California Capitolweek #527
((Jack))
The energy
crisis continues to drain billions of tax payer dollars. Some lawmakers and consumer advocates are
asking the Governor to show us the
money reveals the details of the cost of long term contracts.
Begin Soundbite
This is not
Governor Gray Davis’ money. This is the
taxpayers money.
End Soundbite
((Melissa))
Plus school
safety. It’s more than access to
guns. Why are some of our children so
violent and which ones are most at risk.
Begin Soundbite
We all have
conflicts. And its how we deal with it
that will determine whether it’s a positive resolution or a negative
resolution.
End Soundbite
((Melissa))
Hello, I’m
Melissa Crowley
((Jack))
And I’m
Jack Kavanagh…Those stories and more up next.
((Melissa))
Hello. Thanks for joining us. As the State continues to use the budget
surplus and the taxpayers money to purchase power long term, many Californians
would like to know the exact price tag.
Jack Kavanagh will have more on that later.
We begin
our continued efforts to try and prevent school violence. Legislation that would encourage students to
come forward about potential violence is moving through the capitol. The proposal would grant immunity to anyone
reporting a valid threat.
Begin Soundbite
((George Runner, Assemblyman (R)
Lancaster))
We need to
remove any hurdles that are out there that when it comes to the issue of
reporting of potential violence, especially weapons and bombings in our school.
End Soundbite
((Melissa))
Another
proposal is to set up an anonymous 1-800 tip line and third bill targets
“bullying” in kindergarten through the 12th
grade.
Each
school would be required to develop an anti-bullying program that includes
conflict resolution and counseling.
Some schools already have peer outreach programs to try and prevent
“bullying” and violence on campus. We
visited one Central Valley school to see how this type of program works.
SCHOOL SAFETY PACKAGE
((Student))
A
lot of rumors and students not communicating with each other very well.
((Student))
There’s
a lot of rumors. He said she said.
((Counselor))
I mean it could have just been, she called me a name, he called me a name.
Harassment.
Everyday stresses
including school and peer pressure can sometimes lead to conflicts among kids,
but at Laguna Creek High School in Elk Grove, just outside of Sacramento,
students are stepping in to help
((Dave Platt, Laguna
Creek High School))
You
know, I’ve trained them. I’ve done
conflicts for nine year, but its not – when you have a quality youth who can
sit down, work with them and have got the skills, they are going to get so much
out of it than when an adult does it.
Counselor
Dave Platt works with a group of more than 30 students called “conflict
managers”.
((Dave Platt, Laguna Creek High
School))
Teachers
make a recommendation; looking at students who are not 4.0 students, not
students that are goody goody but students that are seen as leaders.
And that goes through special
training
((Marcello Frazier, Student Conflict
Manager))
Whoo, I
must admit that it was a hard process.
It’s always he said, she said – they don’t know how to deal with each
other. They don’t know how to deal with
each other. They don’t know how to talk
with each other. Most of the time they
come in or they are referred to conflict management and they have a chance to
talk with one another with one of the conflict managers in there to discuss the
problem and to work it out.
A group of conflict managers showed
us how they handled these very pressing issues.
((Conflict Manager))
Daryl, why
don’t you go ahead and tell us your problem.
((Daryl))
Alright,
well, I have a math class with Stephanie, and I’ve been hearing these rumors.
((Conflict Manager))
Is this
true, your boyfriend wants to fight Daryl?
((Stephanie))
I don’t think that. I think he’s just
talking
((Student Conflict manager))
So, your
boyfriend kind of came into it because you’re upset? So, that’s the gist of everything that’s basically going on? What we are going to get you to try to do is
get you to sign a contract to make sure that this conflict stops and doesn’t
start up again.
((Dave Platt, Laguna Creek High
School))
It can be
as what we see as very little, but in each student’s mind that’s the biggest
conflict on the planet, because it’s there’s.
The key, for Conflict Management, is it’s just a critical program, and
it should be on every campus, and it should be student focused.
Student Sherise Kemp
says that the group’s presence on campus does make a difference.
((Sherise Kemp))
Because
it seems a lot of students whenever they do have a problem some of them will
say we will just go to conflict management instead of fighting.
END SCHOOL SAFETY PACKAGE
((Melissa))
This
type of prevention and intervention program is one way to try and stop
violence, but are there other ways to get to the root of the problem?
Joining
us now Dr. Judith Reisman, author of the “Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences”
report for the U.S. Department of Justice and Paul Seave, former U.S. attorney
and current manager of the crime and prevention center in the California
Department of Justice.
Thank
you both for being with us.
