KQED's Forum

“A multi-billion-dollar debacle three years in the making” is how CalMatters investigative reporter Lauren Hepler describes the current state of California’s unemployment benefit system. During the Covid pandemic, the already fraying system reached a backlog that affected more than 5 million workers while up to $31 billion was paid to scammers, according to the state’s Employment Development Department. At the same time, watchdogs claim the EDD wrongly denied up to a million cases and mistakenly flagged more than half of those as fraudulent. More than 150,000 Californians are currently involved in the appellate process for their unemployment benefits, many accumulating debt and stress in the interim. We’ll learn more and hear what’s being proposed to fix the system.

Guests:

Lauren Hepler, investigative reporter, CalMatters

Nicolas Allen, graphic designer based in Fresno

Madeline Maye, video editor based in Burbank

Jenna Gerry, senior staff attorney, National Employment Law Project

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In its nearly 35 years in operation, San Francisco’s Homeless Prenatal Program, has worked with the aim of breaking the cycle of extreme poverty by helping pregnant women with health care, housing, parenting classes and other needed services for themselves and their children. It’s a testament to that mission that the non-profit’s new executive director, Shellena Eskridge, is the child of a woman helped by the program. We’ll talk with Eskridge and Martha Ryan, the founder and former executive director of the Homeless Prenatal Program, about homeless families and the unique challenges they face.

Guests:

Shellena Eskridge, executive director, Homeless Prenatal Program; licensed clinical social worker

Martha Ryan, founder and former executive director, Homeless Prenatal Program

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The U.S. Supreme Court is known for its public docket of consequential cases, with scheduled oral arguments and lengthy decisions often released in the month of June. But the Court’s conservative majority has been making more use of the so-called “shadow docket” for controversial cases, issuing perfunctory unsigned orders with little to no legal analysis. University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck argues it’s urgent that Supreme Court curtail its growing use of the shadow docket, and he joins us to explain why. His new book is “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.”

Guests:

Stephen Vladeck, professor, University of Texas School of Law; author, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic"; co-host, the National Security Law podcast; Supreme Court analyst, CNN

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San Francisco’s Union Square is known for a lot of things: department stores and high-end boutiques, a massive and ornate Christmas tree and a Cheesecake Factory with an amazing view of the city. It’s now also known for swaths of empty storefronts. Close to a quarter of the neighborhood’s 3.2 million square feet of retail space is available for lease, according to brokerage firm Avison Young. Foot traffic in the area has yet to recover from the pandemic, but vacancy was already creeping up for years as more shopping shifted online and rental rates shot up. We’ll talk about how the iconic retail district is doing, how the pandemic shook up brick and mortar retail and what could happen next.

Guests:

J.K. Dineen, Bay Area real estate reporter, San Francisco Chronicle

Amanda Mull, staff writer, The Atlantic

Marisa Rodriguez, CEO, Union Square Alliance - a business improvement district that provides security, maintenance, marketing, and capital improvements.

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The children’s classic Frog & Toad has been made into a new animated series for AppleTV+. The gentle and enduring friendship between those two characters allowed its author, Arnold Lobel, to, according to his daughter, explore and embrace his own sexuality as a gay man. Characters in children’s books allow readers to imagine a different world for themselves. Whether it is the Lorax, Iggy Peck (Architect), or Harriet the Spy, the characters in children’s books can make you feel seen or help you identify emotions that you didn’t know you had. We’ll talk to an author and a bookseller about the characters who bring books to life, and we’ll hear from you: Who is a character in a kids’ book that remains important to you or the children in your life?

Guests:

Michelle H. Martin, Beverly Cleary Professor for Children and Youth Services, MLIS Program Chair, University of Washington's School of Information

Mac Barnett, author of the children's books "Circle," "Square" and "Triangle," which have been made into a new animated series "Shape Island" on AppleTV+. Barnett is the author of the "Mac B. Kid Spy" and the "Jack" series. His books have won Caldecott honors and E.B. White Read Aloud Awards.

