Kevin Grant

The state of California has borrowed $567 million in surpluses from its very successful container recycling program since 2002.  Now, the program is bankrupt, threatening hundreds of small businesses who depend on state subsidies to keep themselves afloat.

Susan Collins, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, explained that the recycling rate, at 85 percent, is the highest it's ever been.   As more consumers redeem their bottles, cans, and other recyclables, the state is paying out money it can no longer afford to part with.



"When the recycling rate's higher, there's a smaller pool of unredeemed deposits to run the system," Collins said.  "It would have been fine, though, if we had all of the money that had been borrowed before."

On November 1st, the state ceased paying subsidies to more than 2000 recycling centers.  Because many of the centers operate very close to the margin, between 100 and 200 have already closed down.  This has cost hundreds of "green jobs," including 500 from the youth-oriented California Conservation Corps.

"If the faucet isn't turned back on, the logical conclusion would be that they would shut down," Collins said.

Collins said her concern is that grocery stores, which are legally required to accept recyclable containers under the state's Bottle Bill, will suddenly be inundated with materials that they are not equipped to handle.

Under the bill, grocery stores must either host a recycling convenience center on its premises or accept them in the store.  Many flaunt the law and do not accept the containers. Supermarket convenience centers presently account for 34 percent of the six billion containers recycled in California each year.
 
One of the state's largest recycling center operators, Tomra Pacific Inc., is now suing the state in an effort to compel the Legislature to pay back the borrowed funds.  A hearing is expected next month, Collins said.

The depleted recycling fund does not just affect private enterprises like those that Tomra operates. Jorge Santiesteban, a division manager at the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, explained that the city draws funds from the deposit program as well in the form of grants and subsidies. 

"Generally those funds were used for recycling programs, promotional recycling programs, educational recycling programs, educate the public," Santiesteban said. "They have been reduced statewide to most cities and municipalities by 95 percent."

The impact for Angelenos will include a less robust consumer education program in L.A., as well as a weaker presence for the recycling program.  Santiesteban said that he foresees that the city will need to cut back on its recycling efforts at concerts, marathons, and parades, among other large public events.

This is a severe restriction on a city that has pledged to create "zero waste" by the year 2025, he said.

"If the money had been left alone, the program itself was pretty healthy," Santiesteban said.

Chas Little, a Hollywood resident, said he strongly supports the Bottle Bill program.

"To take it away, you're going to take away a lot of income from people that are on the street or homeless and also, it's green, so to recycle is to save earth," Little said. "And that's what we want to do."

Next month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to deliver a proposal for fixing the container program to the State Assembly.  In October, Schwarzenegger vetoed a piece of legislation, SB 402, that would have expanded the recycling program to include more types of containers.  

That would have boosted the program's surplus again, Collins said, because consumers lag in redeeming the new types until they become educated about the changes.  She expressed frustration about the state government's wounding of the container recycling program.

"It should be every bit as easy to get your deposit back as it was to pay your deposit," Collins said. 

Drex Heikes knows that the LA Weekly has seen better days.  In fact, the new editor of the city's last standing alt-weekly acknowledges it has been fighting just to survive.

"Sometime in the winter, spring, it bottomed out," Heikes said gravely from his new desk at the Weekly's Culver City headquarters. "I wasn't here, but from what I understand, there were sparks on the pavement. The shocks were gone. There was just nothing left."

The specter of loss still hangs quietly over the Weekly's offices like stale L.A. smog.  The organization has lost or pushed out some of its biggest names in 2009, including former Editor-In-Chief Laurie Ochoa, theater critic Steven Leigh Morris, film critic Ella Taylor, editor and reporter Steven Mikulan, and last week, film editor Scott Foundas.

Once the fattest alternative paper in the county, the rag has indeed looked weaker in recent years.  A steep decline in advertising demand has forced the paper to cut out some of its strongest copy as it squeezes into a smaller page count.  

See the rest of this profile at NeonTommy.com:

 

Instead of an international concert tour, there is a blockbuster movie.  "This Is It," chronicling the late Michael Jackson's preparation for a tour that will never happen, opens tonight at the Nokia Theatre.

This afternoon a medley of workers, fans, media, and security guards ringed the red carpet in the courtyard of the L.A. Live entertainment complex.  The atmosphere was tense: high winds threatened to pull down banners and topple signs, sending a barrage of fallen leaves across the scene.

Nokia employees confirmed that the premiere would begin at 6 p.m., preceded by red carpet ceremonies at 4 p.m. The film will then open at theaters across the Los Angeles area. 

Early arrivers said that their bitter feelings about the circumstances of Jackson's death were influencing their ability to enjoy the atmosphere.  Lisa Hoot of Ceritos, California, who won tickets to the event from the radio station Power 106 FM, said she thinks Jackson's death was a homicide.

