Category Archives: Analysis

The new numbers & a list (a long one) of people who will be having a bad Xmas.

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Where is MY JOB!

Where is MY JOB!

The new unemployment rates for June 2009:

North Carolina: 11.0
Ohio: 11.1
California: 11.6
Nevada: 12.0
South Carolina: 12.1
Rhode Island: 12.4
Oregon: 12.2
Michigan: 15.2
Some unemployment numbers for the end of May for individual California cities.

Riverside: 13.0
Bakersfield: 14.0
Stockton: 15.0
Fresno: 15.4
Merced: 17.3
El Centro: 26.8

Facts from the BLS
Google reported 19% gain in profit, so when is our relief coming.
Didn’t Google just lay a bunch of people off?

When is the tech industry going to unionize, because they need to. That industry is highly exploitative.

Here’s the warning lay off list from July-December of 2009. It is a list that companies have to send to EDD so you can get your unemployment and food stamps!! The number represents the number of people being let go. The date is when it’s happening. Your boss knows when they are going to let you know, but they don’t tell you. You might take some pencils and staplers and you know how much those items cost to replace. Continue reading →

It is that bad.

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Maybe you can carry a rich lady's baby for money?

Maybe you can carry a rich lady's baby for money?

“Goldman posted the richest quarterly profit in its 140-year history and, to the envy of its rivals, announced it had earmarked $11.4 billion so far this year to compensate its workers.
At that rate, Goldman workers could, on average, earn roughly $770,000 each this year — or nearly what they did at the height of the boom.
Only three years ago, Goldman paid more than 50 employees above $20 million each. In 2007, CEO Lloyd Blankfein collected one of the biggest bonuses in corporate history.

The latest headline results — $3.44 billion in profit during its second quarter ”
Seattle Times.

Yes you just read that Goldman Sachs had a record earning quarter. What about you? How have you done this quarter? How have your friends done this quarter? How has your family done this quarter?  In the past two weeks I have known FIVE people who have been laid off from their jobs. This does not include people that I know who have been out of work for months.

According to some facts from the Fight Back Article, US in Longest Recessions Since the 1930s by Adam Price this is what it looks like out there for rest of  the quarter that Goldman Sachs had record earnings.

The economy has lost almost 6 million jobs (4.1% of total jobs) since 12/07, the worst downturn since the recession of 1948. Unemployment among African Americans hit a depression-level 15% in April, unemployment for Asian Americans has risen the fastest. 8.5 million people are on unemployment. 10.6% of the US is on food stamps. People on average are out of work five months. More than one-quarter of homeowners are ‘underwater’ with mortgages greater than the value of their home during the first three months of 2009. Apartment renters are being hit as former homeowners are competing for a place to live, keeping rents up (I know of three people who have had rent increases in the last few months, I probably know of more, but haven’t asked) even with the rising unemployment. During the first three months of 2009, 15% of houses were vacant, or more than 19 million homes. Continue reading →

Wall? We don’t need to show you any stinking walls!

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Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

How can Mexico be so shortsighted and thin skinned? Building walls is an old revered custom for sure, (see China, East Germany, The Maginot Line, and Malibu Colony), and most recently undertaken by the US on the Mexican border, but doesn’t Mexico understand the American tradition of cutting loose in Mexico?
You know, the custom of Americans who live quiet, conservative, Christian lives here at home, while providing all those “jobs” for the stateside Mexicans as gardeners, busboys, sweatshop employees, maids, and fiberglass jacuzzi laminators, (but never inquiring about anything personal in their lives, that would just be rude),  then visiting Mexico and letting their hair down by getting shit faced, throwing up all over the streets, screaming at the top of their lungs and dancing topless on bar table tops, banging the taxi driver in the back seat of his Volkswagen Thing, (but would never date Mexicans back home), haggling the merchants over a few centavos, demanding “real food” (granola and yogurt), at the local joints, getting pissed off at Mexican vendors who don’t speak English well enough. Hell these are all just good old American customs and rites of passage, building a wall is just offensive and unneighborly.
Next thing you know the people of the LA Eastside will want to build a wall too!

