500,000 Expected to Rally in L.A. for Immigrant Rights
If Californians keep one thing in mind for today’s “Day Without An Immigrant” it should be this: Be prepared for anything, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Monday’s boycott is the crescendo to a wave of national protests over a bill passed by the House that would make it a crime to lend a hand to illegal immigrants and would build hundreds of miles of walls along the U.S.-Mexico border. It comes as the Senate considers legislation to strengthen the nation’s borders, expand temporary worker programs and give many of the 11 million illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship – the central demand of protesters. While many immigrants will not participate, there is a feeling that today won’t be like any other day. And business owners, parents and others are trying to prepare.
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Starbucks Signs With William Morris to Get Deals Brewing
Starbucks Corp. has tapped William Morris Agency to help find projects that are its cup of chai, the Los Angeles Times reported. The alliance, which will be announced Monday, authorizes the Hollywood talent agency to identify music, film and book projects for the world’s leading coffee retailer to consider for marketing and distribution in its stores, according to a news release. And not a moment too soon, if Starbucks’ first venture into the world of movie marketing is any measure. Three months after the Seattle-based company announced it would launch a movie marketing venture with the feel-good feature film “Akeelah and the Bee,” the film opened to sluggish box-office returns.
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Analysis: Can Angelides Pull It Off?
In the disconnected, parallel worlds of state politics, state Treasurer Phil Angelides’ endorsement victory at the state Democratic Party Convention last weekend will mean nothing if he can’t translate it to the outside world via television, the Sacramento Bee reports. In that world, Westly is soaring, thanks to spending $22.5 million of his own fortune on feel-good ads portraying himself as a “new kind of governor” out to protect schools and the environment. He leads Angelides by 13 percent, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll. In it, more than twice as many Democrats said they believe Westly has a better chance than Angelides to beat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in November. But University of Southern California political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said Angelides may have found a pulse in time to get back into the race – if he can use his convention success to raise money and then reintroduce himself on television.
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A Studio Chief’s Jailhouse Visits to a Detective Raise Questions
Two days before Christmas 2004, as Hollywood’s A-listers were jetting to places like Aspen and Kona, Ron Meyer, the president of Universal Studios, made a trip to a decidedly less glamorous destination. Mr. Meyer got in his Range Rover and drove more than 120 miles north from his home here to Taft, Calif., to visit Anthony Pellicano, the imprisoned private investigator. While Mr. Pellicano’s client list included some of the movie business’s most influential players , as well as some of their angry ex-spouses , the only heavy hitter known to have visited Mr. Pellicano behind bars was Mr. Meyer. Nowhere in the long-running investigation of Mr. Pellicano, who pleaded not guilty to wiretapping and conspiracy charges, has Mr. Meyer’s name been associated with even a whiff of impropriety. But the relationship between the detective and the studio chief holds a lesson about doing business in Hollywood, where loyalty holds an exalted value, and where an executive who expects to survive at the top must be able to understand the industry’s seamy underworld for what it is, without tumbling into it, the New York Times reports.
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