Media

Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Tinker, Tailor, Journalist, Criminal

The Starting Line – Tinker, Tailor, Journalist, Criminal

by Doug Porter 05.21.2013 Columns

Century Old Espionage Law Being Used to Reign in the Press

By Doug Porter

For as long as there’s been a central government in the United States, it’s been attempting to reign in the press.

The 1798 Alien and Sedition Act was an effort by the governing Federalist Party to criminalize criticism of Congress and the President.  President Abraham Lincoln signed numerous executive orders which made it both illegal and punishable by death to hold “correspondence with” or give “intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly”.

Twentieth century presidents resorted to covert surveillance and even blackmail when they couldn’t find a handy law to keep the fourth estate in check.

The latest chapters in this ongoing saga involve search warrants that ultimately covered months of work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 people at the Associated Press and secret court actions naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as criminal co-conspirator in an espionage case.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – University of California Hospital Strike Looks Like a Reality

The Starting Line – University of California Hospital Strike Looks Like a Reality

by Doug Porter 05.20.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

More than 2,000 hospital workers at UC San Diego are planning on staying home from work for a couple of days (May 21 & 22) this week. Vocational nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacy technicians, bus drivers and custodians will go on strike Tuesday following nearly a year of failed negotiations. Their last contract expired in September.

Depending on who’s talking, the 30,000 workers at five University of California health centers are about to walk off the job (or honor the picket lines of those who do strike) are motivated by demands that the UC Medical System stop prioritizing profit over quality patient care OR a refusal by the union to agree to UC’s pension reforms.

The pending strike is NOT just about higher pay, as is being reported in the mass media. Demands by management that workers increase their contribution to pensions funds have been countered by the union’s complaints about soaring executive compensation in the UC system.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Republicans Ask: Can We Find Obama Guilty First and Have the Trial Later?

The Starting Line – Republicans Ask: Can We Find Obama Guilty First and Have the Trial Later?

by Doug Porter 05.17.2013 Columns

The Scandal Trifecta That Isn’t 

By Doug Porter

After five years of waiting and hoping, Republicans of the Tea Party persuasion have finally reached a hysterical critical mass. Here, they’re saying, is the proof of what we’ve been trying to tell the public all along—that the President of the United States is unfit for office.

Yesterday, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann hijacked a press conference with Senator Mitch McConnell that was supposed to be a pity party for some tea partiers who were allegedly targeted by the IRS, by announcing that her constituents were demanding impeachment.

As Brian Beutler at TPM noted, “You could hear the crunch of McConnell’s intestines turning to ice from across the capital.”

The mother of all these ‘scandals’, Benghazi ran into trouble yesterday as Republicans were fingered in the national news media for mischaracterizing leaking two isolated tidbits from classified emails.  The unnamed ‘Congressional GOP sources’ belief they could get away with such a deception was undone by the Obama administration’s decision to release more than 100 pages of previous classified emails.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – A Real Scandal! Activists Around the World to Protest Monsanto May 25th

The Starting Line – A Real Scandal! Activists Around the World to Protest Monsanto May 25th

by Doug Porter 05.15.2013 Activism

Balboa Park March & Rally, Mission Bay Overpass Light Brigade Events Expected to Draw Thousands

By Doug Porter 

While the oldstream media is obsessing on the current crop of Washington’s politi-dramas, an international protest movement is gathering steam. Activists in on six continents, in 36 countries, and in 47 U.S. states — totaling events in over 250 cities — are coordinating demonstrations to occur simultaneously at 11am Pacific time on Saturday May 25th under the general theme “March Against Monsanto”.

The St Louis-based biotech behemoth Monsanto has come under increasing attack from environmentalists, agriculturalists and average consumers in response to the company’s conduct in the realm of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically-engineered foods.

Efforts aimed at forcing the company to engage in transparent business practices, like providing consumer information about products incorporating GMOs, have exposed a corporate culture willing to use raw power and virtually unlimited amounts of cash to protect their interests.

