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Life & Times Transcript
8/17/07 This coverage is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- One more reason to get hot under the collar over gas prices. Judy Dugan>> It's the equivalent of going into a grocery store and watching your grocer put the thumb on the scale for every purchase. It's not that much money per purchase, but it is unfair. It may be legal, but it's not fair. Val Zavala>> And then, how do you make a great painting? Sometimes even a great artist like Ed Moses can't tell you. It's all straight ahead 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. Val Zavala>> We pay enough for gas these days without being ripped off. So when we learned that consumers may not be getting all the gas they're paying for, we looked into it. It has to do with gas expanding in hot temperatures, so that gallon of gas may not be a full gallon. Sam Louie explains. Sam Louie>> Freddy Chulo is a trucker who spends most of his time on the road. He enjoys crisscrossing the country and getting paid for it. Freddy Chulo>> I've been driving for eight years now, seeing new places like last summer when me and my wife went to Niagara Falls, get to see beautiful America. Sam Louie>> But Freddy is also seeing something else interesting, inequities at the pump. Depending on where he fills up, he says there can be quite a difference in the amount of fuel coming out of the nozzle. Freddy Chulo>> In other states, like hotter states like Arizona and Nevada where the temperature is really hot, the fuel expands more. So when it comes out of the pump, you're not getting all what you paid for. You're getting skimmed. Sam Louie>> It's known as "hot gas". Judy Dugan>> It's a simple issue. It is simple science. Any liquid expands as it gets hotter, so you're getting less energy per gallon when the gasoline goes in above sixty degrees. Sam Louie>> Judy Dugan is with the consumer watchdog group, Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. She's working to put an end to the hot gas problem. Judy Dugan>> That means a loss to motorists of about $2.3 billion dollars a year. In California alone over the course of a year, the loss is four hundred fifty million dollars. Sam Louie>> For someone like Freddy Chulo, a business owner with three trucks, the possible loss of fuel can be crippling. He estimates that he spent a total of forty-five thousand dollars last year in diesel fuel alone. Freddy Chulo>> You'll still be making money, but at the end of the month, you really see the numbers and you wonder if it was worth it or not. Sam Louie>> The crucial point is sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Gasoline sold above sixty degrees is considered hot gas. Currently, the practice is legal, but critics consider it questionable behavior and retailers are compensated for selling it. Judy Dugan>> At the other end of the chain as it comes out of the refinery, as it goes into the underground tanks at the retailer, the volume of gasoline that's delivered is adjusted for temperature. If it's above sixty degrees, some more gasoline goes into the tank to make up for it. The only people who don't get a little more by volume when gasoline is hot are you and me, the consumers. Sam Louie>> Some gas stations have warning labels to educate the public about the impact of temperature on gasoline, but consumer watchdog groups believe more needs to be done such as installing temperature-regulated gas nozzles. Judy Dugan>> Well, other countries, for instance, Canada do regulate their fuel by temperature. They have nozzles on the pump that measure the temperature of the fuel going into the tank and add more or less for temperatures above sixty degrees and below sixty degrees. Sam Louie>> And until that's done, Dugan feels that all drivers are being taken. Judy Dugan>> What it is is the equivalent of going into a grocery store and watching your grocer put the thumb on the scale for every purchase. It's not that much money per purchase, but it's unfair. It may be legal, but it's not fair. With the grocery, you can say, "Oh, I'm not going to shop there anymore", but with gasoline, you have no choices. Mary Wilson>> A store clerk putting a thumb on a weight when people buy produce is, I would assume, breaking the law. What these dealers are doing is not breaking the law. They're abiding by the current laws and regulations. Sam Louie>> Mary Wilson is with the California Independent Oil Marketers Association which represents the independently owned gas stations. Mary Wilson>> There needs to be some education about the fact that these stations are actually owned by independent dealers that may just own one station. So first, there's that. Secondly, the retailers that are currently, they are selling according to regulations. There are no laws being broken based on how we're currently selling it. Sam Louie>> Wilson also feels that the public is misinformed when it comes to the actual amount of fuel lost from higher temperatures. Mary Wilson>> For every twelve gallon fill-up, if there's a temperature deviation of five degrees, it amounts to a one tablespoon difference in a twelve gallon fill-up. My point is, if you don't top off your vehicle and have spillage out of your car, you're going to gain that one tablespoon back. Sam Louie>> Selling fuel above sixty degrees has been a practice that goes back decades. Wilson is not against making modifications, but first -- Mary Wilson>> Let's do a study. It has been a historical