The US is #1 in putting people in jail. We’re #1!

Locked Up

The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world. We’re a country that in some parts uses the test scores of third graders to figure out how many future prison beds we should be building.

So I guess that means if you’re not scoring high on test, you’re not going to get a job, since you live in America you have two choices: homelessness or crime.

Pull yourself up by your boot straps or we’ll lock you up.

In America that seems perfectly reasonable.

America is a perfectly reasonably barbaric country. Continue reading

Cute? A story of MY fire escape.

Baby Rat w/feathers

Baby Rat w/feathers

I went by my girlfriend Noe’s place in Boyle Heights. It used to be my place, but I decided to move downtown.

My girlfriend loves everything and everybody. When I went to her place she was like, “Browne I have something to show you.”

So she takes me to the fire escape and shows me a baby rat. With feathers. I think some people call them pigeons.

“Isn’t it cute?” Noe.

I just sort of stare, she continues, “The mama was there and then there was an egg, so I couldn’t kick it out. It’s nature. It’s beautiful.”

An egg is not a bird, apparently she hasn’t been reading her pro-choice literature.

That nest and egg would have been on the sidewalk on the pavement if I still lived there. A sort of lesson to all of the other pigeons to stay off MY fire escape, but the universe works in mysterious ways and Noe lives there not Browne, so a lucky break for the pigeons of Boyle Heights.

Browne Molyneux

Coachella. Layaway. YES YOU CAN!

layaway

I’m listening to cheesy 80s music streaming via yahoo and I hear this commercial for Coachella and not that I’m a big Coachella person or get in a car and go to the desert to listen to crappy music kind of person, even in my 20s that was not me. I have always been a read a book, drink a bottle of vodka, go to sleep, wake up at 9pm and go to a dive bar and argue with you kind of person.

But what caught my ear was apparently this year’s Coachella is offering a layaway option.

Layaway to go to sit in the desert where there are all kinds of rules like:

No chairs
No food or beverages (you have to buy the overpriced food and alcohol there, though I didn’t see anything about alcohol and I’m really not seeing the point of an alcohol free festival unless it is a Mormon Music Festival.)
No stuffed animals (what the hell is that “no” for…)
No drugs or drug paraphernalia (to me there is no point in going to the desert without taking drug, if god didn’t want us to use drugs in the desert then why did he make meth grow there?)
No parking overnight. No overnight parking…??!!! Nearest bus stop is three miles away, nearest train station three miles away…so I guess you spend 100 bucks on a hotel to sleep at for five hours. I wonder do the hotels also have layaway? Continue reading

La Crisis: A list of all the companies that have laid-off this year (the last six weeks.)

 

A Margaret Bourke-White Photo

A Margaret Bourke-White Photo

Here is a volunteer information list of all of the companies who are or who have given people notice that they will no longer have a job.

After the company name is the layoff date and the number of affected workers

Just so you can get a feel of how bad it is this is just for the first two months of 2009 (and February just started.) There are 19 pages of companies.

In 2006 there were only 24 pages for the entire year.
In 2008 44 pages.
At this rate we’ll have 120 pages of layoffs by the end of 2009. At about 40 companies per page the amount of job losses would be staggering.

H/T to LoveandHateLA

AUTOBYTEL IRVINE 5 1/2/09
AT&T, WORLD WIDE CUSTOMER
SERVICE
SAN RAMON 37 2/27/09
AT&T, NATIONAL CUSTOMER
SUPPORT
SAN RAMON 16 2/6/09
AT&T , ADVANCE SOLUTIONS INC MONTEREY PARK 81 3/24/09
ANESIVA, INC SOUTH SAN
FRANCISCO
62 1/9/09
AT&T COMPANY PLEASANTON 16 1/30/09
AT&T COMPANY SAN RAMON 55 1/23/09
AT&T COMPANY PLEASANTON 27 2/6/09
ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED SAN JOSE 191 2/3/09
ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED SAN FRANCISCO 75 2/3/09
ALZA CORPORATION MOUNTAIN VIEW 29 3/20/09
ADVANCED MEDICAL OPTICS MILPITAS 61 1/17/09
ACTIVISION BLIZZARD LOS ANGELES 4 1/31/09
A FIRSTGROUP AMERICA CO DBAFIRST
TRANSIT
LOS ANGELES 177 2/28/09

Continue reading

Thoughts on the Kingdom Day Parade and Obama…

I’m not going to front. I have never been to the Kingdom Day Parade. The times I thought about going I got this response from my bourgie black girfriends, “That’s real ghetto Browne, let’s just do brunch.”