San Diego protest info here and here.  More details later on in story

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Thumbnail image for Desperate “Times” at Anti-Koch Brothers Rally

Desperate “Times” at Anti-Koch Brothers Rally

by Source 05.15.2013 Business

By Danny Feingold/Frying Pan News

The L.A. Times has not exactly been falling all over itself lately to curry favor with the city’s labor movement, with a seemingly endless stream of news stories, columns and editorials portraying unions in a less than sympathetic light. So the last thing one might have expected to see was a rally of workers and labor leaders coming to the defense of L.A.’s paper of record.

But desperate times call for desperate measures – and with the Koch brothers potentially poised to take over Spring Street, the present moment certainly meets the test.

In case you have tuned out the Times and every other source of local news, Charles and David Koch – patron saints of the Tea Party, best friends to climate change deniers and bankrollers of an endless parade of far-right causes – have set their sights on the Tribune Company’s empire. After emerging from a bankruptcy brought on by the rapacious practices of former owner Sam Zell, Tribune’s far-flung newspaper interests are up for grabs. And while Rupert Murdoch and a local consortium headed by Eli Broad are also in the running, public attention has focused on the Kochs.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – UT-San Diego Publisher ‘Papa’ Doug Manchester’s Overly Generous Campaign Contributions

The Starting Line – UT-San Diego Publisher ‘Papa’ Doug Manchester’s Overly Generous Campaign Contributions

by Doug Porter 05.14.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

Some people are more equal than others. And when it comes to fat cats like developer and newspaper publisher Doug Manchester, that ‘more equal’ status would seem to mean above the law.

Today’s revelation about Manchester’s misdeeds comes from the Sunlight Foundation, which has scoured campaign finance records nationwide and identified hard money donors who have donated to federal candidates, political parties and political committees in the last election cycle,

“Papa” Doug Manchester made the list of hard money donors of those who appear to have exceeded the legal limit of $70,800 to parties and committees in the 2012 cycle. His donations of $83,426 to committees and $10,000 to candidates all went to Republicans, of course.

I doubt he’s lost any sleep over breaking this ‘little people’s’ law. That’s why he’s got lawyers.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Special Ed Student Used as “Bait” in School Drug Bust After Parents Refused Permission

The Starting Line – Special Ed Student Used as “Bait” in School Drug Bust After Parents Refused Permission

by Doug Porter 05.09.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

We’ve seen an up tick in stories recently about drug busts in schools in the region.  While no parent wants to see their kid on the wrong side of the law, it turns out that at least one of these ‘stings’ wasn’t quite the law enforcement coup touted to the news media.

The San Diego Sheriff’s Department’s ‘Operation A Team’ spent a year posing as students at four county high schools, scoring drugs at Poway, Mission Hills, and Ramona High Schools. The busts were announced with much fanfare recently, and the UT-San Diego even garnered an undercover interview with one of the agents.

Last fall undercover officers enrolled at Temecula high schools rounded up 22 ruffians in a similar investigation.

Yesterday the Press-Enterprise ran a story regarding a special education student recruited by a Temecula school official over the objections of his parents to pose as ‘bait’ in an on-campus sting. And it turns out this isn’t the only case involving a special education student and drug stings in the Temecula Valley Unified School District.

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Thumbnail image for Desde la Logan: Our Focus on Barrio Logan for-the-Month “Wrap Up”

Desde la Logan: Our Focus on Barrio Logan for-the-Month “Wrap Up”

by Brent E. Beltrán 05.09.2013 Columns

By Brent E. Beltrán

In April many of us here at San Diego Free Press focused our journalistic efforts on my community of Barrio Logan. Twenty three articles were written about this vibrant, working class neighborhood.

They were stories that broke the old stereotype of Barrio Logan being a violent, gang infested place where people are scared to go to. I’m proud that our little website that could helped advance the image that Barrio Logan is a beautiful place to not only live but visit and enjoy.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – The President is Doomed: Darrell Issa’s Benghazasm

The Starting Line – The President is Doomed: Darrell Issa’s Benghazasm

by Doug Porter 05.08.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

Well here it is folks. This is the day we’ve all been waiting for. Congressman Darrell Issa’s going to blow the lid off the foreign policy scandal that’s been festering for over six months now.