practice. So let's do a study. If it's got a huge impact on the consumer, then let's make changes, but make changes in a way that does not completely disrupt some of these small dealers. Sam Louie>> Wilson also points to the gas additive, MTBE, as an example of moving too quickly. Mary Wilson>> MTBE was added to fuel as an oxygenate and it was mandated. Then there was this, you know, big blow-up that, well, MTBE is not good for us. Sam Louie>> If the same were to happen now with temperature-regulated gasoline, it could be quite costly for station owners. Mary Wilson>> If you own one station and you're making your money really in the convenience store, it's a lot of money and it's the upfront money, you know. They're not going to get to pay the vendor to install it over every gallon they sell through it. They're going to pay for it up front. When you are a small business person, that's something to be considered. Freddy Chulo>> "When we get there and we'll get there safe and we'll do the two drops first and go check into the hotel and go sit by the poolside, huh, Armando?" Sam Louie>> In the meantime, truckers like Freddy Chulo with a wife and son to support are heading to Vegas together. Freddy Chulo>> I got my family in my truck right now. We're on our way to Las Vegas, Nevada. That's how I spend time with them when I'm working for a long period of time away from home. I bring them with me just to spend quality time together. Sam Louie>> At least in Vegas, he knows it's a gamble. Losing a little money isn't like getting short-changed at the pump. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. 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>> It seems like every week we open the paper and there's another scandal on Wall Street, whether it be insider trading, back-dating stock options or overstating profits. But who's the person in charge of keeping Wall Street honest? Well, that big job goes to the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Chris Cox, who is also a long-time Congressman from Orange County. We talked with Chairman Cox when he was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. Chris Cox, you have a big job. You are in charge of basically keeping Wall Street honest and these guys are ambitious, smart, some of them are greedy. It seems like every week we read that they're trying to get away with something on Wall Street. Are these guys out of control and how do you rein them in? Chris Cox>> You know, whenever there's a lot of money, a lot of other people's money, there's a lot of temptation that's built into what is otherwise a wonderful system that we have. We want to keep all the good parts, but we want to police it. So we have a specialized police force when it comes to securities trading because the subject matter is so complicated. We want to make sure, though, that the basic principle that we observe in all the rest of our civil society, putting a cop on the beat to preserve law and order, applies in our capital markets as well. The reason that it's so important is that markets require investor confidence in order to work at all. So if we want all the job-creating benefits, all of the economic growth, all the wonderful things that capital markets produce for us, then we've got to make sure that investors can have confidence that it's on the level. Particularly when the SEC becomes involved, we're talking about ordinary investors, not big institutional investors, hedge funds or what have you, although they're all important. We look after all investors' interests, but particularly we want to make sure that what sometimes is referred to as the little guy, although maybe the little guy has a lot of money to invest these days. But we want to make sure that the average retail investor knows that the insiders don't have some edge so that it's always heads, they win and tails, he or she loses. Val Zavala>> That's why the SEC was created in the first place, to assure investor confidence. So when you go after someone, are you basically nabbing the majority of the wrongdoers or are there a lot of people getting away with stuff for every one that you're able to successfully prosecute? Chris Cox>> Well, there is no question that, in a nation of three hundred million people, a lot goes on that the government doesn't know about. What we have to be sure of, however, is that everyone understands that there is a very serious risk that, if they take the law into their own hands, they probably will get caught. We want to make sure that, when we do catch people, people know about it. There's a big deterrent effect that we expect to achieve through our penalties and through our prosecutions. Val Zavala>> That's why it's pretty important sometimes to see the corporate executive actually, you know, in handcuffs taken off to jail even though that's often criticized as theater, but you're saying it actually has a good purpose? Chris Cox>> Well, that's true throughout our justice system. We always have to make sure there is fairness to the individual who's charged with an offense. It's not really about making an example out of people. We don't have that kind of a system in America. But we do have a system in which there is equal application of the law to everyone no matter how high you are up on that corporate ladder. If it turns out that you are responsible, that you are the one that broke the law, then you should be treated just as firmly by our justice system as anyone else. That's what the SEC does. Val Zavala>> Cox, a