Ron Wolff: So, will someone please explain to me how CEOs getting wealthy and average workers being cheated out of hard-earned wages is part of the American dream?
Latinos Boosting Democratic Voter Enthusiasm
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Randy Shaw: Recently polls shows Latinos’ positive perceptions of Democrats sharply rising in the wake of the Party’s unsuccessful effort to enact the DREAM act last week.
Congress Should Pass the “Medicare You Can Buy Into” Act
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Tracy Emblem: Grayson’s simple public option plan is more cost-effective for many individual’s who are held hostage now by the BIG Four. Buying into Medicare’s larger insurance risk pool brings down individual premiums.
Fatal Pipeline Accident Turns Attention to Nation’s Aging Pipelines
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Marian Wang: More than 60 percent of the nation’s gas pipelines are 40 years or older, AP reports. And age isn’t the only issue. Older pipelines are often configured in such a way that they’re unable to accommodate the latest pipeline safety technology.
Janitors Protest: A Rally Against Economic Injustice or A Public Nuisance?
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Sylvia Moore: These protests were just the latest expression of outrage among the working classes across the country, who have suffered massive job losses and wage stagnation, while failing bank behemoths who wrecked the economy got bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars.
Bell Officials Earned Thousands for One-Minute Meetings
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Marian Wang: More revelations in the city of Bell overpaid officials controversy. On top of it all, the state has found that Bell illegally raised property taxes. Legislators are considering plans to refund some $2.9 million to residents.
High Stakes Teaching: The Value-Added Sham
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Sikivu Hutchinson: The value-added sham won’t help parents and communities of color struggling to achieve educational equity for youth who have already been intuitively assigned a jail cell by a public school culture marching in lockstep with the teach to the test ethos.
On Reading the Sunday Paper
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Ron Wolff: Like many people, I get some of my news these days from blogs. But I still read a daily newspaper. Had I not, I might have missed several key reports.
President Palin? Take the Poll
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Sharon Kyle: Of course, it is possible that Palin’s celebrity will never be more than that – celebrity and she’d be clobbered if she were to actually enter the bid for the presidency. But, so far, things have been working out pretty well for Sarah Palin.
John Amato, Crooks & Liars Founder Speaks in LA
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John Amato Speaking at LA Media Reform Fundraiser in Beverly Hills on July 16: In Over the Cliff: How Obama’s Election Drove the American Right Insane, John Amato and coauthor David Neiwert show that the Tea Party “movement” was not the organic uprising it was made to appear, but rather was kick-started by FOX News and follows in a long tradition of movement conservative activism that harkens back to the street theater days of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist.
“Los Angels” at LAFilm Festival, Friday, 25 June: Director Thomas Napper Illuminates Skid Row
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Linda Milazzo: Serendipitously, perhaps even miraculously, a second movie had been made; a documentary originally titled THE CHORUS as a take-off on THE SOLOIST, that was now titled LOST ANGELS. It was an expose dedicated entirely to Skid Row and to the extras employed on THE SOLOIST. Joe Wright was an Executive Producer. Susan Klos, author of the above email, who’d read my article, was a Co-Executive Producer, and Thomas Napper, a long-time associate of Joe Wright, lovingly and patiently directed.
How Many is “Too Many”?
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Ron Wolff: In Los Angeles County, child abuse hotline tips flow in at a rapid clip. Responsibility for investigating them falls to the Department of Children and Family Services. The Los Angeles Times reports that more than 18,000 cases are unresolved within the mandated time limit of 30 days, at least in part because there are simply not enough social workers.
Mutual Respect: The Passing of Bill Elkins and the Lessons of Growing Old
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Anthony Samad: I’m sure many attended the service out of a deep love and friendship for Bill Elkins. I’m all were there in a show of deep respect to Bill Elkins. I know I was. A life lesson we often miss when we are young searching for respect, never understanding that it is earned in ways one least expects. Respect becomes mutual as time reveals the results of our stands. Sometimes it takes a passing to realize what the fight was really all about. We both wanted progress, just in different ways.
Drill-Baby-Drill Off Shore: A Prescription for Environmental Disaster
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Tracy Emblem: Fortunately, President Obama showed common sense by placing a hold on newly proposed off shore-drilling plans while an investigation into the disaster is underway. Congress should reconsider the lifting the currently proposed offshore drilling ban and protect our coastal waters for our future generations.
Who’s Who In Black Los Angeles: Who Really Wants To Know and What Is This Really About?
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Anthony Asadullah Samad: Guess who discovered Who’s Who In Black Los Angeles after two years? Before you ask, I really wanted to feature a Los Angeles Times editor in Who’s Who in Black Los Angeles. Really. The problem is, there is not a single African American among those who make coverage decisions for the paper. In hindsight, it probably was a mistake not to include the one black man on the paper’s full-time Metro reporting staff. That brother deserves a special award for what I imagine he goes through everyday. Well, maybe next year.
