If you wandered into the Bootleg Theater in Silverlake last Thursday night just before 9, you would have seen about 50 mostly middle-aged people sitting at scratched-up bar tables laughing and drinking, interrupted suddenly by six musicians, also mainly middle-aged, who joked as they entered the room, stepped onto a...

We have about two days to save a groundbreaking bill that will make corporations and big-spending one percenters who buy political ads, reveal their identities in their commercials so you'll know who's trying to manipulate your vote.

The California DISCLOSE Act, AB 1148, authored by progressive champion...

Hey Stephen Colbert. There's an existential challenge to your shadowy Colbert Super PAC S.H.H. and I've been trying to give you a heads up. But you're not making it easy.

Whenever you and your Fat Cat Moneybag buddies like Karl Rove and...

Just before the divorce attorney welcomes me, I warn myself, be sure. Because when the lawyer asks my husband's name, I'll have to say, "Barack Obama."

No need for an alarm clock following that. A lifelong insomniac, I lull myself to sleep and usually stay in dreamland via NPR...

When I hear that AT&T and Verizon are key players with other multinationals and Republican legislators in a so-far obscure group that advances corporate interests and undermines ours, my thoughts turn...shall we say, vehement.

The most recent of these to find itself the focus of keen though undesired media interest...

From his seat on the bus delivering him to aid retreating congressional Republicans conjuring their newest Dem-defeating strategies last weekend in Baltimore, Republican pollster/word illusionist Frank Luntz issued a dare. He was on Public Radio International's (PRI) aptly named To the Point hosted...

Ferial Masry would be an arrow rushing through the air if she were not a person. Her bull's-eye would be a magic button that when pushed, manifests reinvigorated jobs in a green energy economy with first-class public schools.

Next Tuesday Masry hopes to make that scenario real...

Like many who don't want this country to become a crazy right-wing Caliphate, I freaked when the Citizens United ruling was decided last January. As if Democratic electeds and policy czars hadn't screwed us enough already with their chicken shit behavior...now we'd also be swiftboated by

When Democratic Senators failed to stop Republicans from filibustering the DISCLOSE Act last Tuesday, it was an especially depressing example of the party's weakness. The act would have required corporations, unions and other entities giving more than $600 to a candidate, to openly state that they're funding...

Thanks to my work last year on the Huffington Post's Eyes and Ears (E&E) citizen journalism unit, I stumped an opponent of Proposition 15, the California Fair Elections Act (CFEA).

If passed next Tuesday, June 8, Prop 15 will launch a pilot project to give...

You agree you won't sue us if the medical tests you receive today cause problems. Instead you'll go to arbitration and you'll accept the arbiter's decision as final.
Now please sign this form, and date your signature.

That's the gist of the consent agreement I was given at a...

"Until we make it so candidates don't have to rely on wealthy donors...we will never be free of political scandals and corruption." ---Public Campaign, 2009 Fair Elections Now Toolkit

Name a political issue messing up your life, and I can almost guarantee that the nasty chemistry between big...

"Drink from the tank, not the bowl." -- Kevin Mason, Emergency Preparedness Guru

"You're on the 405. It's afternoon rush hour in July. And then...an 8-point-5. You feel the freeway shaking under your car... What do you do now?" asked veteran LA firefighter/disaster preparedness expert Kevin Mason of a suddenly...

"...we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn, September 2,...

"Doesn't it suck that even when you have health insurance, you can't afford to see the doctors you really trust?"
--Favrile, Sherman
Oaks CA hairdresser, January 19, 2010

My hairdresser Favrile and the salon where she works are my reality gauge. If Fav's talking about something, so are lots of...

Dah DEE dah
DAH dee dah
Dah dah dah dee DAY

Dah DEE dah
DAH dee dah
Dah dee DEE dah day...

Recognize this melody? If you're a Blue Shield of California member, you hear it pretty much every time you call and end up holding...

What the...I told the passenger's side rear view mirror of my car when I saw what it showed.

I'd just found the only legal parking place on Moorpark near Van Nuys in Sherman Oaks. All I had to do was parallel park fast and maybe I'd make my meeting...

"Either the public buys the politicians or the special interests will."

-- George Skelton, LA Times

Big Pharma makes sweetheart deals with the White House.

Big Oil sends employees to spoil congressional Town Halls with their assault rifles and their "grassroots" concerns about climate change.

Big Milk...

"It's not about what the public wants. It's about money...and nothing will change...until the money-lenders are tossed out of the temple, and we tear down the sign they've placed on government -- the one that reads: "For sale."
--Bill Moyers, July 10, 2009 Bill Moyers Journal, PBS

The...

Late afternoon rush hour, Hollywood, this time of year -- right after Easter, just a few days left of Passover. Moments after hugging my then 11-year-old goodbye and watching her dad welcome her to his seder, I already missed her.

I was expected at a seder in the West...