Republican, was appointed by the Bush administration which is commonly considered to favor corporations, yet his job is to support investors. Well, last month, the SEC wrote a brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of shareholders in an upcoming case, but the Bush administration effectively blocked the SEC's brief from getting to the high court. Have you found the cooperation from the Bush administration that you as Chairman of the SEC would like? Chris Cox>> Well, if you're talking about the Supreme Court case in Charter Communications that's going to be coming up in the next term, the Securities and Exchange Commission contributed our ideas to a brief to be found on behalf of the United States government. We looked at it from an investor protection standpoint, but because this involves banks and the banking system, the banking agencies also had interest as did the Treasury Department. Their interests were a little different. They're focused on the safety and soundness of the system and what third party liability would mean in those cases. So we had a different opinion about how a particular case should come out, but that's the way the Solicitor-General does his job. He takes the views of all the agencies and puts them together. I haven't yet seen what they're going to file, but I hope it will reflect to a significant extent some of the views that we passed on to them. As you know, the SEC took a very pro investor stance in that case. Val Zavala>> Now you have been a long-time representative of Orange County and, as you know, Orange County went through a terrible bankruptcy a few years ago. I understand that you are going to now look for ways to assure that municipalities, counties and cities don't get into that kind of trouble again? Chris Cox>> Absolutely. It's been eleven years since the Securities and Exchange Commission finished up its investigation of the debacle in Orange County with which we are all still very, very familiar. Now that's been followed up by the very recent events in the city of San Diego where the SEC has just concluded a securities fraud investigation, imposed sanctions and found that the city was in violation of the securities fraud laws. These are very, very expensive problems for not just investors, but also taxpayers. The municipal market is so big and so pervasive these days, $2.4 trillion dollars in municipal securities are outstanding right now. Val Zavala>> These are simply, to put more simply, the bonds that cities and counties issue to fund various projects. Is that correct? Chris Cox>> That's a big piece of it. But today, it isn't just governments. In many municipal securities, the sole source of repayment of the bond is the private activity of some private sector organization. For that reason, we need the same kind of information about these securities that we get about any other securities in our capital market, but that isn't so. For largely historical reasons, there aren't the same disclosure rules. There isn't the same protection for an investor who buys a municipal bond when it comes to accounting rules, information about the issuer, about the quality of management, about the value of the collateral and so on, that we have when it comes to corporate securities. So we want to level that up. Val Zavala>> And you hope to boost the level of disclosure that municipal governments or whatever have to provide to investors? Is that the key that would prevent something like that from happening? Chris Cox>> That's right. There is something called the Government Accounting Standards Board. They are an objective, neutral standard setter for accounting rules for governments and we want to make sure that those rules are observed uniformly so that investors can compare. If they have municipal bonds in their portfolios from different issuers, they need to know that apples and apples compare rather than have a whole cacophony of different rules set by everyone. Val Zavala>> Chairman Chris Cox, you've got a big job. Thank you very much for spending some time with us. Chris Cox>> Well, I enjoy very much being home again. I spend most of my time in Washington these days, but California is such a big and important part of our nation's capital markets. The SEC has a big presence here. Val Zavala>> Chris Cox was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. If you'd like more information on future events and speakers, you can go to their website at townhall-la.org. Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> He's been a central figure on the Los Angeles art scene since the late 1950s. He's eighty-one year old painter, Ed Moses, and he has two shows opening at the same time. Not bad in the art world where youth is often lauded over experience. Vicki Curry goes to the studio of Ed Moses where color is bursting from the walls. [Film Clip] Ed Moses>> I don't know what form it's going to take and I don't know until I see it, until I get it. Then I'm immediately bored. So that's what's kept me motivated. People say, "God, you're sort of amazing for such an old bastard." I said, "Because I've never lost that desire to discover and explore." Vicki Curry>> Ed Moses has been making art for more than half a century. Looking at his body of work, it seems he's concerned less with developing a signature style and more with the quest to try something new. Ed Moses>> These bled the edges which got softer edges. When I tried to make them precise earlier, they just weren't cooking. They just didn't look