“What Are You Reading?” Asked The L.A. Times Festival Of Books
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Linda Milazzo: Responding to what are you reading? here, at the 15th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, requires finding space on the formerly all-white wall that after just two hours is dense with book titles, ranging from children’s classics to the coming-of-age The Catcher In The Rye, to seemingly equal entries of The Koran and The Bible. In a city known for its Hollywood glitz and climate-friendly outdoor living, what many don’t know about Los Angeles is how much it reveres its book festival; the largest in the nation, attended by 130,000 readers of all ages and ethnicities.
La Mission
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Carl Matthes: Not to be missed is Peter Bratt’s “La Mission,” a film brimming with street and domestic violence, and laced with homophobia, search for ethnic identity and machismo. Starring the talented Benjamin Bratt, Peter’s younger brother, “La Mission” refers to the Mission District in San Francisco, the real-life, growing-up family neighborhood of the Bratt brothers.
Buy Stocks and Enter Coal Mines at Your Own Risk
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Ron Wolff: The logical question to ask is: How much is the CEO of Massey Energy Company compensated for setting the tone and establishing the philosophy that “violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process”? According to the New York Times , CEO Don L. Blankenship earned $11.2 million in 2008, about twice what he earned in 2006.
Where’s the Religious Left?
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Perhaps the only figure with national stature on the “religious left” who has been consistently vocal in his opposition to fundamentalist Christian orthodoxy has been Jimmy Carter. Clearly, if a comparable coalition existed on the Left the Religious Right’s moral and political influence on such issues as abortion, same sex marriage, stem cell research and intelligent design would be balanced by dissenting forces. That such a coalition does not exist underscores the bankruptcy of organized religion’s monopoly on morality and moral principle.
Unemployment? Or Unwillingness to Pay for Services?
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Ron Wolff: Meanwhile, millions of people look for work. No, they’re not all trained to be police officers, probation officers, electrical engineers, or teachers. But many of them could be. And most of the rest are either qualified or COULD be qualified to perform tasks that provide society with useful — even necessary — services.
Good News on Bullying
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Ron Wolff: What are the consequences of not providing mature social learning environments for our children? Just observe the overgrown children who populate our legislative bodies!
Hypersexual Disorder: Stop Blaming Gays and Lesbians
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Carl Matthes: It’s time to stop putting the blame for violent or predatory sexual activity in the military on gays and lesbians. Even facing unfair characterization and laws, gay men and lesbians enlist. They serve loyally, even though they must lie about their sexual orientation. And, yet, they remain willing to possibly give, ultimately, their life for their country.
Balancing Altruism and Self-Interest in Government
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Ron Wolff: No doubt some of the “conservatives” (for lack of a better label — generally I dislike labels as oversimplifications) who read my articles feel that I spend too much energy denigrating our society. I can almost hear them say “If you love Denmark so much, why don’t you move there?”
What Would a Space Invader Think?
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I’d love to see an intelligent creature from outer space slap a few people in the face and say “Wake up! You are destroying each other and the planet! Use your mental capacities for something more meaningful than voting for the next American Idol!”
Laughing So Hard
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So, right, it’s a wonderful movie, and as much as the LA Progressive does such things, we give it four stars, a kiss and a hug and a pat on the behind, and recommend that you see it. But I think we were touched with something more that night.
The Chandlers Invent and Reinvent L.A.
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Those of us who were a part of the Golden Age cannot hope to see its likes again in today’s faltering fortunes of print journalism. Perhaps a sequel to this book would be not so much inventing L.A., but reinventing the Los Angeles Times.
Contractors in Iraq Are Hidden Casualties of War
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“These guys are like the Vietnam vets of this generation,” said Lee Frederiksen, a psychologist who worked for Mission Critical Psychological Services. “The normal support that you would get if you were injured in the line of duty as a police officer or if you were injured in the military . . . just doesn’t exist.”
Don’t Be Afraid of the Black Girl: Serena Williams
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What happened Saturday during the women’s semifinal at the United States Open between Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters is just another example of how Black women are still seen as threatening and hostile.
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The Revolution Will (Barely) Be Publicized
Sylvia Moore: The pro-corporate, anti-tax Tea Party movement has gotten wall-to-wall press coverage, even though only about 30 percent of the population actually supports it. Saturday’s event did get some national coverage from the major television networks, but that paled in comparison to the kind of attention the Tea Partiers are getting on a routine basis. Locally, all I could find was this 37-second clip from ABC7 News. Kudos to ABC for showing up.