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Life & Times Transcript

10/10/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Thirty-seven billion dollars is a lot of money. Are Californians ready to spend it?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "This proposition here will build more highways, more freeways, more tunnels and bridges, more on-ramps and off-ramps, everything."

Chuck DeVore>> There is a tremendous amount of pork in this measure that will not build roads or bridges.

Val Zavala>> And then, we'll show you Tinseltown before it sparkled, including the mother and father of Hollywood.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> 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.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

Val Zavala>> Call it the thirty-seven billion dollar question. Are California voters ready to approve the biggest building boom since the 1960s? Well, there are five bond measures on this November's ballot that would authorize billions for highways, schools, levies, housing and more. So are they a good idea? Well, Roger Cooper takes a look at the measures that you will have to decide on come November 7.

Roger Cooper>> The governor of California striding towards the microphones was accompanied by state and local officials, both Republican and Democrat. This spot overlooks the 405 Freeway in Sherman Oaks. It was ten in the morning and traffic was still backed up.

The governor chose this location to convince voters to approve a set of five bond measures. Together, they called for an unprecedented thirty-seven billion dollars to be spent on everything from roads, houses and port security, to levies, schools and mass transit. He says our present infrastructure was meant to serve only a much smaller population.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "We're going to have to start rebuilding California, create an infrastructure that is truly for thirty-seven million people rather than twenty million people. So the legislators, Democrats and Republicans, got together and we started working and negotiating and up came a thirty-seven billion dollar infrastructure package."

Roger Cooper>> Not since Pat Brown was governor back in the 1960s has such an ambitious investment plan been put forward. Brown is credited with building massive water projects, freeways and our state college and university systems. Are voters ready for another major investment? And just what would the five bonds do? Let's begin with 1A. Proposition 1A would require the gasoline taxes earmarked for transportation projects actually go for transportation instead of getting siphoned off.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "Which is very important that the transportation funding stays where it is, that government, the state legislators, cannot raid it every year."

Roger Cooper>> Republican Assemblyman, Chuck DeVore from Irvine, agrees.

Chuck DeVore>> So what Proposition 1A does is it kind of puts a firewall around monies that are supposed to go for transportation.

Roger Cooper>> But opponents argue that 1A would take away flexibility to make wide spending choices. By locking in tax monies, budget decisions would be put on autopilot. Then in hard economic times, cuts would have to be made in other areas like education, health care or disaster relief.

Next on the ballot is Proposition 1B which also deals with transportation. 1B would provide $19.9 billion to repair roads, build highways, improve mass transit, reduce congestion and air pollution and increase security at ports.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "This is why people are spending so much time in traffic and away from their families, so we want to change that. This proposition here will build more highways, more freeways, more tunnels and bridges, more on-ramps and off-ramps, everything."

Roger Cooper>> In this case, Assembly DeVore parts ways with the governor, calling Proposition 1B unneeded borrowing.

Chuck DeVore>> There is a tremendous amount of pork in this measure that will not build roads or bridges. It goes to ongoing funding of things like transit and things like transit ought to be funded with general fund money.

Roger Cooper>> But State Senator, Kevin Murray, a Democrat from Los Angeles, begs to differ.

Kevin Murray>> If you kind of just don't believe in mass transit, you could take that argument. But first of all, there is no pork in the transportation bond. Transportation monies going back a long way are distributed virtually by population.

Roger Cooper>> The next infrastructure proposal is the smallest of the five. 1C calls for $2.85 billion to be spent on low-cost housing for low-income people, shelters for battered women and seniors, as well as parks.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "Then Proposition 1C is affordable housing. As you all know, part of the American dream is to have a home and we want to make sure that we have more affordable housing in California."

Roger Cooper>> But Assemblyman DeVore is a prime opponent of 1C. He says that it's a drop in the bucket and won't make a dent in the affordable housing problem.

Chuck DeVore>> This is an expensive program that will benefit a teeny tiny small number of people in this state, a small number of people who will be determined by bureaucrats who make the decisions about who gets the money for these houses.

Kevin Murray>> We need affordable housing. The one thing we can't do, as much as we need developers to do, you know, profit making projects and keep our economy rolling, we can't leave our entire housing stock to the whims of whether or not it's enough profit for a developer.

Roger Cooper>> DeVore argues that, if you want to encourage home building, restrictions on developers should be like requiring less open space. As for Proposition 1C --

Chuck DeVore>> It talks a good game, but what it doesn't tell people is that, out of the $2.85 billion dollars debt, you have four hundred million dollars in parks that won't house anybody and up to a hundred fifty million dollars of state bureaucratic costs.

Kevin Murray>> Being a drop in the bucket is not a reason not to do it. I mean, the fact is, Democrats proposed a larger bond along with the governor. The governor proposed sixty-seven or sixty-eight billion dollars and the Republicans didn't want that much. So you can't then argue that it's not enough. The second thing is, yes, there are some parks in it, but one of the things we need in our communities are livable communities.

