Last weekend, I met a woman who escaped slavery.

I was working a freelance project for the nationally-syndicated public radio program “The Story With Dick Gordon” produced by WUNC out of North Carolina. The story was “Enslaved in L.A.” and you can hear the final product at “The Story” Web site. The subject of the story was a 30-year-old woman who spent more than seven years as an enslaved servant here in Los Angeles, working in the large home of a wealthy family.

Her story is sad and simple. She was a poor, badly-treated servant in her home country of Indonesia. She was promised a better working life in Los Angeles, so she moved here and realized she was mislead. Instead, she was a virtual prisoner in the large home, with 24/7 working hours and almost no pay. She was told her destiny was to serve that household, and she felt hopeless. Eventually, a few alert people (a Chinese tutor and a hero neighbor) taught her that she had rights in the U.S. Once she believed them and her neighbor introduced her to an organization called CAST, she was able to escape.

While her story was extraordinary, would startled me most was how ordinary this woman was. If I had met her in the street, I would have thought of her as just another newly-arrived immigrant making their way in Los Angeles. She was dressed simply but fashionably, spoke fluent albeit accented English, and had a modest smile. She was soft-spoken and quiet.

Now I can’t help but look at people twice, wondering how many other stories like hers are walking down the street.

This week, I have been looking into the problem of homeowners trying to modify their mortgages, after monthly payments become unaffordable.

These are people who are in danger of falling behind on their mortgage payments, are defaulting or at risk of defaulting, and who are desperate to avoid foreclosure.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Calif. Attorney General Gerry Brown, Federal Trade Commission Chairman on Leibowitz, and Douglas Axel, Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said that federal and state authorities are increasing their oversight of mortgage modification consulting firms. Law enforcement has handed out legal actions – everything from lawsuits, to criminal charges, to cease-and-desist orders – against firms, lawyers, and individual actors who have taken desperate homeowners’ money but not helped them as promised.

FTC Chairman Leibowitz said the number of scammers in Southern California (especially Orange County) is far higher (even as a ratio of the total population) than in other places around the country. The only other part of the country where it’s as bad is Southern Florida.

Both Southern California and Southern Florida are facing the most foreclosures and defaults. Douglas Axel said the Southern California region he represents has the worst housing market in the country. With that kind of misery and the state budget cuts leaving law enforcement with fewer staff, it’s been an open invitation for unscrupulous people to take advantage of families and homeowners needing help.

Here’s how the scammers operate:

• They check public records for information about those defaulting on their loans (they can get your name, loan info, and what bank you’re with).
• They call you or knock on your door. They might say they represent that bank, even though they don’t. Or they might just sound really sympathetic, and say that they can solve all your problems for a small upfront fee.
• You pay them a fee, and then wait. You might hear lots of different excuses, delays, lost paperwork, etc. But the bottom line is, nothing gets done with your lender.
• Some companies are asking people to turn over their monthly mortgage payments to them, instead of paying their mortgage. This is a huge red flag!

Not all firms who ask for upfront fees are out to scam homeowners. But even lawyers have been caught participating in loan-modification scams. So, going to a law firm doesn’t guarantee you’re safe.

The bottom-line message from state and federal law enforcement officials is: if someone asks you for an upfront fee to help you with your mortgage problems, tell them “no” and look for free, non-profit, and government-sponsored alternatives through HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development).

You can listen to my interviews after the Wednesday press conference here:

• Interview with California Attorney General Gerry Brown
  Brown says that even though the California budget crisis and federal cutbacks have left law enforcement understaffed and scammers flourishing, state and federal offices are trying to ramp up enforcement and oversight. Brown says budget cuts has made law enforcement less effective at keeping track of scams and stopping them. Also, when asked by another reporter when he’s going to announce a run for governor, Brown seems to suggest that he will indeed run, and he will announce sometime in the fall.
• Interview with Douglas Axel, Assistant U.S. Attorney
  Axel says Southern California is a hotbed for mortgage modification scams and a national leader in foreclosures. He says if someone is charging you upfront fees, look for help somewhere else. Axel also says that Spanish-speakers are the most victimized.

As the Proposition 8 battle was just getting under way, I remember a leading figure in the California gay rights movement sounding extremely confident that public opinion was on the side of gay marriage. That leader was very wrong.

In light of today’s ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8, the state’s gay marriage ban, the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating opinion piece detailing some of the big hurdles still facing the gay rights movement.

As the Proposition 8 battle was just getting under way, I remember a leading figure in the California gay rights movement, speaking in a public forum attended by news media, sounding extremely confident that public opinion in California was on the side of gay marriage. That leader was very wrong.

The WSJ opinion article details just how wrong, by showing how much the public as a whole still has some very fundamental reservations about not only gay marriage, but gay people in general.