Santa Monica, 1% vs. Los Angeles, 4%

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1990_peniless1

  

Of course, I’m talking about Santa Monica’s newly adopted rent increase of 1 percent (effective September 2009 through August 2010) for their rent-controlled units, compared to the 4 percent increase the city of Los Angeles will allow in our rent-stabilized units (effective July 2009 through June 2010).  Santa Monica’s Rent Control Board approved the relatively small increase last week in consideration of the hard times that currently afflict even the bourgie classes of renters in that city.  To say the least, it’s thought-provoking to see the contrast between the two cities’ rent policies… to think that those of us lucky enough to live in rent-stabilized units in LA could see our rents go up 4 percent after July 1—even while housing market rates actually drop in the face of rising unemployment.  

 

How the hell can that be, you ask?

 

Continue reading →

Boredom is…

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boredom

On my daily commute to work I spotted this on N. Broadway.  Now this side of town is not without plenty of graffiti/bombs/tags but this meanders into other territory.  It’s not just a ‘tag’ but in a way someone trying to engage us and express his “boredom” with an act of creativity! Of course bored is spelled as borred, which makes one wonder as to whether this was intentional or not. And even the last “D” looks like a “b,” further changing an interpretation of this piece.

But frankly, on a purely visceral level I love this. Reminds me of all those million punk songs that sing about being young and bored. Even Søren Kierkegaard, Dutch 19th century existentialist, wrote about the nature of Boredom. For example he said in Either/Or,

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

And also:

Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence

So, whoever did this is in good company in being bored…but as the Internationale Situationiste also said:

Boredom is counterrevolutionary.

OH! Who would’ve thought being bored had such existential implications!

How It Begins: Renaming a Neighborhood

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soho

I don’t get it. Why do newcomers feel a need to come up with new names for their neighborhoods? Is this one of those customs of the middle-class species? Or is it just someone trying to make a buck?

Check out this paper I recently picked up over in the Fairfax District and their attempts to rename the area as SOHO aka South Hollywood. First, that name is pretty fucking stupid: it continues this needless fascination with New York for cultural guidance. (WWMAD?) Plus it’s the tired moniker of choice for every fake ass “creative” neighborhood, and yes, that includes you NOHO.

Lucky for us, this paper actually has a long-winded “story” about how they came up with this new uninspired name for the Fairfax area. The website they link doesn’t have that info, but click ahead to see why they feel at ease taking an eraser to some of the common names for this area.

Continue reading →

Poor Food

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pf1

You can take that title two different ways.  As in either poor quality food or just food of the poor. Sometimes it can mean both things. Which did you assume?

This was my lunch today. (Well, only half of it was, the rest went into the trash bin.) I was down on N. Broadway, thought I’d have some hot and sour soup from the new Chinese food place, as everyone knows that’s my favorite soup ever. Or now they do. Yes, even over menudo or sopa de zanahoria. Hmm, for only $2 more I can get the “combo”, seems like a good deal.

And that’s how it starts.

Continue reading →

don quixotes midnight ride, through the LA Eastside

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ride

Ai mi espanto!!

A couple of weeks ago I took a round trip on the train, LA to Albuquerque and back to LA, the trip was great, I bought a bottle of red wine, a couple of Italian sandwiches at Lanza Bros Mkt on North Main, got on the train, no search by Homeland Security, no taking off my shoes, belt, jacket, no emptying my pockets, no hard stares or grumpy questions, just got on the train, got my seat by the window and enjoyed the scenery.

In Burque I was met by familia and we drove up to the little mountain pueblito that my ancestors have inhabited for hundreds of years. Funny how little things change in some places, the language spoken is still mainly Spanish, the customs and traditions are still old school, a mix of Catholicism and witchcraft.

After a week I headed back down the mountains to Burque for the trip back home to LA on the train.

I had another botella of vino rojo and a couple of big fat homemade chile verde burritos for the trip. I had my cellphone charged so I could check on the Lakers game against Houston.

As I entered the station I noticed a couple of Immigration SUV’s parked at the entrance, hmmm very odd I thought.

Continue reading →

Hope, can it stop action?

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The other day Felcia Montes a homegirl of mine posted on her FB that we got kids marching to keep their sub par education funded, college students on hunger strikes, yet we all are just tweeting and IMing each other. Where is the anger?

It reminded me of my students who got two jobs to pay for school and how it will cost more next semester; about the ones that dropped out to work and help save their family home; about the bank VP who worked 25 years at the same bank who one morning got a phone call telling her she was fired, her 401k was worthless and that there would be no severance check; about the fathers who killed their families and themselves when their economic stability crumbled; about the empty stores; empty promises and on and on…
Continue reading →