Dr.
Reisman, the frightening part is that school violence, actually violence can
incur anywhere in today’s society.
((Dr. Judith Reisman, Institute For Media
Education))
People
have been telling themselves for years that this is a lower echelon, lower
level problem. Something that occurred
only with underserved children, but as they look around their lovely suburban
schools of course they are recognizing that the profile can fit any
school. It can fit the upper suburban
school as well as any other school, but recognizing my position, in the
Institute for Media Education, I would argue that we would not solve these
problems in any way, shape or form until we address the way in which our
general society is treating violence, is treating sexuality issues. We had 4,200 children reported as rape
victims, as battery rape, sexual battery victims just in school in 1996
reported in one of the D-O-J reports so this violence perpetuates itself in a
whole broad spectrum of ways.
((Melissa))
Paul,
what are we learning in terms of what Judith is saying and you have been a
prosecutor and have seen these crimes escalate in the court rooms.
((Paul Seave, California
Department of Justice))
What
we are learning; what we’ve been learning for the past ten years is to start
thinking in terms of what is causing this violence is risk factors. In other words, there is not a single
cause. There is not a simple
explanation. It’s like someone who has
heart disease or may have heart disease.
The more risk factors he has—overweight, high blood pressure, doesn’t
exercise and so forth—the more likely they are going to have a heart
attack. We can’t say that he will but
it’s a greater likelihood. It’s the
same with violence especially among youth.
And the risk factor starts unbelievably at age 0 and even while the
child en utero. If a pregnant woman is
taking drugs or alcohol, that can cause mild level of brain damage or
worse. Harsh parenting, let alone,
abuse or neglect is a risk factor.
Domestic violence - this is a new approach; the child doesn’t have to be
subjected to violence, simply being exposed to violence affects the development
of the brain in the first 5 years.
((Melissa))
So
should we change – When we talk about prevention now, we just saw our story on
teens trying to prevent conflict. Is that too late or is that still effective,
but we need to sort of rethink our preventive efforts?
((Dr. Judith Reisman,
Institute for Media Education))
Well,
I would agree with everything that Paul has said but I have to add that one of
the major risk factors, and we knew this since1972 in the Surgeon General’s
report on television violence, has been the media. And I know that this is something that’s a huge taboo that people
are grappling with, but we have allowed the media to have such widespread
availability. We have media in which
these young boy killers get their picture on the paper; they get their pictures
on television; they get their pictures on “Time” magazine; they get their name
known everywhere; this is one of the most exciting things that have ever
happened to them. And we know that this
is a huge risk factor and certain kinds of kids wanting to imitate that and
have that kind of opportunity. We have
to stop that. We can’t have their
pictures out there and we can’t use their names.
((Paul Seave, California Department of
Justice))
Now,
traditionally, we have been aiming our programs to children who are at least
six years old and older and especially in junior high and high school. I think we have to rethink the way we are
spending our money on prevention to really start in the first five years of
life. At that time, if we can start
fixing it there, we’ll get more bang for the buck there than if we wait until
the child has already been exposed to a lot of risk factors by the age of five,
and we’re already behind the eight ball there.
I think the Department of Justice—we are already talking to the
California Department of Education with whom we have a partnership, and we are
exploring how to shift down to from age 0 on.
((Melissa))
Okay,
one concern with that is when we look at the most recent case with the Santee
shooting with the suspect. He didn’t
have a record. He didn’t have any
outward aggressive signs. It was at
fifteen that maybe the grades started to slip a little bit, so how would we
know to sort of look for the sign? Are
the signs subtler? Are we keying in the
wrong signs? In other words, are we
looking at people who show a pattern of behavior when some of the deadliest
violence has occurred with teens that have no record?
((Paul Seave, California Department
of Justice))
There’s
no way that you can look at a particular person at a particular time and say,
“They’re going to be committing a crime.”
((Melissa))
So how
do we prevent it?
((Paul Seave, Calfornia Department
of Justice))
Well,
there are a number of general approaches.
One is, as I said, we start looking at programs to deal with youth
society-wide from age 0 on. Now, there
are also programs in schools. When you
get to junior high and high school programs, there are anti-bullying
programs. Some have been scientifically
tested and have had some success.
There’s the idea of “code of silence.”
Youth may know that their friends are considering doing something like
what happened down in San Diego, and we can have programs that facilitate
people that have this knowledge telling authorities. That’s a very difficult issue, but we can work with that.
