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tv   Book Discussion  CSPAN  August 11, 2014 1:30am-1:46am EDT

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globally influential shall. >> host: in the suburbs, the lawns got big, and now they've gotten smaller again, haven't they? >> guest: simple forces, one is just escalation of real estate value. now expensive to have the big lawn. and in this part of the country the price of water is going through the recover so people are reassessing that notion. property values drive these decisions, and property values are quite high in most parts of the united states. >> host: what do you do here at perrer dine. >> guest: teach urban and environmental policy at the school of public policy, and i teach quite a bit about resource politics and about water, for example, which is a big issue for us, and it's an urban issue as well as agricultural one. where there are no real distinctions. so, what is happening in the state is fascinating on many levels, not just because of the stresses, like the drought that is putting us into a crisis and making people actually think
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about our underlying institutions, which is useful, so never let a good crisis go to waste. it's also the case that california, by virtue of the size of its economy, by far the largest economy in the united states. it's on 0 global par, seventh or eight, up there with brases sill terms of its regulatory decisions, taking on air pollution, cleaning up tail pipes, cleaning up water. the stayed had a clean water act before the federal one, a clean air act before the federal one, coastal act before any other states. and it's been able to drive through those kinds of decisions. it's been able to sort of entrain the rest of the country because markets look to california because it's so large, most populous state. so california makes a decision, for example, to take lead out of gasoline. automakers are going to take it out across country and make it a decision to require catalytic
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converters. the whole country will turn -- if california makes a decision as the state did under arnold schwarzenegger, passing a law to cap and trade greenhouse cap emissions, that market will become quite powerful and influential. we also see other states in quebec and canadian province trying to join the california cap and trade system. so studying what happens here is a good way to see larger trends. another aspect is california's economy is very much oriented towards the rest of the world and the pacific basin. china and korea and japan, australia, and to latin america, are always at the forefront of the way in which we think about our relationship to the environment and the way in which we regulate it. we have problem here now. we success any cleaned up a lot of our smog evictions. we evicted most of the heavy industry. we cleaned up our cars and vehicles. the air is much cleaner now. now we have smog coming to us
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from china, not only blowing across the pacific, which they're noticing, but we have a lot of diesel engines coming through, chips that come 0 to the sport of long beach and los angeles and then trains and trucks that haul those goods off to chicago and kansas city, and we exported our smog but we're bringing it back in the form of the goods which are manufactured offshore. so, change is the way in which we have to regulate it. we have to can, how to decope with a globalized economy because we're not separate phenomenon it. >> host: you have talked about the tensions often involved in these issues, and one of those tensions is is the fact that california has done these things and led in several environment mayor areas but then lap is known as the land of excess, big houses, consuming energy, cars everywhere, highways and cars. >> guest: ya. everything you mentioned is true. and we have to remember that there are 18 million people in southern california in a place
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that arguably shouldn't support that many, and it's arguably the place where there shouldn't be a great city at all. no natural advantages. doesn't have a harbor, surround bid mountains and has no coal or iron orr and yet a great industrial city grew here and now a great post industrial city continues to pull people. southern california and los angeles in particular did this through desire and engineering and institutions, went out and found the water, found the energy, publicized itself quite well, and continued to do that. so, southern california has been able not only to succeed in economic and cultural terms but then to kind of ruin its success with too much success, and it has thus far been able to work its way through the stresses and continue to function. i think we're well equipped to continue to do that. in terms of cleaning up the air,
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this is emouse amount of innovation going on an enormous amount of innovation in materials of efficiency and turning toward an electric economy and cleaning up energy sources and streams, and then, for example in the area of water supply, southern california is utterly vulnerable because it built itself based on pulling water in from all over the western united states, and those supplies are, frankly, vulnerable, and quite questionable. and the region as a hole is trying to think its way toward solving those problems, and one interesting thing is simple police by ceasing to say we're a desert, there's no water here, we have to go out to wyoming and northern california to get our water, that's actually not a desert. it's a semi arid environment and snow pack and groundwater and a lot of water that we waste to the ocean that we could reuse, recycle, clean up the groundwater basin, and back more self-sufficient in this region. so, it is both true that the
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place is a land of excess and hopeless, but also true that's an enormous amount of innovation and clear-eyed assessment of our vulnerables here. so i have a mixed verdict burt it's really interesting thing to watch. >> host: by the way, how did that english garden in the frank geary house turn out. >> guest: quite lovely. snuck in a lot of subtropical plants. >> host: we have been talking with wade graham, american eades den, from minute kell to to central park. what our gardens tell us about who we are. this is booktv on location at pepperdine university. >> pepperdine's university's joel fox is next. he spoke about california politics and the politics behind his mystery novels. >> joel fox, you like to say you have a long rap sheet in california politic. >> guest: it is true. i go back to 1979, joining
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howard jarvis, the author of proposition 13 and the california tax row volt that swept the country. in fact in talking to marty anderson, who is economic adviser to ronald reagan, he said when proposition 13 passed it gave the reagan campaign some impetus to push forward with taxes as the lead issue. so i worked as howard's aide. was hired just after the campaign and traveled with mr. jarvis around the country. worked with him on a number of other issues issues and he passd awayin' 1986 and i took over as the president of his taxpayers' association. had that job for a decade. and involved in a lot of california ballot propositions along the way, and even since then, but then went out on my own to do some consulting. i have been a small business advocate, been involved in a lot of ballot measures in the state of california, and even worked