Among the contentions of the article is that opposition to gay marriage is firmly rooted in people’s continued discomfort with gay people. There is still educating to do, according to a new poll the article author referenced, on whether being gay is a choice, a lifestyle, or a hard-wired trait. Plurality of respondents still think it’s a choice. I find that very telling, since many people in insular, urban gay communities question whether America is well past the question of gay acceptance, well past questions of whether being gay is a choice, and well past the type of discrimination prevalent as recently as the 1980s and 90s.

As that gay rights leader found out – a leader at the forefront of the losing battle against Proposition 8 – overconfidence, and a lack of understanding of the world outside of the comfortable, safe urban bubble, can be disastrous.

It is even more disastrous, when coupled with a lack of dialogue with those who don’t look like you, since on election night even Los Angeles County voted to approve the gay marriage ban. With a larger than usual turnout among Latino and African-American voters, analysts attributed the gay marriage ban victory in Los Angeles to the surge in minority voters.

Gay people of color have long complained that they are not well represented in affluent, gay communities. There seems to be an internal, subtle segregation among a disparate community that has but one trait in common – sexuality.

And so Proposition 8’s victory in Los Angeles County was evidence that the gay rights movement not only didn’t speak to people outside of urban centers, but also to people of color inside urban communities.

And what was the response following the crushing defeat of Proposition 8? Vilification of the opposition.

Angry protests last November surrounded Mormon worship centers, since the Mormon Church was thought to have donated a huge sum to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. Church leaders denied that.

And today, as the California Supreme Court decision was handed out, gay marriage supporters were chanting “shame” outside of the supreme court building. This is the same court that ruled in favor of gay marriage in California, which then triggered Proposition 8 on the November ballot.

The WSJ article addresses this as well, pointing out that the civil rights movement on which the gay marriage movement aims to model itself, had a method described as “turn the other cheek.”

Could such angry attacks against those who don’t agree with a point of view actually backfire?

It will be worth watching to see how the gay marriage campaign in California develops from here, both on the pro and con side. Will gay marriage proponents change their tactics? Could all this attention paid to Proposition 8 already have changed some voters’ minds one way or another?

The answers could prove a fascinating study in civics, civil rights, and democracy.

California’s budget problems have to do with the state’s political history going back a century to a progressive movement that instituted the initiative process. That process, in turn, has bound the budgetary hands in Sacramento…

I covered the aftermath of California’s special election today for the newscasts on NPR (National Public Radio).

All five measures that would have partially addressed the state’s massive budget shortfall were voted down by a margin of almost 2 to 1. That’s a huge margin in elections. The only ballot measure that passed capped pay for elected officials during years that the budget is in deficit. I can’t imagine a clearer signal of voter anger that doesn’t include voting everyone out of office.

After wading through the complex ballot measures and budgetary problems, I better understood why voters so angrily voted down anything having to do with the budget crisis.

In short, it seemed as if everything we’d been hearing before the election – we’ve heard before. California’s coffers have gone through rough periods time and time again. Every time the economy declines, state funds plummet – apparently much more so than in other states.

Of course, with the country’s economy in a severe recession and job losses adding up at a staggering pace (a month’s job losses today equal a year’s job losses during a normal period of economic decline), the budget crisis this time is particularly severe.

The reason why California’s budget is so precarious is often explained as something like this: California’s budget problems have to do with the state’s political history going back a century to a progressive movement that instituted the initiative process. That process, in turn, has bound the budgetary hands in Sacramento through initiative after initiative, and a massive property tax law revolt known as Proposition 13. All this has left lawmakers with little wiggle room in terms of how state money is spent, on what it’s spent, and how much. And the state is left too dependent on fickle income tax revenue, which has reportedly plummeted to levels not seen since the 1930s (I couldn’t confirm this from a second source for my reporting today, and so I didn’t include it in my story.)

So with the budget problems seemingly nothing knew, it seemed to me that proponents of the budget ballot initiatives had a credibility gap – including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had campaigned to fix California’s budget and tax problems, and has not been able to fulfill that pledge.

Voters have heard gloom and doom scenarios many times before. So why should they approve yet more borrowing of money, and an extension of tax hikes during tough economic times?

At the same time, the state has been borrowing heavily to limit the severity of budget cuts. Just months ago, lawmakers had to close a more than $40 billion deficit.

So there’s multiple ways to analyze the failure of the budget initiatives: voters were angry and didn’t believe politicians knew what they were doing, they rejected higher taxes, they rejected cuts in spending, they didn’t fully understand the issues at hand, they hadn’t quite yet felt the pain of the budget problems (by way of major cutbacks) so they didn’t understand the urgency of passing the ballot measures proposed.