right. People say, "Well, you are always changing." I say, "No, I'm always mutating." I respond to other artists in responsive rebellion to them, showing them how to do it or how I would do it, but leads me into that, into something that I haven't seen. The thing is, can you make a painting that you haven't seen? Well, good luck. Vicki Curry>> Ed Moses' curiosity and drive led to a life-changing decision in the late 1940s that eventually landed him in the middle of the acclaimed Los Angeles art scene. He grew up in Long Beach and served as a surgical technician during World War II. He had planned to go to medical school, but that plan started to fall apart once he enrolled at Long Beach Junior College. Ed Moses>> But I had rotten grades. I probably had ADD, but they didn't have a term for it at that time. I couldn't memorize, I couldn't learn anything. This friend of mine said, "You've got to meet this art teacher. You've never seen anybody like him." Well, I hadn't. I'd just been around straight people all my life, feeling the person that was out of sync with everything, but trying to join in, you know. So I saw this guy and I immediately signed up and I had no talent, no ability and everybody was doing all this kind of stuff with drawing and I didn't know what the hell to do. Finally, I dipped them in and I just started moving them all over and nothing was happening. So I got my fingers and I did this big finger painting all over. So he put my canvas up there and said, "Now here's a real artist." Everybody looked at me and, from that time on, they all followed me around like I was a real artist and I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I still don't. To this day, I don't know what I'm doing. Vicki Curry>> He's the only one who thinks so. He enrolled in a Masters program at UCLA and had his first major exhibition before he even finished his degree. It was 1958 at the influential Ferus Gallery, home to a group of young artists who would go on to international acclaim: John Altoon, Billy Al Bengston, Wallace Berman, Ed Kienholz, Ed Roche, George Herms, Robert Irwin. Ed Moses>> It was a "bad boy" gallery at that time and we all thought we were great and everybody else was stupid. We all were very competitive and we'd show each other work. Vicki Curry>> Ed Moses has never looked back, but unlike many of his peers, he's focused almost completely on painting. Ed Moses>> Yeah, I'm sort of habitual now and I'm aggressive by nature and compulsive, so it's a kind of ritual maybe. Every morning, I paint. I was always sort of obsessive and I liked repetition. I thought, if I repeated it enough, something would break open, but I'm not trying to express myself. I'm trying to discover things. I'm more of an explorer for personal madness through physical paint on a canvas. I really like these. This is the first turnaround I've had. Vicki Curry>> Oh, really? Ed Moses>> Yeah, I've been working on these for about three months, but I like this one. This is going to be a honey when we take it in. Vicki Curry>> Moses says the materials and the process of working with them are as important to him as the final product. Ed Moses>> Because I never know what I'm going to do, what colors I'm going to use. I get out here and I say, "Oh, we'll do this." I did one day in black, as you see. Vicki Curry>> Oh, right. Ed Moses>> In a response. So I'm always rebelling to what I'm doing, thinking I'm going to get too comfortable with this, so I have a lot of things going. So I have to spoil a lot of canvas. I like to be like a writer used to be with a typewriter and he'd tear out and tear out. Then "Oh, yeah" and then that's his lead-in. Well, sometimes they do look amazing. I think, if you just put it out there, if you do it enough times, something will happen. Secret sauce will appear. Vicki Curry>> Moses seldom uses a recipe in his search for that secret sauce. His work has alternated between controlled and free-form. Ed Moses>> I have a hard time being out of control, but I like being out of control. Intellectually, I like the adventure. My psyche and my dream world doesn't like it at all. Terror is my constant companion. That's who I hang out with. That's who appears at four a.m. when I wake up with a start. I think this terror is always there for us, but we deny it, we cover it, we control, do all these kinds of things. So I decided to let it run rampant. But that's my obsession. I'm obsessed by this and trying to find something that I can go, "Wow", that's not organized. Sometimes when I do it, I just put it on the wall and walk away and leave it. Don't look at it, then come back and be surprised or horrified. That's what painting is all about. Does it have a presence? Was there some connection between you, the canvas and the paint that's authentic? That's great. I love looking at that one down there. That combination is extravagant. Vicki Curry>> Moses still paints every day, but even after all these years and all those paintings, his work still isn't easily recognizable. But Ed Moses just can't stop experimenting. Ed Moses>> I don't want to be a professional artist. I don't want this to be a job or something. I hate working. So what do you want to do? Well, I just want to flop around like a fool and maybe once in a while something goes boop or something like that and you say, "Wow, look at that.". 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. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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