OC Board of Supervisors Give Yet Another Honor to Rich, White Republican Dude

When a person returns to a place after being gone for 15 years, it’s natural for that person to assume that a great deal will have changed in that period. I certainly did after returning to Orange County in the summer of 2018, but to my amazement I still find myself recognizing far too many …

Professor Kathleen Treseder Settles With UCI Over Alleged Sexual Harassment

Even Dr. Kathleen Treseder’s good days are bad. This might seem to be a non-sequitur, but it’s her life right now. You might think her life was great, considering that she just agreed to a fairly large settlement with the University of California over their handling of myriad complaints of sexual harassment–from Treseder and others–against …

The OC Women’s March Organizers Reflect on the Past Two Years’ Events—and How This Saturday’s Will Be the Best Yet

On a cold, early Saturday morning in January 2017, an estimated 20,000 people gathered by the French Street plaza in Downtown Santa Ana for the first OC Women’s March. The local contingent of the nationwide Women’s March that was sparked by the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States united an unprecedented …

How Does Your City Rate at Altering Lifestyles to Combat Climate Change?

Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach residents are among the most prepared Californians to make significant lifestyle changes to help combat climate change, while people in Orange are among the least interested in doing so, according to a new survey. Sandbar Solar, a Santa Cruz-based solar installation company, polled 3,500 people nationwide to gauge if they would …

Kaiser Mental Health Workers Launch Statewide Strike

Workers at Kaiser Permanente recently staged what is the largest mental health strike in history over the course of five days. Thousands of workers, at nearly 100 facilities across the state in protest of the healthcare giant’s continued refusal to provide what the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) considers to be adequate care. This …

Irvine Inflight Entertainment Business Faces $1 Billion Federal Fraud Case

An Irvine company that supplies extremely lucrative inflight entertainment systems to airlines around the globe is fighting a federal lawsuit in Southern California that accuses it of engaging in racketeering, unjust enrichment and fraud exceeding $1 billion. According to officials at Wamar International LLC, they were hired in 2012 by Thales Avionics, Inc. to do …

From Black Panther to Black & White: The Best of What We Saw In 2018

Last year, when Aimee Murillo and Matt Coker revealed their five favorite films seen during 2017, they had no idea they were starting a year-ender tradition. And yet, here is their second-annual look back, with the same caveat that these are productions that were seen on any day and created during any year, so long …

Fifty Years After Timothy Leary’s Historic Laguna Beach Drug Bust, California Reconsiders Pyschedelics

This evening marks the 50th anniversary of Timothy Leary’s famous marijuana arrest in Laguna Beach. Leary, who died in Beverly Hills in 1996, is today immortalized as a torchbearer for psychedelic drugs. Looking back a half century after his Southern California bust, he casts a duller shadow, however. Instead of boosting one of the era’s …

Controversy from Orange County Precinct’s 120 Percent Voter Turnout is “Misinformed”

Conservative and self-proclaimed “patriot” websites are spreading reports that in one Orange County voter precinct, more ballots were counted than there were registered voters, resulting in a whopping 120.6 percent turnout in the Nov. 6 midterm election. You know, the election that resulted in all those red Republican-held congressional districts flipping so all of Orange …