Ever since Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath” came out in early October, he’s been on a non-stop promotional tour. He’s appeared on the BBC and the Daily Show, he’s done Twitter group chats and Ted Talk Q&As, and has had negative and positive reviews published in dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian. But despite all this PR attention, as far as I can tell, no one’s really described in plain English what the book is about. And that’s just weird…

So let me be the first: The book is about pitying the rich. Its central thesis: being poor, crippled and/or discriminated against helps you succeed in life. (more…)

Last week, I wrote about the nation’s first successful “parent trigger” privatization of a public school, in a isolated town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. In that piece, I mentioned how parents and teachers had become disillusioned by the biased reporting of parent trigger in the media.

“No matter what article I read, it seemed to me that the common perspective that was shared was pro-Parent Revolution,” said La Nita M. Dominique, the local Adelanto president of the state teachers union, referring to the outside pro-charter front group that descended on their community and used harassment, deception and thinly veiled threats of deportation to push parents into signing a petition that handed over their kids’ school to a private contractor. (more…)

It’s just past 5 a.m. and I’m sitting in my suite at The Plaza hotel, high up above the grimy streets of downtown Las Vegas. On the horizon, beyond the gold brick Trump Tower, beyond the needle of the Stratosphere, beyond the shimmering lights of the city, I can make out the hazy outline of the Spring Mountain range that separates the Vegas basin from the open Mojave Desert.

In a few hours, I am going to cross those mountains, drop down into California and head in the direction of my next NSFWCORP assignment: I’m moving to Victorville, California, a gnarly desert bubble suburb that inflated faster and popped harder than almost any other place in the West. (more…)

“Let me say publicly what I said privately earlier today: no person in any country should be detained for exercising universal freedoms of expression, assembly and conscience” —Hillary Clinton in Burma on December 1, 2011

SANTA MONICA, CA: After a bit of good-natured wrangling and legal indemnities on both sides, Paul Carr and I finally agreed to terms last week. Barely had the ink time to dry on my employment contract with NSFWCORP, when I learned that the City of Los Angeles had filed criminal charges against me for reporting on a political protest that happened a year ago. My arraignment is set for December 6, only 369 days after I was bailed out of jail on a $2,000 bond. What’s the rush, right? (more…)

On election day, I woke up before dawn, took a dip in the ocean, made coffee and worked until about noon, when I decided to get the thing over and go vote. I walked five blocks to my polling station, located in the lobby of the Santa Monica Shores apartment towers sitting right on the beach.

It was a warm clear Southern California day. Outside the polling station, long-stemmed palm trees swayed softly in the light ocean breeze.

I could see through the glass doors that there was a long line stretching diagonally across the lobby. I swung the doors open and didn’t take more than two steps inside when I was hit by a gut-wrenching smell–a musky, nauseating mix of rancid beer, rotten fruit and anchovies. The lobby was filled to the brim with pensioners—and one of them had a yeast infection that had gone rogue. (more…)

Be libertarian one time? Is that the same thing as "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas"?

Author’s note: I wrote this brief dispatch about my run-in with libertarian pro-marijuana activist/former judge James P. Gray back in March of 2011. But the piece disappeared into the black void of my computer hard-drive, and I forgot all about it—until now. I’m glad the text turned up, because Judge Gray’s sleazy efforts to bring lefties and progressives into the Libertarian Party fold under the innocuous banner of pot legalization is much more relevant today than it was 2011. After all, Judge Gray is now the running mate of Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson is using the weed wedge issue to siphon off votes from Obama.  —YL

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