Roger Cooper>> Next on the ballot is Proposition 1D. 1D would spend $10.4 billion dollars on education infrastructure, repairing and upgrading public schools from kindergarten through state colleges and universities.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "That means ten of thousands of new classes will be built and tens of thousands more classes will be modernized. We also have money for expanding our universities and our community colleges."

Roger Cooper>> Once again, Assemblyman DeVore is a dissenting voice. He agrees that our schools need repairs, but questions who should pay for it.

Chuck DeVore>> I think, when you look at school bonds, the question that I would like people to ask themselves is isn't it better to have local control? If you have a local school district that is undergoing tremendous expansion or needs to recapitalize aging facilities, wouldn't it be better to try to convince local voters that they should encumber themselves with debt to build these new facilities?

Kevin Murray>> Post-proposition 13, the local people just don't have the flexibility to do it. You know, the question is do you want your education, the value and the quality of your education, decided by where you live? In a state like California, I don't think we do. Everybody knows we are way behind on infrastructure development in terms of schools.

Roger Cooper>> And last on the list is 1E. 1E would devote $4.1 billion for levy repairs, flood protection and disaster preparation, much of it in the Sacramento Delta.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "As you all know, we know that our levies are in worse shape than the ones in New Orleans, so we are literally one big storm or one big earthquake away from a major disaster."

Roger Cooper>> Opponents of 1E argue that the state can't afford the new debt. Once again, they say that local projects should be funded locally. And where does Assemblyman DeVore stand on this one? He supports 1E, but reluctantly.

Chuck DeVore>> Again, like the others, there's a tremendous amount of waste in it. There's a tremendous amount of money that will be spent on things like environmental litigation that will not save people or property from damage. But the reason why I'm supporting it is precisely because people may die if we don't support it.

Kevin Murray>> I mean, it's pretty self-explanatory, particularly given Katrina and the other natural disasters that have happened. What people in southern California don't necessarily realize all the time is that we have a series of levies up in northern California that not only protect the homes and businesses of the people in northern California, but protect the quality of our water supply.

Roger Cooper>> Governor Schwarzenegger is working hard to put his own positive spin on the bond measures to build and repair California's infrastructure, but whether he will be as successful as his predecessor, Governor Pat Brown, is the question, a thirty-seven billion dollar question that can only be answered on November 7. I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> For more information on this measure and other measures on the ballot, you can go to the website for reliable and objective information.

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

Val Zavala>> In January of 2002, America's attention was riveted by the kidnapping of a Wall Street Journal reporter named Daniel Pearl. He was held captive for several weeks in Pakistan by Islamic fundamentalists. Then his gruesome murder, a beheading, was videotaped and put on the internet.

Now the story of Daniel Pearl's life and death is being told in a documentary on HBO called "The Journalist and the Jihadi". It chronicles Daniel Pearl's life and marriage, his love of music, his dedication to journalism and finally his brutal murder by Islamic terrorists.

Daniel Pearl's father, Judea, is a computer science professor at UCLA. I talked with him about how he's dealing with the death of his son. He put it this way.

Judea Pearl>> I'm an engineer and I'm a soldier, which means I have to have revenge and I have to do it in the most effective way available to me. I don't have armies, but I have some knowledge that I can use and I know that the cultural and educational means are for me to use in order to fight this.

Val Zavala>> It's interesting. You said revenge and yet you're using that in a very specific way.

Judea Pearl>> Only because I believe it is education and dialog that can be effective. If I did not believe that those methods would be effective, I would go back to tanks (laughter).

Val Zavala>> Judea Pearl was recently awarded the Purpose Prize, the hundred thousand dollar prize to people over sixty making a positive impact in the world. Judea has partnered with an Arab professor from American University, Akbar Ahmed. Together they go to campuses and other venues presenting an honest and frank Muslim-Jewish dialog.

Akbar Ahmed>> "We need to recognize, the Jewish people need to recognize, that the Palestinians have suffered and are suffering and feel under siege."

Judea Pearl>> Here we are sitting on a stage and we are confessing our grievances and trying to find a common ground. I am supposed to defend the sentiments of the Jewish community even though I'm not a rabbi or a political leader, and he is defending the Muslim community.

Val Zavala>> How did you meet?

Judea Pearl>> I was on a search and I called a few people and they told me you ought to give him a call and I did. We met in his office. It was like a call to understanding, to have a common understanding of history and where things are going. He even discussed Israel at this point and I discovered in his book a few nice words about Israel. Not really nice, but about the fact that Israelis too feel under siege. So this kind of empathy you rarely find from a Muslim writer which, to me, meant a lot. It meant that we could talk honestly.