"I just think someone killed him," Hoot said. "I think his doctor did it." She and her son, Kelvin Joe, Jr., suggested that Jackson's doctor, Conrad Murray, should be imprisoned.

"I'd like to see him pay for what he did," Hoot said. "Nobody deserves to die for no reason."

Maria Slivkoff of Riverside, California placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the event giant AEG Live, the second largest concert promotion company in the world. AEG put together the tour Jackson was preparing for before he died.

"Michael Jackson only wanted to do 10 shows but [AEG] forced him to do 50 shows," Slivkoff said.   "He didn't eat or sleep and he lost a of weight."

Slivkoff said that security guards had attemped to confiscate her hand-made signs urging passersby to boycott the film, one of which read "AEG Killed Michael. Do Not Watch 'This Is It.'"

Inside the gates of the red carpet area, TV journalists from MTV and Japan's Fuji TV prepared for the procession of celebrities expected to attend the event.  MTV correspondent Sway Calloway spoke with staffers on the stage as workers put the finishing touches on the stage itself.

Strong winds were clearly hampering workers' efforts to finish completing the set.  One cameraman said he was "terrified" of the wind, explaining that he would be filming from an elevated basket.  At one point, a piece of metal believed to have broken loose from the Staples Center flew down and landed inside the venue. 

Mike Strong of Noble Security, manning one of the fences this afternoon, said he expected the red carpet event to draw "every celebrity in the world, if you think about it."     

 

 

  

Man vs. Sign

An employee of La Parrilla, located at Sunset Boulevard and Hamilton Way in Silver Lake, sets up shop on a Sunday morning. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man vs. Gate

Tarascos on Sunset Boulevard and Micheltorena Street gets an upgrade to the gate leading into its outdoor patio, courtesy of a local welder.  

 

 

 

 

 

Man vs. Fence

Sparks fly as the welder adds pieces of steel to the patio fence at Tarascos.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Higher Plane

A carnival ride sits still outside St. Francis of Assisi Church, part of its annual Parish Fiesta, a three-day event taking place through today. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                           

Morning Song

A local man serenades the camera as he sits on a turned-off fountain off Sunset Boulevard.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Vulgar Song

The song turned out to be vulgar, the specifics of which the viewer might be able to determine via imagination.  The man requested some change for alcohol after the conclusion of the song, which the photographer provided. 

 

 

 

 

Closed for Business

A passerby approaches the LaunderLand Laundromat, at Sunset Boulevard and Hyperiom Avenue, which has permanently closed its doors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Empty Shell

Peering into the remnants of the closed laundromat.

Just north of Downtown, just west of Chinatown, just into Echo Park.  Dodger Stadium is down the street.  The skyline sits off in the southern sky.  The intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Beaudry Avenue plays host to the vibrance of Los Angeles life, and in doing so demonstrates its convergent cultures.

 

Glenn Beck is afraid. He thinks you should be afraid too. He's got a long list of boogey men he has tirelessly pushed upon his audience: Communists, black people, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nazis, corporations, and the State of California, to name a few. 

He makes no secret of a fundamental mistrust of the American government, which he believes is on a path to "national socialism," led by a President, Barack Obama who has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." 

His tone is often evangelical, reflective of his mid-life conversion to Mormonism, which Beck embraced after falling into drug and alchohol addiction.  He calls for a return to an Americanism he saw present the day after 9-11, which he calls The 9/12 Project.

And he cries. He cries a lot. In many respects, Glenn Beck is living his life in public. He speaks often about his alcoholism.  He has also spoken of his daughter, Mary, born with cerebral palsy.

In fact, he used one of his Fox News segments to insinuate that the current political climate might be conducive to Third Reich-era eugenics with respect to people like his daughter, the day after he opined that Sarah Palin's government-run "death panels" were indeed a real possiblity.  Unfortnately for Beck's audience and the larger public discourse, that idea has been shown to be demonstrably false.

It turns out that much of what Glenn Beck says actually orginiates in his own imagination. One might speculate that Beck's imagination is so twisted because his life has often been as terrifying as the nightmarish future he envisions.

For example, when Beck was 15, his mother (also named Mary) drowned in Puget Sound, in what may have been a suicide.  He spent 10 years addicted to cocaine, a drug that fueled his early radio career riffing on the news with a show called Q-Zoo in Tampa Bay, Florida. He eventually bottomed out, rebuilding his life with the help of rehab and religion. 

If Beck's tears are real, there may be something admirable about the passion he displays for the United States and the condition of our democracy.  But the real Glenn Beck is apparently still the guy who riffs on the news (this time on good, old fashioned adrenaline), speaking from his imagination and not from any common reality. 

In fact, he seems to enjoy creating his own reality. And when you mix fear, sorrow, and fantasy with a global radio, TV, and Web platform, you get a dangerous cocktail that the American public would be better off not swallowing.