Thu Doan, children's book buyer, East Bay Booksellers, a bookstore located in Oakland

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Gay stand-up comedian Zach Zimmerman grew up in Virginia with Evangelical parents and attended a school that taught the Bible instead of history and expelled any student found to have watched an R-rated movie. Zimmerman has journeyed far from their roots, having transformed from a “straight, meat-eating Christian conservative to a queer, vegetarian, atheist socialist.” We talk to Zimmerman about religious guilt, love and comedy and their new essay collection “Is it Hot in Here: Or am I Suffering for All Eternity for the Sins I Committed on Earth?”

Guests:

Zach Zimmerman, stand-up comedian; author, "Is It Hot in Here? (Or Am I Suffering for All Eternity for the Sins I Committed on Earth?)"

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Gas and oil production in California has been on a slow decline for decades, and more than a third of unplugged onshore oil wells are sitting idle. Those unplugged wells can leak methane, brine and carcinogenic chemicals — and are vulnerable to geological risks like earthquakes and landslides. A first-of-its-kind study, published by think tank Carbon Tracker, looks at the massive costs of decommissioning and cleaning up wells. With the costs of cleaning up exceeding the industry’s future profits by billions of dollars, the shortfall could mean that taxpayers are on the hook. We learn more about the study.

Related link(s):

Carbon Tracker, “There Will Be Blood: Decommissioning California’s Oilfields”

ProPublica, “It Will Cost Up to $21.5 Billion to Clean Up California’s Oil Sites. The Industry Won’t Make Enough Money to Pay for It.”

Guests:

Mark Olalde, reporter covering the environment in the Southwest, ProPublica; reported the piece, "It Will Cost Up to $21.5 Billion to Clean Up California’s Oil Sites. The Industry Won’t Make Enough Money to Pay for It."

Dwayne Purvis, founder and principal advisor, Purvis Energy Advisors; report author, "There will be blood: Decommissioning California’s Oilfields"

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The Hetch Hetchy reservoir was created a century ago to supply fresh water for millions of people in the Bay Area. It was created by damming the Tuolumne River, flooding a former mountain valley in the Sierras and forming a reservoir that can hold up to 117 billion gallons of water. Hetch Hetchy embodies a feat of modern engineering, but as the globe warms up and demand for water shifts, the reservoir’s storage capacity and water management capabilities may not hold up. For our next installment of Climate Fix: Rethinking Solutions for California, we’ll talk about how climate change is putting pressure on Hetch Hetchy and what a far warmer future means for this mountain bathtub.

Guests:

Samuel Sandoval Solis, PhD, professor, UC Davis; cooperative extension specialist in water resources management, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University of California

Newsha Ajami, PhD, chief development officer for research in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and president, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

Ezra David Romero, climate reporter, KQED

Peter Drekmeier, policy director, Tuolumne River Trust

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With the end of Title 42, a law enacted during the pandemic to slow the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., the Biden Administration finds itself caught between policymakers who say the President is too tough on immigration or not tough enough. Immigration is also an issue that Republican presidential hopefuls are keeping at the center of their primary campaigns: Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, and likely-to-run candidate Ron DeSantis are all running on their bonafides as advocates for stringent restrictions on immigration. We’ll talk about the current situation at the border and the role that immigration will play in national politics and the presidential election.

Guests:

Michelle Hackman, reporter covering U.S. immigration policy, Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau

Philip Bump, national columnist, Washington Post - recent article, "What will the inevitable 2024 debate over immigration look like?"; author, "The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America"

Rafael Carranza, reporter covering immigration issues , Arizona Republic and USA Today

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Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s novel ‘Chain-Gang All-Stars’ portrays an American prison system with corporate-sponsored gladiators whose fights to the death, and most every waking moment, are followed, reality TV style, by the nation. It’s a searing satire of an exploitative prison system and the society that supports it that is uncomfortably recognizable. We talk with Adjei-Brenyah about the speculative, and the actual, American prison system and writing a novel about dehumanization through characters that are full of humanity, compassion and love.

Guests:

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author, "Chain Gang All Stars"

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