Akbar Ahmed>> "We have to live together. I'm sure that happens. This is just going to go on and on and on."

Judea Pearl>> I think one of the facts was that infusive atmosphere of being willing to listen. I was impressed with the fact that we used these photographs behind on the stage. It sort of inspires an aura. You spend ten years of life trying to understand different people, a different culture and always expect a hand in friendship.

Val Zavala>> The dialogs are part of the mission of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. The Foundation also honored Daniel's love of music by sponsoring concerts and it brings foreign reporters and editors to visit and work in United States newsrooms.

Judea Pearl>> Hopefully, we bring to them, to the country of their origin, our economics and our ideas of the truth and fairness in writing.

Val Zavala>> They've also published a book of a hundred forty-seven essays by prominent Jewish leaders. It's called "I Am Jewish".

Judea Pearl>> My Danny's last words, you know, in his video. He was asked to recite. Apparently, the killers selected only those sentences which relates to his being Jewish. So you can hear him saying, "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish. Back in the town in Israel, there is a street named after my great-grandfather who was one of the founders of the town."

Val Zavala>> In the documentary, Daniel's mother tells the story of a dream she had even before she learned that her son was missing.

Ruth Pearl>> "I had a dream that Daniel was kidnapped and the dream was that he was in some kind of a troubled situation. He felt like he was going to die. It was a nightmare that I'd never experienced before. It was the first time that I'd had such a foreboding nightmare about Danny. I went to the computer and I sent him an email asking him to describe the situation and I wrote in parentheses "terrorists?" I asked him to answer the email. The dream was very likely as an omen that he realized he was kidnapped. It was 7:20 in the morning in Los Angeles and it was 8:20 in the evening in Karachi. Of course, he never answered."

Val Zavala>> The mastermind behind Daniel's kidnapping was a known terrorist, Omar Sheikh. Sheikh lured Daniel Pearl to a restaurant in Karachi pretending to be a contact for an important source on a story.

Reporter>> "Omar Sheikh, or Sheikh Omar, as Randall calls him, now holds the key to finding Daniel alive."

Spokesperson>> "We were able to identify Omar Sheikh as the individual who authorized the kidnapping."

Val Zavala>> In July 2002, Omar Sheikh and three accomplices were put on trial in a Pakistani court. They were found guilty of murder. Omar Sheikh was sentenced to death. Today, seventy year old Judea Pearl continues his work at UCLA, but his heart is in fighting the intolerance and hatred that fueled his son's murder.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> The documentary, "The Journalist and the Jihadi" airs tonight on HBO at eight p.m. For more information on the activities of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, you can go to their website at danielpearl.org.

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

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

Val Zavala>> Yes, there was a time when Hollywood was not all about making movies. It was in the early 1900s and now that chapter of Hollywood history is part of a new book. Vicki Curry talks to the author who also brings us some never before seen photos of Hollywood in its infancy.

Vicki Curry>> Greg Williams, you've written a comprehensive history of Hollywood which, of course, is known around the world for the movie business. But clearly, the history of this place goes back well before the movies. How far back does it go?

Greg Williams>> Well, I start with the Indians who lived here. Actually, they were here much longer than any of us have been so far. They were here thousands of years. In these canyons, we had pretty much the Chumash. There was also the Tongva closer to the Los Angeles area. They lived in family communities in these canyons and these canyons were pretty idyllic. Their biggest village right here through the Cahuenga Pass was over by where Universal Studios is.

That's how where the name Cahuenga came from because the tribe was known as the Cahug-Na. But the reason it's called Cahuenga is, when the Franciscan Fathers came through here, they simply wouldn't use the Indian name. So Cahug-Na became Cahuenga for the same reason that Kukamonga became Cucamonga. They just renamed it in their own kind of tongue, something that they could pronounce.

Vicki Curry>> That's when really the first changes started to happen to this area is when the Spanish explorers started to come through?

Greg Williams>> Yeah. Portola came through here bringing Father Junipero Serra and they came through this Cahuenga Pass which they called Camino Real. The pass was actually a notch that they could make a shortcut from Los Angeles on the way up north where they ended up in Monterey. So they came through this area and they pretty much colonized the Indians.

Then after that, there was this whole era of Californios, which were actually native Spanish-speaking people who were indigenous here who were called Californios. They actually joined forces with the Americans who were coming across from the east coast to kick Mexico out of the area. The Californios had this wonderful kind of rancho lifestyle.

As a matter of fact, the first home in Hollywood was an adobe. This man named Don Tomas Urquidez had his adobe right at the foot of Outpost Drive. It was the first home and the Californios celebrated their pastores there and every May they had a fiesta. At one point, it was this wonderful cross-cultural event because the Americans would participate with the Californios in the Spanish tradition.

Vicki Curry>> As more Americans came in and this Californio era faded out, that's when really kind of the development of modern Hollywood started to begin?

