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he got in. It was a stressful two years, he says, but worth it. Marcos M. Villatoro>> What happens is, every Monday afternoon, there are workshops where you hand out your poem or your short story and people eat it for lunch (laughter). You can bring swords in if you want (laughter) as in swords as in your pen, but leave your ego at the door because there's no place for it here. Marcos M. Villatoro>> "Thanks, clan. Oh, I got to show you one of my many New Yorker rejections." Val>> Today's lesson is also about leaving your ego behind. Marcos M. Villatoro>> "We're sorry to say that this manuscript is not right for us in spite of its evident merit. Unfortunately, we are receiving so many submissions that it is impossible for us to reply more specifically. We thank you for the chance to consider your work." Okay, now that's Xeroxed, right? But somebody at the New Yorker wrote, "Good story. Thanks." When I received this, I went "The New Yorker. There's somebody at the New Yorker who thought my story was good." Val>> For Villatoro, teaching at this Catholic college is a perfect fit. Marcos M. Villatoro>> It's been a tremendous match. In fact, the Romilia Chacon novels started coming out when I came here, so I have dedicated all the novels thus far to the students of Mount St. Mary's College, to my writing students especially. Linda Ignarro>> I was so upset that I had to take a writing class. I'm an English major. It's required and I was like, no, I don't want to take a writing class. But the first day of his class, he became my favorite teacher. I love him and now I want to be a writer because of him. Kiran Rawat>> When I'm sad or happy or I just had a moment or anything, I could just take a piece of paper at my computer and just go off on it. He calls it vomiting. You just throw up on your laptop everything that comes out. If it's making sense, you don't think about grammar, you don't think about anything. You just put your feelings down and you organize it later. Marcos M. Villatoro>> At some point, Romilia is starting to gain a little weight. So one of my students said, well, okay, if you want her to gain weight, have her throw herself on the bed so that she can button her jeans and then wiggle like this (laughter). I never would have thought of that. Marcos M. Villatoro>> "If you get a Xerox rejection with somebody's handwriting on it, what do you think? How do you feel about that? What's going on?" Val>> No Los Angeles writing career would be complete without interest from Hollywood and, in fact, one of the Romilia Chacon novels has been optioned for television. In the meantime, it's the morning Villatoro loves the most, those four to five hours where rejection letters are miles away and there's only the sound of typewriter keys tapping life into a soccer mom detective in search of killers and good pupusas. 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've all seen them, drivers who are doing everything except paying attention to the road. Well, now Life and Times commentator, Cris Franco, gets behind the wheel and gives us an amusing look at ourselves. Cris Franco>> You won't believe the results of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's recent survey on distracted drivers. Here's what we drivers confess to doing as we propel our two-ton chariot at blinding speeds down crowded highways and streets. Cell phones are extremely distracting and they're all over the road with one in four drivers talking on them at any given time. Well, you've got to be constantly on your cell phone when you're only catching every other syllable that the driver is saying. I'm telling you, it's very distracting. Sixty-six percent of motorists adjust the radio. This distraction will only increase once we have satellite radio and we're going to spend all our commute time surfing the three thousand channels. Let me see, in search of our oldies station. Whoa! I don't need the radio because I sing in my car. In the shower, I'm Pavarotti, but in my car, I become Whitney Houston. Forty-nine percent of motorists eat while driving. Guilty. Although I wouldn't recommend it. Believe me, it's hard enough to keep your breakfast down and the fried hash-brown patty things after a near head-on collision. Smoking and driving is also a not advisable thing. Take it from me, it's hard to maneuver your car. It's really hard to maneuver your car. Hey, watch it! Thirty percent reads while driving. Maps, phone numbers, reports, even books. Read while driving. Oh, my gosh, he got in a car accident. And as much as we love them, twenty-five percent of drivers said that their concentration is pulled away by fussy children in the back seat. I don't have children specifically for this reason. A few people actually pray while on the road. Not a bad idea when you hear this next alarming statistic. Thirty-seven percent of drivers admitted to falling asleep at least once while driving. Thirty-seven percent. So what are they driving? A 2002 Posture-Pedic? And I understand this even less. One-fourth of all female drivers have put on makeup using the rear view mirror as their private vanity. I'm telling you, if I ruled the world, any man or woman putting on makeup while driving would immediately be taken to jail. At least they'd look good for their mug shots. If those driving distractions don't rock your world, how about this? Now your cigarette lighter can power your in-car toaster, microwave, crock pot, waffle iron or blender. So when you get pulled over by the CHP, you can hand him your ID and a banana daiquiri. Val>> I only put on makeup during red lights. 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. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val>> Next time on Life and Times -- The rediscovery of a significant work by a famous muralist raises the question: why was it painted over in the first place? >> A black man with a child, a white woman with a child, at the height of the Depression. These are messages that the authorities did not want conveyed to the masses. It was too provocative. Val>> That's next time on Life and Times. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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