@GoodJobsLA

Pro-labor organizers were outside a Bain Capital-owned Burlington Coat Factory store in Inglewood today to protest what they say are its non-living-wage jobs and a corporate system that benefits the rich at the expense of more poverty in America.

Bain, as you know, is the venture capital firm founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He has run on its record as a company builder and job creator, but critics say Bain has too often bought manufacturers, borrowed money, and then sunk them into bankruptcy, leaving unemployed workers in its wake.

As far as Burlington Coat Factory goes ...

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Helga Weber / Flickr

Please explain to us how L.A.'s own version of Berkeley, a town once ruled by ultra-lefty Tom Hayden and his band of merry pranksters called Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, has turned into an Amish village where the local government is up your arse with just about everything you do there?

It was a bit of a culture shock to see the city by the sea outlaw smoking on balconies at multi-unit complexes in 2010.

Now the Santa Monica City Council is banning smoking INSIDE your own apartment. Really:

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Rust O'Leum

Home sweet home.

On the fourth day of "Operation Healthy Streets" -- the city's attempt to power-wash Skid Row of its feces, syringes and lord-knows-what-else -- the regulars near 4th and Towne got into a tense standoff with the LAPD, according to Pete White with the L.A. Community Action Network.

White, a homeless advocate, claims that cops came by after the cleaning and told all those lingering on the sidewalk...

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Mitt Romney's fund-raising trip to L.A. today will not be without opposition from the so-called 99 percent.

Yeah, class warfare is coming to Century City as the man who will probably be the Republican nominee for president of the United States returns to Los Angeles to tap some of that big money we have.

The group Good Jobs LA along with labor activists and Occupy protesters will be out in force:

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Eric Tastad

California researchers this week confirmed it: The rich really are different. But maybe not in the ways you think.

Nope. Those exposed to private prep schools, nanny-aided childhoods and the formalities of grand dinner parties seem to lie, cheat, cut people off in traffic, and "endorse unethical behavior in the workplace," according to UC Berkeley.

This is what being a class act is all about:

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jericl cat

Sunset y Vine.

If you think "class warfare" is dead because the Occupy movement no longer really occupies anything, you're probably wrong.

Following the release of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's 2010 tax return, which showed a 13.9 percent rate on his corporate-raider income versus the 30-plus percent most of the rest of us pay, this war taken up by the Occupy nation still has some fight left in it.

In fact, the labor group Good Jobs LA, occupiers, immigrants' rights organizations and others will take the matter to the streets of Hollywood ...

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Twitter

Kim K. don't pay?

We once joked that "Occupy that ass" could be the silly title of a porn spoof but, as they say, this shit is real.

The class-warfare train is about a six-pack away from literally marching with pitchforks to the good side of the tracks, and the latest salvo aims at millionaire tabloid candy Kim Kardashian who, it would seem, hasn't been paying her fair share of taxes.

No, even with allegations of a big, mutlimillion-dollar payday for a Kardashian-Kris Humphries wedding that went nowhere fast, the tax man don't cometh for the rich and self-obsessed like he comes for you and I:

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radaronline.com

Lucias Foster, left -- the most resilient scammer alive.

Today's proceedings in Van Nuys Superior Court could not have gotten any weirder:

Lucius Foster, the 89-year-old father of actress Jodie, was declared "guilty" of concocting a home-building scheme that leeched thousands of dollars off the house-hunting 99 percent. At his sentencing tomorrow, he could get up to 25.5 years in jail, City News Service reports. Prosecutors call him the "Bernie Madoff of Sherman Oaks." (Not to be confused with the Bernie Madoff of Beverly Hills.)

We don't know whether to be mad or amazed.

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Google Maps

The Fannie Mae offices in Pasadena

Update: Gudiel was arrested, along with her mother and seven other protesters, at the Fannie Mae offices yesterday, about an hour into the sit-in. However, her supporters quickly bailed her out. The group is currently gathering for a march downtown, where Gudiel is planning to make "an announcement."

Originally posted October 5 at 3:15 p.m.

While the Occupy L.A. protesters continue to camp out on a front lawn where they're very much welcome, a "parallel effort" over in Pasadena is doing the real unwanted occupying today.

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Council District 11 via Twitter

Councilman Bill Rosendahl bonds with the many characters of Occupy L.A.

Update: "Occupy L.A. Now Allowed to Camp on City Hall Lawn: Why Are Politicians Sucking Up to Protesters?"

Update: Buzzkill. Mayor Villaraigosa doesn't technically have the power to let protesters camp out where Municipal Code says they can't. Details at the bottom.

L.A. City Councilmembers Richard Alarcon and Bill Rosendahl introduced a resolution to support the Occupy L.A. movement today -- a gesture that would essentially attach the City of Los Angeles to protesters' many grievances. The council will take an official vote on the resolution next Tuesday, but judging by their dramatic, heart-wrenched personal responses to occupiers during the meeting's public comment period, no black-sheep councilmember is going to make the dick move of voting 'No' on such a popular cause.

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@OWSLosAngeles via livestream.com

Good news: Megaphone kept in safe, dry place.

Updated after the jump: How the rain is affecting Occupy Colleges, the movement's college-student offshoot (headquartered in L.A.). And click here to watch soaking-wet protesters trudge into City Hall and appeal to councilmembers, live.

A perk of occupying L.A, one would think -- as opposed to occupying, say, Wall Street -- is a perpetually sunny SoCal sky under which to air your grievances.

Then you get a day like today. By 5 a.m. this morning, Occupy L.A. protesters outside City Hall were drenched in an early-October gift from the weather gods.

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Jessica Wilzig

Occupying downtown L.A.

We had a little fun with the two-man "Occupy USC" operation yesterday. Perhaps the rich kids' school identifies more with the 1 percent of billionaires that is the ire of the Occupy Wall Street movement that started in New York a few weeks back and branched out to L.A. this week.

It looks like the public school kids are about to show the Trojan how it's done.

UCLA, Cal State Northridge and Santa Monica College students are planning to participate in an Occupy Colleges campus walkout at ...

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Matthew Wunderlich via the Daily Trojan

Sticking it to the mascot.

Online USC paper Neon Tommy isn't without a tinge of sarcasm today when it blogs of one student and his "solitary vigil" for Occupy USC:

When asked if he was attempting to encourage others to join him in his protest, he responded, "I'm not telling people to come here, but if people, any friends or anyone decides that they think that it's right then anyone's welcome."

And a piggybacking Los Angeles Times blogger gets a little snicker in as well, with the headline "Lone protester launches Occupy USC vigil." But the trusty Daily Trojan reveals the truth: Occupy USC has a second man on board!

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Harold Abramowitz

Occupying L.A. near Disney Hall.

Those rabble-rousers that have been stirring things up downtown L.A. in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement just got some powerful backers.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) said hell yes to Occupy L.A. in a statement released last night. Lest you forget the federation is one of the most powerful forces in L.A. politics.

So what's the kingmaker doing in bed with the people in the street? Here's how the federation explains it:

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yunguyen666

This whole class warfare thing is kind of cool. We haven't seen this much bloodlust among the masses since Apple introduced the iPhone 4.

After President Obama proposed that millionaires and billionaires pay the same tax rate as working-class folks (sparking charges by the right that he's engaging in "class warfare" -- how dare he demand that our gilded titans fork out their fare share?), California's own Sen. Barbara Boxer recently weighed in.

She claimed that, since 1995 (an economic peak and the near-middle of the Clinton years) America's 400 richest taxpayers saw their income grow by 400 percent, and that the tax rates for this same, elite group, actually went down by 40 percent. True?

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