((Dr. Judith Reisman, Institute for
Media Education))
Paul,
now you’re talking about stepping in again, halfway down the road. Look, one of the biggest problems I see with
the violence issue in terms of the Department of Justice’s work is their
failure, in my view, to ignore the role of violent videos and that sort of
thing. Now, in Oklahoma they just
passed a resolution, a law, that they would ban violent videos from children of
a certain age, that sort of thing. I
don’t know all the details yet because I just read about it yesterday. We know that the violent videos and the
games that the children are watching—Lieutenant Dave Grossman’s been testifying
about this for years—we know that there are certain things that are triggering
young boys and—by the way, I don’t think we’ve had any girl killers yet, have
we?
((Melissa))
No, I
don’t think so. Now, is that more of a
parental role though?
((Dr. Judith Reisman, Institute for
Media Education))
Well now
that’s what I wanted to argue.
((Melissa))
Is that
more of a parental breakdown versus a system breakdown?
((Dr. Judith Reisman, Institute for
Media Education))
That’s
what I wanted to say. I don’t like the
idea that we are simply talking about shifting responsibility to, number one,
peer kids in the school and, number two, what we’re going to do in the
classroom, when, in my mind, we’ve undermined the role of parents for the past
twenty to thirty years.
((Paul Seave, California Department
of Justice))
Which
fits into the point I was making earlier that the Department of Justice, when
looking at risk factors, we feel that we have to start—I mean, the family is
where violence and the risk factors start, and we should be looking at zero to
five and then six and onward. Many of
the programs about schools and high schools—you asked about that. There are things that we can do there, and I
outlined two of them, but to really have an impact on violence prevention
before it happens, we need to get in at the beginning, and I don’t disagree
with you that a risk factor is what people see in the media. That is one of many risk factors.
((Dr. Judith Reisman, Institute for
Media Education))
The
Columbine killers, these kids did not come from hostile, overaggressive
parents, and I want to be very careful that the parents out there do not hear
that when they try to be disciplinarians with their children—appropriate
disciplinarians; I’m not talking about sadists, but as parents have been in the
past, appropriate disciplinarians—that they’re not going to worry, “Oh no, I’m going to turn this
child into a killer.” That is
absolutely not scientifically established at all. We know that over-permissive parents can produce these kinds of
children as well, but we have an over-permissive society, Paul. We have been corrupt, all of us, and we’ve
been passing that corruption on to the children.
((Melissa))
Paul, in our final
few moments, are we going to look at revolutionizing at how we prevent crimes
or our outreach efforts? Do we need to
totally change our approach?
((Paul Seave, California Department
of Justice))
Yeah, I
don’t know if “revolutionize” is correct, but I think a radical reconsideration
of how we do it. We spend very little
money on prevention versus money that’s otherwise spent on law
enforcement. The focus has been on the
later years. I’m hopeful, and I know
that the Attorney General Bill Lockyer passionately believes that prevention
has to become a much bigger priority than it is, more money has to be spent
there, and we have to get in on the front end and not wait until there’s a
problem.
END DISCUSSION ONE
((Melissa))
Thank
you very much. On that note, we are out
of time. Dr. Reisman and Paul Seave,
thank you very much. Here’s what some
other people had to say when we asked them what factors lead to violence.
Begin Soundbites
((Woman #1))
I don’t
think metal detectors—I think they’re extreme, but I think they need something
because it’s so easy to sneak that stuff into school.
((Woman #2))
I think
that if we had smaller schools with smaller school populations, we would have a
much better chance of knowing everyone, where they came from, and what their
home situation is, tracking people.
((Woman #3))
I think
it really has to start with the entire society. At this point, you can’t just put it on the school system. You have to look at what the parents are
doing, what’s on TV, what’s in the movies, the video games.
End Soundbites
((Jack))
Time now
for “At Issue,” our inside look at what’s going on behind the scenes at the
Capitol. “At issue” this week? What else, the energy crisis.
Pressure is mounting on Governor Davis to release details on the
billions of dollars in taxpayer money spent on buying electricity.
One lawmaker says he’s prepared to sue the governor to get that
information
Begin Soundbite
((Assemblyman Tony Strickland, [R]
Thousand Oaks))
This is not
Governor Gray Davis’ money. This is the
taxpayer’s money, and they have the right to know how much it’s costing them to
keep the lights on.
End Soundbite
((Jack))
The
Governor says releasing those details could hurt the state’s bargaining power
in on-going negotiations.
The legislative analyst’s office estimates the state has spent
more than 3 billion dollars buying power.
That tab is growing at the rate of about 45 million dollars a day.
Meanwhile, a major announcement from the Governor to possibly help
ease consumers’ pain.
The Governor is trying to avoid summer problems with a new “20-20”
conservation program.