Greg Williams>> Well, actually, early Hollywood was farmland. There was interesting thing because they were finishing the railroads to Cross-Continental and it came into Los Angeles, you know, I think it was about 1880. They discovered that, right in this area of Hollywood, they called it the frostless belt. Well, they found out that they could grow just about anything here. There was this man named Jacob Miller who started a farm out by Laurel Canyon and he grew the first avocado ever grown in the United States.

So right before it became Hollywood, there was nothing but farmland and they would grow these exotic fruits and vegetables. People would actually come from across the country to check out these farms and see what was growing. It was so amazing that, within the United States, they could grow such exotic produce.

Vicki Curry>> There's a couple that you really consider the mother and father of Hollywood that many of us have probably never heard of except maybe by the name of the street after them, the Wilcoxes. Tell me about them.

Greg Williams>> Well, there was a couple named Harvey and Daeida Wilcox and they came from Kansas. They came out here with everybody else. When the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe was finished, they came out to Los Angeles to develop land. They actually started in Los Angeles developing around USC. They developed a housing tract and made some money.

What happened was, they had a newborn son who died in infancy. Well, the couple was so bereft that just to kind of console themselves, they would take these drives in the country to see the countryside and see if there was any place else besides Los Angeles which they found a little too busy, a little too dirty. They would just come out and take the horses and drive around.

They came out to the area of Ivar, which is now Hollywood Boulevard, and they found a fig orchard with a barn to dry the figs. Daeida, the wife, thought, well, this will be perfect for her. She could work with the figs. Harvey was looking for a new housing development, so he actually started compiling different tracts all around the area. He ended up with about three hundred fifty acres.

It was when Daeida was taking a trip on the train back east that she met this woman named Mary Beck who had an estate in Illinois called Hollywood. She thought that name was wonderful. It connoted greenery and artistry and a sophistication, so when she came back, she told her husband they were going to call the tract Hollywood. He put it on the map and there it stayed.

Vicki Curry>> So Hollywood started really as a subdivision, so to speak?

Greg Williams>> Yeah, and Harvey Wilcox himself did all the streets by the compass, straight up and down. Everything between Franklin and Sunset, and La Brea and Gower are all Harvey Wilcox's original streets. They named them themselves. I love the story that they were sitting one day to try to figure out some street names and these two children walked by that lived in this canyon over here called Holly Canyon. The children were named Ivar and Selma, so they named two streets after them. That's why we have an Ivar and Selma in Hollywood.

Vicki Curry>> Daeida Wilcox was responsible for bringing Hollywood its first celebrity. Is that right?

Greg Williams>> Yes, she was. Her husband, Harvey, died in 1891. They actually lived in a small wooden ranch house at Hollywood and Cahuenga. She spent about eight years being land-poor. She just couldn't sell the real estate because there was a whole bust in Los Angeles real estate. She actually met this man named Paul Delapre who was a French painter of flowers. She gave him three lots at Cahuenga and Holly Boulevard and they built this wonderful Moorish mansion that was the Delapre House with gardens all around it. It became the first tourist attraction in southern California.

Vicki Curry>> However, this period of sort of suburban tranquility was short-lived because, very quickly, the movie business came in to Hollywood.

Greg Williams>> Yes. The movies found Hollywood and there was a lot of vacant land. A lot of actually empty orange and lemon groves, so they took them over and they started the movie business. We had Paramount at Hollywood and Vine and major movie studios all up and down Sunset.

The people who founded Hollywood at first were very upset. It totally shattered their tranquility. Once movies arrived, well, all the Hollywood Boulevard frontage just went up in value. At first, everyone in Hollywood was opposed to the movies because it just shattered what their dream of Hollywood was. Everyone of them who owned property sold out and made profits and went elsewhere (laughter) except for, unfortunately, Daeida Wilcox. She died in 1914 just right at the cusp before Hollywood became known as the movie capital.

In 1915, we had "The Squaw Man" come out directed by Cecil B. DeMille that was photographed at Hollywood and Vine, which was soon to be Paramount Studios, and Hollywood became known as the motion picture capital.

Vicki Curry>> And that's when it became the Hollywood that we know today.

Greg Williams>> Well, yeah. Even so, it's changed a lot. Hollywood has been morphing continually. I don't think anything has been here really longer than fifty years. It just seems to keep changing. We've lost a lot of the integral Hollywood buildings that were here with the movies and even the radio industry. If I had my way, I'd do it all in CG with computers and just try to go back and do it to the orchards and then do it to the houses and then do it to the movies and then do it to the radio, and then do what we have today. It would just constantly be changing.

Vicki Curry>> Greg Williams, author of "The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History", thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

Greg Williams>> Well, thank you, Vicki, for talking with me.

Val Zavala>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> 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.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

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