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in a couple of political campaigns. don't do that too often but i was 'osi director for richards reardon, the former mayor of los angeles when he ran for governor, unsuccessfully, against gray davis in 2002. but then i was a senior policy adviser for arnold schwarzenegger when he ran successfully against mr. davis the following year in the re-call election. so that -- and involved also with things in the los angeles area as well. >> host: has prop 13 over the long haul been successful? >> guest: well, if you poll it today, it has the same two to one support it had in 1978 when it passed. it did the main thing it intended to, kept people in their homes, from being taxed out of their homes and put controls on the tax structure. now you can talk to particular interests in california who will say it is not a good thing, but we asked the voters, the
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pollsters ask the voters. people who want to do away with it ask volters constantly whether they into go fur with a ballot measure but people are happy with what it did. >> host: has the proposition ballot infrastructure in california gotten out of hand? >> guest: well, it's certainly being used -- people think that if you have the money, all the money in the world, you can change the law in california. you can qualify a measure, if you have money. there's no question you can get enough signatures can the way the system works is you have to gert a certain amount of signatures within 150 days. it depends on how many people voted for governor in the last election. and then if you gather those signatures you're on the balloted and you have your campaign and go for it. however, a lot of studies have been done on this and while if you have a lot of money in the bank, you can probably qualify
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because you can hire sirring gathereres to get the signatures. but that doesn't necessariesly mean you pass the measure on the ballot. there have been a number of recent examples where a company wanted to change the law that benefited themselves and outspent their opponent 18 million to 100,000 and they lost. there's been a number of examples like that. so it's still -- the final decision is still in the hands of the voters, and they have, i think, for the post part, made good decisions on some of the measures that have come along, and it's still something that the voters seem to really relish here in california. constantly the public policy institute of california says, that do you think of the ballot measures what do you think of the initiative process? should we change it. always some sentiments to change it but then no one agrees on what the change should be. but 75% of the people say they like the initiative process.
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the legislature wishes they had those kind of numbers. >> host: joe fox, what's your connection to pepperdine. >> guest: i i teach one course a year in the school of public policy. i've been doing that for seven years now. with my connections in the political world in california i bring in a lot of folks from different aspects of life, from elected officials to reporters to bureaucrats, to give the students a slice of the real world they're across at the political -- i had the speaker of the state assembly, the lieutenant governor of california, and i try to reach out to everyone i can to bring them down here and do some -- to come to malibu for an afternoon, which is not a bad induce. >> host: who is zane rigby. >> guest: my lead, which in my mystery novel series, an fbi agent, senior agent in his
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50s, and he gets involved with couple so far two cases in which he has to solve not only a current modern day mystery and a murder, but something that involves an american president, palestine until the past of an american president, because that the only way he is going to solve the murder mystery. he has to solve that puzzle involving an american president. the fit one was called "lincoln's hand" and that is bases on the true story that there was an attempt to steal behind abraham lincoln's body 11 years after he was assassinated, and they actually opened up the see gov gus and pulled the coffin part away out before the were found and ran away. the people who guarded the tomb were so concerned there would be another attempt they moved the coffin around. someone once tabulated that president lincoln's coffin was moved 17 times. >> host: that's history historical fact. >> guest: i use historical fact as the basis of my stories and
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then embellish the modern day measure mystery. in fact for two years in the lincoln's tomb in springfield, illinois, there is a terrace and below theater race i would call it a cellular, and the coffin was just covered with bad planks and he was burred in the cellar before moving him back to the room where he is today. even as late as 1901 when his son-was still alive, they buried him again below the surface, stick feet, and they set up an alarm system from tomb to the caretaker's house and robert lincoln came in and shade that's not good enough. i want more protection. robert lincoln was an attorney who had work for mr. pullman, the pullman car fame, and mr. pullman, who wasn't exactly loved by everyone when he passed, decided he wanted to
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real request be protected. he was buried very deep and under concrete. robert lincoln said that's what we're going to do for my dad. so president -- the president lincoln is now buried ten feet below the surface with concrete over a without iron fencing so sew coffin was moved between when they reconstructed the tomb and did this final burial. it was actually opened twice, opened in 1887 and in 1901, to make sure he was there. so the premise of my novel is, is abraham lincoln in his tomb, in his coffin, and if not, where the heck is he and how come people are dying to fine out? >> host: what is the -- uss houston. >> guest: the uss houston was a cruiser, franklin roosevelt's favorite warship. took it out a number of times. went on fish can expeditions on the uss houston, and in fact he took it three times to cocoa's
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island off of costa rica, and it's about 300 miles west in the pacific off costa rica, and supposedly there are number of buried treasures on the island. now, mr. roosevelt was a fisherman, he liked to fish in those waters and in fact caught a 110-pound sail fish that is with the something i sewnan today. -- something i sewnan today -- signature sewnan today. and one time he had entertained a couple of british treasure hunters on the houston on whether they can find treasure on cocoa island. the houston was sunk by the japanese, went down with the hmm perking dhmsperth.

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