Customers
of the three major California utilities will get a 20 percent rebate if they
cut their electricity use by 20 percent.
The
Governor says it could save enough energy to power more than 2 million
households and save the state more than one billion dollars.
How
do you qualify?
If
your electricity use this year, between June first and september 30, is 20
percent below last year's during that same period, then you get the rebate.
Again, the
rebate applies only to customers of Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas
and Electric and P-G and E
The money
will be covered by the state fund that is used to buy emergency power.
Joining us
now for more on the energy crisis,
Dan Schnur,
Republican political consultant,
and Gale
Kaufman, Democratic political consultant.
Let me just
throw it out on the table. Have we
found the solution?
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
We—
((Jack))
Is this
20-20 energy program just going to do it?
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Well, a couple
of things. Number one, Davis is saying
this rebate program is going to be paid for out of the same fund that he is
using to pay for electricity that the state has already bought, that he's going
to use for electricity that he has yet to buy, and that he is going to use to
purchase the grid. By my rough math, he
has spent 25 to 30 billion dollars of the 10 billion dollar bond that Congress
approved this year. This is the kind of
thing that Congress is passing a bankruptcy bill against.
((Jack))
Because we’re just—
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Because
every new program on Gray’s part comes out of that same pot of money. What he’s doing, and it’s actually fairly
politically clever, is he’s staying in the headlines as someone who is trying
to do something about the crisis.
Buying the grid doesn’t have anything to do with solving the
crisis. Buying long-term deals doesn’t
have anything to do with this summer’s problem, and attempting a rebate program
like this is tangentially relevant to this summer, but only tangentially, but
by staying in the headlines day after day after day, when the lights do go out
this summer, the people of California are going to have seen many months of
evidence that Davis has been active and involved and so on.
((Jack))
Dan says
it’s just window dressing. Is it?
((Gale Kaufman, Democratic Political
Consultant))
Well, I
don’t know, and I won’t do any math, but I will say it’s very confusing what’s
going on right now, and if I was a consumer just up for one of those
rebates—although, just listening to you, I learned I’m not up for a rebate
regardless of what I do, but if I was, unless you tell me what that means—How
do I conserve twenty percent, and what’s that really going to mean for me over
a three month period of time?—I don’t know if he’s done anything to solve the
problem or not. I don’t know if people
can do what he is suggesting. Just this
morning, the Energy Secretary said regardless of what we do, there’s going to
be blackouts this summer, and that flies in the face of what the Legislative
Analyst said yesterday in California and what the Governor, it sounds like, is
trying to say as well. So, is any of
this solving the problem? I don’t know
if anybody knows.
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political Consultant))
Jack,
almost no one believed the Legislative Analyst. It’s becoming increasingly clear that there are going to be
blackouts this summer, so politically speaking, the question is not whether
there will be blackouts or not because there will be. The question then becomes, “When the lights go out, whose fault
is it?”
((Jack))
So it’s
politically managing the blackouts at this point? Is that what you’re saying?
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Not so much
managing the blackouts, but building a wall of protection. If Davis is on television several times a
week doing something, anything about electricity, the people around him are
hoping that it offers him some level of protection from criticism when the
lights go out because they can point to all that activity—
((Gale Kaufman, Democratic Political
Consultant))
I am shocked that you would be so cynical—
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
We’re
gambling right here at KVIE.
((Gale Kaufman, Democratic Political
Consultant))
(Laughs)
That’s right. I would say that what
they’re trying to do is keep from having blackouts, and I really think because
everybody—
((Jack))
By keeping the issue out on the top burner all the time—
((Gale Kaufman, Democratic Political
Consultant))
And maybe
it does look like there is a new solution every fifteen minutes, and in some
respects, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing yet because, hopefully, one of
these things or a combination of them will mean that we’ll be less likely to
have the blackouts, and if we have them, they will be for a shorter period of
time, and they’ll cause less damage.
((Jack))
The late—
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Gray Davis
in 2002, sound and fury signifying nothing.
There’s your bumper sticker.
((Jack))
The late
B.T. Collins used to always make the point that a bond is a tax. When you think about it, you issue a bond,
but the state’s taxpayers have to pay that bond back plus interest. Now, if we’re financing the purchase of
power right now, if financing the reduction of rates in San Diego, if we’re
thinking about financing the purchase of the transmission lines, if we’re
thinking about financing a state power authority, that’s all on my credit card,
and I have no idea what the costs are.
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Well, and
that’s the worst part of it. You know,
we saw the news clip from Tony Strickland, the state assemblyman, for not
making the details of these deals available.