Girl on 92.3 the Beat float.

Girl on 92.3 the Beat float.

This year I decided I was going, but then I decided I wasn’t because I had gotten drunk the night before.

Continue reading

Murder Your Car!! Art Project. Tonight at 7:30pm. San Pedro

My quest for a car to destroy has come to an end. The results will be performed in a symbolic ritual involving a sledge hammer an eighteen wheeler and small children.

Anti-consumerism is the theme the tools to be discussed will be public transportation and a tossing away of all things that you think you need to be happy.

What is your addiction(s)?

Continue reading

La Crisis. Is your rental in foreclosure? Don’t know, well here is a resource.

I was reading the Uncle Fatlips blog and on his page I found a great resource, RentalForeclosure.com.

On it you can look up where you are renting and see if you will soon be homeless.

I found out my building is in foreclosure or has received a notice of foreclosure.

Continue reading

I think some people are confused!!! This isn’t the dream.

“Pastor Rick Warren to Speak at the King Memorial
The service is scheduled for Jan. 19 at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is included in the official program of the 10-day King Center’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, which begins on Jan. 10.
The Reverend Mark Whitlock, senior pastor at Christ Our Redeemer AME Church in Irvine, said Obama’s invitation opened the door for positive communication between the conservative movement and the civil rights movement
.”
By ERIKA I. RITCHIE
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

From Keith Knights K Chronicles

From Keith Knight's K Chronicles

I always get knowledge reading the Field Negro.  Rick Warren  is speaking at Ebenezer Baptist Church!!  This truly floored me. How did this happen. Well I know how this happened. Years of backdoor dealing by the UnGodly megachurches have finally come to this. This is what the Civil Right’s Movement has been working for? Acceptance by a bunch of racist, homophobic, closed minded jerks?
Continue reading

Newport Coast: The tragic underside of the census. A piece of satire.

So sad!!! The lack of diversity is killing them inside.
So sad!!! The lack of diversity is killing them inside.

Newport coast, it turns out, has become even less black and brown. Newport Coast was so undiverse that in 2001 it attached itself to Newport Beach as to not look so oddly white in a quickly changing multicultural world.

You can’t even find out how white it is, because it’s not only white, but rich and rich people don’t want you in their business.

A lot of us Angelenos take Orange County for granted. Continue reading

Doing La Crisis 1990s style.

5.99 WOW!!!

5.99 WOW!!!

I was unlucky enough to be a child of the 90s. The 90s sucked. I always wished I could have been a child of the 80s, but no I was stuck in the decade that started sarcasm, plaid shirts as fashion statements or rather just not washing in general as a fashion statement. It was filled with lots of music that I hated, but had to listen to because there was nothing else available. Lots of whiny songs about killing yourselves and the gov’t and how it sucked and blowing up shit, but it wasn’t fun like punk in the 1970s it was all 1990s and crap. Oh yeah and techno started then too, freakin’ great disco without the cocaine or fun lyrics.

  Continue reading

The Homicide Report Blog. Part 2. The Browne solution.

Dear La Opinion and the LA Sentinel,

Ignacio E. Lozano founder of La Opinion.
Founder of La Opinion Ignacio E. Lozano

In these hard economic times we all need ways to make money, though I read in Editor and Publisher that newspapers that were neighborhood or ethnic based were doing surprisingly well. I hope both of you are in the doing well group. As you know the LA Times got lots of mileage out of the deaths of readers who looked pretty similar to your readership though their Homicide Report Blog.

I personally didn’t care for it that much owing to their lacking of coverage areas of Latino and African-American life. I felt that it was a sort of one sided type coverage that just perpetrated stereotypes. Many people of color did not agree with me. They feel that living on your knees is better than being dead. Even though we all agreed that the coverage was going to do absolutely nothing in regards to stopping crime. Continue reading

One less check out stand at Walmart.

A temporary Walmart employee was trampled too death in New York by customers eager to get into more of a hole for the new year. I guess Walmart literally is evil.

I just got back from the Really Really Free Market (easily accessed by the Red Line/Purple Line and Metro Lines 720, 20, 200, 51/26) and was greeted by pleasant people exchanging clothes, bicycles parts, cds, book and various accessories for your humble abode. It’s going on until 5pm and the Really Really Free Market promises to not kill you, injure you or empty your bank account.

____________________________________________________

Sidenote while Walmart in the big city is a big deal among progressives the places where Walmart truly does the most damage is in rural America. They go in undercut everyone and everyone else closes shop and Walmart literally is the only game in town and people end up completely dependent on this horrible company that doesn’t pay a livable wage.

Browne Molyneux