But I also wonder if there may be another way of looking at what happened on election day. Perhaps at least some of the voters looked at the proposed solutions, the scope of the budget problem, and scratched their heads. Afterall, how can $6 billion raised by ballot initiative help alleviate a $20 billion deficit? And, at that, the initiatives would have raised that money at a heavy expense – not just tax increases, but cuts in social services for kids and new borrowing against future lottery proceeds (which theoretically could affect education funding, if lottery money was actually used to pay back the loan).

Perhaps voters simply decided that the solutions proposed were too little to solve the problem and took the wrong approach.

This is all speculation on my part. But it does lead to a broader point. There were few clear-cut decisions on the California ballot. And it may not be that surprising that in the absence of clearer, more concrete solutions, voters chose the status quo.

The current Miss California may lose her crown tomorrow – pending the decision of none other than Donald Trump. And I find myself wondering how to think of this story.

At one level, this whole beauty pageant industry seems an anachronism that has little to do with today’s world. But for better or worse, this young lady has now reached some level of celebrity and she is listened to.

Should she have not spoken out about her views opposing gay marriage? To punish her for that would seem strange since most politicians have said the same thing – including almost all of the presidential candidates last year.

Of course, officially, she may lose her crown for posing in scantily clad, suggestive poses. But don’t the contestants come just shy of doing the same thing in the swimsuit portion of the pageant?

I’m left a little confused as to what the controversy is about. And being a Californian, I have not heard anyone I know speak of the issue in a way that might actually impact their life in any tangible way.

So why are news outlets paying any attention to this story? I’m confused.

I had lunch a few days ago with a friend who I met while at NPR. She freelances for them and we worked together many times.

The conversation turned to the value of branding and I have been thinking more and more about how subtle the art of branding is. I was telling my friend that I don’t think most of us can articulate how we feel about different brands or why. But we do have subtle ingrained impressions. And they guide our decision making.

I have been thinking about how this basic concept of marketing can apply to people as a product. Do we consider someone authoritative, trustworthy, a leader… How are our impressions formed and shaped, and how can they be manipulated?

Successful actors and casting directors, especially in the Hollywood industry, often have a good grasp of this concept. But they think of it in a different way – the idea of types: is someone the romantic lead type or the comic sidekick?

How they arrive at these molds seems to have a lot to do with basic societal norms, expectations and even prejudices.

But it’s all very subtle and can leave some of us trapped in a mold not of our choosing. So I wonder if it’s possible to recast that mold to whatever one wants, if the right ingredients are manipulated.

I remember when The CW network was first launching, and I sat down for an interview with network chief Dawn Ostroff – she said The CW was a “new network for this new millenium” and that they were going to try to do things differently.

I am not sure how much of that has panned out, as admittedly, I have not been paying attention much to The CW since I left NPR and stopped covering the TV beat.

However, I found it a fascinating development that Ostroff has decided to discontinue programming on Sunday nights, and allow affiliate stations to counterprogram at will.

It’s almost an old-school model. I remember growing up on local TV channels where the weekend’s were filled with reruns and movie nights. I wonder if we’ll be going back to that model, at least in the short run.

The Fox television network – NOT Fox News – has turned down President Obama’s request to air his primetime address. The other three major networks will carry it on Wednesday – on the occasion of Obama’s 100 days in office.

I thought the networks were required to carry things like this? I had no idea it was a voluntary option.

I think it would be a fascinating idea to do a story about how many times in recent history networks have refused to carry presidential addresses, what the law actually is about this, and whether the refusals have become more or less common. Back in my feature reporting days, this would have been the first thing I would have proposed to my editors today.

In remembering Bea Arthur, on the occasion of her passing this past Saturday of cancer, I came across a couple of interesting video clips. One of her, in language that made me blush, participating in a roast of Pamela Anderson. (Bea Arthur in Pamela Anderson Roast) The genius of Bea Arthur is so very evident in this clip – her sense of comic timing and delivery. It’s impeccable.

The other video is from NBC’s Today Show on Sunday – a phone interview with Rue McLanahan – Arthur’s co-star on the TV show “The Golden Girls.” (Rue McClanahan Remembers Bea Arthur) McLanahan offers a loving glimpse of the private, behind-the-scenes Bea Arthur.

Countless times, when I’ve been out reporting from the field, I’ve wished to have the opportunity to file the story and photos quickly and directly from my location. Technology appears to have finally caught up with the new robust WordPress blogging tool on the iPhone.

I’m very excited to try it out from now on, and am writing this post on the iPhone WordPress tool. I’m attaching a photo from my iPhone library to this post, just to practice using that functionality.

I hope the mobile blogging tool will eventually incorporate audio and video as well.