Secretary of State Bill Jones came out this week making the same
criticism. More worse for Davis, the
state’s largest newspapers—The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle,
The Sacramento Bee, and so on down the line—are also demanding that information. The lesson for Davis in all this, and you
can go all the way back in political history from Watergate through Whitewater
through Teapot Dome, is that the cover-up is always worse than the crime, and
the more a politician, any politician even if they are trying to do legitimate
good, the more it appears that they are trying to hide things from the
public. That’s never good news.
((Jack))
Okay, Gray
Davis is not trying to do a cover-up.
That’s probably too strong, too strident a term, but don’t you have
members on your side of the aisle who say, “Look, we want to know what these
numbers are.”
((Gale Kaufman, Democratic Political
Consultant))
Yeah, I
think everybody wants to know what those numbers are, and I don’t think that
there’s any reason to think that we won’t know. We have a budget process coming up. We have bonds to be sold.
At some point along the way, everyone will know what this is costing,
and I think that this is so political at this point, and everybody all over the
place, whether it’s the legislature or you break it by party, everybody is
trying to get a piece of the action, and I think by the Governor trying to keep
some measure of control over the situation.
You may not like the way he is doing it, but at least he’s in charge and
trying to get a handle on his piece.
You know, I would say that just so that I can keep up on all this, I’m
reading what the US Senate is trying to do and trying to figure out if that has
any relevance. Is anybody talking to us
here in California to see if the actions that we’re trying to take will help
us, will hurt us? You know, this is
getting more and more complicated, and I was hoping that it would get easier to
understand, and that’s just not happening, so it’s easy to say, “tell us the
truth,” and I think everybody has said, “Tell us the truth,” but what is the
truth at this point that we’re trying to get at? It’s very complicated.
((Jack))
The state
of New York has a policy where it does not reveal the costs of actual long-term
contracts for six months. I think
that’s probably where California is getting the idea.
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Davis and
his spokespeople have made it clear that although some of the details will be
made available once the deals have been signed, some of the deals will never be
made public, and they talk about compromising their negotiating position, and I
guess I would argue that while it is true that Democracy is the least efficient
form of government, there is an obligation on the part of elected officials to
disclose relevant information when they’re spending these amounts of taxpayer
money, and Davis’ people have made it very clear that some of that information,
by their intent, will never be made available.
((Jack))
There have
been charges, as far as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, that there
may have been some collusion. In fact,
the FERC has ordered major generators to refund something like 10 million
dollars. If that is—and the people on
this program have referred to the energy industry as a “cartel” in some
respects. Don’t you think that the
generators themselves have a pretty good ballpark idea of what their
competition is bidding for these long-term contracts?
((Gale Kaufman, Democratic Political
Consultant))
Oh
yeah. Absolutely. I think they know, and I think that goes to
Dan point that at some point I think it will become public what everybody is
paying for this.
((Jack))
If the
generators know or have a good idea, and Gray Davis knows, why can’t we know?
((Dan Schnur, Republican Political
Consultant))
Well, that’s
exactly right, and to their credit, the Davis people did say this week, albeit
after Bill Jones went out and made the point first, that they would begin to
look for a way to share some of this information with the legislative
leadership, much in the same way the President of the United States shares
information related to national security with certain select members of
Congress under the understanding that it won’t become public, but for the
media, for the general public, if they were spending billions of dollars in tax
money, if they were raising taxes by that amount, that’s the kind of
information that we should demand. The
same holds true here.
((Jack))
On that
note, we’ve run out of time. We have
got to continue this conversation in our next meeting. It looks like we are not finding a real end
to this energy crisis any time soon here in California.
Thanks for
joining us.
We would
like your thoughts on this topic:
Do you
think the Governor should disclose details on state power purchases?
Here’s
where to send your feedback and where to get more information on the energy
crisis.
END @ ISSUE
(( Melissa ))
Time now
for feedback from last week’s program.
On helping
increase our state power supply . . Len from the Sacramento writes:
“Why hasn’t
California investigated the possibility of bringing electrical generating ships
to San Francisco Bay and hooking them into the power grid?”
Lee from
Stockton writes:
“ The
destruction of California seems assured unless population growth is stabilized.”
((Jack))
Casey from
Modesto responded to our segment on school violence. He writes:
“It is not
the people who are failing the systems, but the systems that are failing the
people.”
(( Jack ))
That’s all
the time we have for this week.
Next week,
ongoing coverage of our energy crisis.
((Melissa))
Find out
why some are saying solar is our state’s best hope.
Until then,
thanks for joining us.