Winter festivals emphasize family and home, core strengths of every society. In our communities we guard ourselves against the long darkness. We hold out signs to one another that we can withstand these worst of days.
Unemployment is low, profits are high, but wages remain stubbornly flat. Could the decline of organized labor be to blame?
The press tends to cover the immediate aftermath of natural disasters. Readers get heroic stories, viewers see great visuals, and if they are lucky, the victims get help while people are paying attention. Then comes the long road to recovery.
Public records lawsuits are time consuming, requiring an attorney who believes the case is one for which it is worth going to the mat. But occasionally lines are crossed that simply have to be challenged.
After about 90 minutes of copying the U.S. Constitution by hand, we all seemed to have one experience in common: writer’s cramp.
President Trump has jeopardized the lives of 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who came here seeking better opportunities. There’s not much more to be said than that—except that it’s also a big moneymaker for a handful of private investors and corporations.
St. Paul, who wrote the earliest documents we have from the Christian era, declared: “Each will receive wages according to the labor of each.” You work, you get paid.
The basic bomb shelter has had an upgrade in the form of $3 million condos where the ultra-wealthy can insulate themselves from Armageddon.
With their meetings being disrupted by apparent Trump supporters, Westside liberals can no longer enjoy their old sense of isolation and insulation.
In the military, McCain was a hero. But yesterday, on the Senate floor, he put loyalty to his party and to President Trump over loyalty to his country and the needs of his fellow citizens.
Oklahoma is definitely Red America. The Koch brothers’ political network has for years spent large sums supporting state legislative candidates. And it paid off in 2010 when the GOP gained control of the governorship and both houses of the state legislature.
Small, exurban towns are experiencing a plague of addictions – so many that overdoses fill the morgues with bodies.
By cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for mental health care and substance abuse treatment, President Trump’s budget would send more people to jail who don’t belong there.
From making health care more affordable to this group, to allowing new college grads to stay on their parents’ insurance as they tinker with market-shaping innovations and ideas in their parents’ garages, the Affordable Care Act has been a game changer for entrepreneurship.
On June 15, 2003, years before Los Angeles had its first CicLAvia event, several thousand bikers and pedestrians descended upon the Pasadena Freeway for a bike and walk ride on the freeway. The event, called ArroyoFest, demonstrated the emerging capacity of L.A.’s bike groups.
Does anyone really want a handful of corporations, the likes of McDonald’s and Burger King, teaching children and locking people up in prison?
Racial incidents have exploded recently because white and mainstream prejudice has been contained under the line of vision for several decades, and now the lid’s off.
Some experts argue that private-sector efforts to stop climate change have penetrated too deeply into the business world, and claimed too much capital, to be thwarted by any single federal administration.
Trumpcare would not only strip coverage from millions of poor and working people, but it would also give billions of dollars in tax cuts to health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, investors and even tanning salon operators.
For-profit water corporations see America’s crumbling infrastructure as a business opportunity. Either they buy struggling water systems or market their services to cities like Pittsburgh that need the help.
We are suffering a period of extreme weather patterns that a German insurance company says could only happen because of climate change. Last year was the hottest year ever – tracking on 14 months in a row of record-breaking temperatures.
Just before the Oroville Dam became daily front page news, during what turned out to be a brief lull in this winter’s storms, one of my neighbors asked me if I thought the drought was over. “Nope, just an interlude,” I said.
Earlier this month, the Seattle City Council voted not to renew its contract with Wells Fargo, pulling more than $3 billion in city funds from the Wall Street giant. And rightly so—Wells Fargo defrauded over two million of its own customers.
George W. Bush believed that God wanted to make him President. We can only guess what President Trump thinks about God’s role in his election.
Last Monday the Senate Republicans confirmed Wall Street predator Steve Mnuchin to oversee America’s financial industry. Across the country, bankers and hedge fund managers poured champagne while showing clips of Michael Douglas’ “greed is good” speech from the film Wall Street.
President Trump already has some congressional Republicans worried about his ability to stay on message. But the president’s federal government hiring freeze sends an age-old conservative message loud and clear.
The author Sam Keen once told me that James Donaldson was the only person he ever knew who became a social worker because he needed the money. But when Donaldson shaped this city – and changed my life – social work was still in his distant future.
How people traveled to the Women’s March in downtown Los Angeles was itself extraordinary and could make January 21 the date that transit re-established its role as central to the L.A. experience.
Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Education, certainly has an opinion. Despite never having taught in, managed, or attended a public school, DeVos believes that public school children should be in private hands.
One phrase describes how many people feel about this next chapter of the American experiment in self-rule: We fear the worst.