Anyone who lives in or visits Los Angeles can see we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands. More than 60,000 people are without homes, and the numbers grow every month. The allegedly booming economy has trickled up to the rich; meanwhile many working people experience the ravages of downward mobility. Priced out of increasingly...
Here’s how: Instead of infecting young minds with mythic propaganda offered in the standard American History curriculum, texts that downplay the immorality and barbarism of our nation’s founding, expansion, and ongoing operation, we could offer future generations something much more like the truth. Instead of telling stories that celebrate slaveholders, murderers and pathological psychopaths, we...
Franklin Canyon Park, in the storied borough of Beverly Hills, has been used as a popular filming location for decades. Exterior shots for The Andy Griffith Show, Twin Peaks, On Golden Pond, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Happened One Night — all were photographed here. These days, about 25 movies are filmed in Franklin Canyon annually. Producers...
If you’re an American under the age of 30, your country has been “at war” almost every day of your life. Not that it directly affects you. Or hardly anyone, really, except members of the lowest socio-economic classes. We were at war for every single day of the Obama presidency and today, with a very...
When a business owner replaces employees with automation — machines, robots, computers — the effects radiate in two opposite directions. On one hand, the employees (and their families), have less, since they no longer draw a paycheck. On the other, the owners (and their shareholders) have more, because lower payroll means higher profits. A dear...
Experts on matters patriotic, including members of Congress and the corporate oligarchs for whom they toil, believe that those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the greatest country on Earth benefit from a magical phenomenon known as American Exceptionalism. According to those who have made a kind of casual study of our glorious history,...
When your country’s government seems to be controlled by characters from professional wrestling competing in a “loser retires” bout, it’s easy to ascertain villainy in every unfair maneuver. The people in the Trump Administration: bad guys. Heels. They cheat. They lie. They’ll do anything to win. Who are the (baby) faces in this charade? Democrats,...
Finally, what many of us long suspected has been categorically confirmed. No, not that the Democratic primary was rigged by the Clintons and their vassals at the DNC, rendering the millions of us who contributed to and volunteered for Bernie Sanders into suckers at a carnival midway trying to knock down milk bottles nailed to...
In the near future — 20 years? 50 years? — capitalism will implode. The vast majority of what we today consider “jobs” will be accomplished by machines running on artificial intelligence. Billions of people will rendered useless — except as highly nutritious protein meal for their machine-owning overlords. Without wages, consumption of goods and services...
The wiki description of California Government Code 12.75, known as the Ellis Act, named after the San Diego state senator who introduced it in 1985, sounds innocuous enough: “The Ellis Act is a California state law that allows landlords to evict residential tenants in order to ‘go out of the rental business,’ in spite of desires by...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Does righteousness have a sound? Can good intentions be heard in the language of music? Saxophonist/composer Dan Blake’s new recording, Da Fe, attempts an aural answer to those questions, and the results are convincing. A Buddhist, social justice warrior, and former member of the Esperanza Spalding band, Blake’s values are deeply humanist and compassionate; on the...
