At once a godsend and a bombshell, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretive and propagandized free-trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim nations that, in some estimations, combine to control 40% of global GDP. Since 2008, the TPP has been negotiated behind closed doors— an antithetical notion to the premise of an open democracy if there ever was one....

Another NFL Playoff season means playfully teasing and bashing friends' teams who didn't make it to the playoffs. It means the progression of excitement from the divisional and championship rounds is likely to end with another Lombardi Trophy in New England. All there's left to do is hope that somehow the Steelers keep the Patriots from making it to Super...

The presidential debates air Monday night as Clinton snags a 6 point lead over Trump. Yet, while these two behemoth personalities are potentially the least liked candidates in history, the disconcerting spectacle is the media’s tattered reputation. This isn’t new. Journalism has suffered dwindling approval ratings since the mid-nineties. In a recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and...

"For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium." —Albert Camus California is one of 30 states that practice capital punishment. The inefficient system has cost...

As the year draws near an end, the frequency and intensity of violent acts has increased. At the very least, the chronological proximity of the recent shootings, from Paris to San Bernardino, feels like an apocalyptic denoument . It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and to redact any hope for humanity as a whole. And while I can identify with that...

Political apathy, individualism and the unraveling of the neo-liberal order are symptoms of the same underlying cause: the "equality of conditions." “In order for a nation to wage war on a grand scale,” wrote the French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, “its citizens must be prepared to make numerous and painful sacrifices.” But democracies are motivated by self-interest, so sacrifice hardly...

The 2.3 million that we as a nation incarcerate has become a defining quality of this nation of ours. The US prison system costs taxpayers more than 80 billion dollars a year, a sum that eclipses the gross domestic product of more than 125 countries. Here in California the CDCR budget is ever-increasing, now over 12 billion dollars a year,...

Pink isn’t for boys. Girls don’t play football. Men don’t cry and women can’t fight – or so goes the dictum of convention. But, the ephemeral nature of existence beckons our surrender into the other. Fans, critics, straight, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer celebrate their aristocratic, glam rock Ubermensch David Bowie. On Monday, Jan. 11, the world mourned the loss...

As millions of Californians anticipate the legalization of recreational marijuana, policy makers struggle to strike the ideal regulatory and recreational chord. The question that looms over the world’s sixth largest economy is whether Proposition 64 is the fiscal and ecological deliverance pot enthusiasts have prayed for or an insidious attempt to pigeon hole a flowering niche. Most notably the Emerald...

The 2016 presidential election brought forth a new machine of misinformation often referred to as fake news. Fake news is the latest post-truth instrument that continues to inflict hysteria in the public. In November of 2015, President Donald Trump tweeted a fake infographic that depicted inaccurate statistics of deaths caused in and by the Black community. At the same time...