Representative Steve King of Iowa, perhaps best known for his comparison of immigrants and dogs, says:

“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is,”

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Dougie Manchester’s Minions Twerking the Night Away

The Starting Line – Dougie Manchester’s Minions Twerking the Night Away

by Doug Porter 05.07.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

‘What the hell?’ you’re probably thinking, how did he come up with that headline?

 I was just reading the UT-San Diego’s editorial page today, something not recommended for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

Leading the inane parade of profoundly partisan digestational by-products today is another in this week’s ObamaScare is coming missives.  We’re being schooled this week on “the broken promises that President Barack Obama used to sell the Affordable Care Act”.

Did you know that the President and his liberal/socialist cabal are going to take away your health insurance right after they grab your guns? It must be true; look what happened in Massachusetts when essentially the same plan was enacted…

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Fletcher Switches Sides, Gloria Doesn’t. And the Party of NO Keeps on Keeping On

The Starting Line – Fletcher Switches Sides, Gloria Doesn’t. And the Party of NO Keeps on Keeping On

by Doug Porter 05.06.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter 

It’s getting harder to tell the players without a scorecard in San Diego politics these days. Take a couple of days off from the news babble and the whole landscape might be changed.

Friday night six hundred local Republicans gathered round at the safely white Rancho-Bernardo Inn for their Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. Congressman Darrell Issa regaled them with stories of Benghazi while Rueben Barrales and Puerto Rico’s recently defeated Gov. Luis Fortuno pitched the crowd on the ‘natural tendencies’ of the Latino population.

The whomp whomp of Issa’s figurative Molotov cocktails aimed at the Obama administration (and Hillary’s potential candidacy in 2016) faded into the background quickly on Saturday as Nathan Fletcher, the formerly ‘reasonable’ Republican-turned-independent announced his switch to the Democratic Party.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – The National NRA Convention: No Sane People Allowed

The Starting Line – The National NRA Convention: No Sane People Allowed

by Doug Porter 05.03.2013 Columns

Going Great Guns, Deep in the Heart of Texas

By Doug Porter

Stories about pushback resulting from votes against the Senate’s most recent efforts at gun legislation are making the rounds this week, including poll results showing voter frustration with elected officials who opposed background checks.

This weekend, however, the media landscape will shift as the National Rifle Association holds a three day gathering in Houston, Texas.  Today’s ‘leadership forum’ will boast conservative heart-throbs like former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum.

INSIDE: Is Obama the Worst Socialist Ever?, Ethiopian Blogger Imprisoned, Where Have All the Teachers Gone?

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Whoa! Stop that Walmart! UFCW President Calls for ‘Extreme Measures’ in Wake of State Audit

The Starting Line – Whoa! Stop that Walmart! UFCW President Calls for ‘Extreme Measures’ in Wake of State Audit

by Doug Porter 05.01.2013 Books & Poetry

By Doug Porter

So much news, so little time… Here is today’s roundup.

A fifty eight page report from State Auditor Elaine Howle examining the City of San Diego’s practices regarding permitting for construction projects has raised serious ethical and legal questions about a Walmart location under construction in Sherman Heights.

Community groups opposed to the destruction of the Historic Farmer’s Market building in Sherman Heights were joined by organized labor in protests and lawsuits aimed at halting Walmart. But their complaints fell of deaf ears as city officials claimed all appropriate reviews had been conducted and touted the mega-retailers plans to create jobs in business-friendly San Diego.

Now it’s come out that the City didn’t even issue permits until after construction was underway, even after the lawsuits were filed.

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Thumbnail image for BLOG UGLY – The Memetoads Take on Filner

BLOG UGLY – The Memetoads Take on Filner

by Source 04.30.2013 Media

Poisoning the Conversation at CBS8

By Bob Dorn

I see this image of the chickenhawk/wingnut/GOP-intern type of internet player in my head; he’s the sort that girls and women avoid by changing aisles in the supermarket if they see him before he sees them.

He (rarely a she, for reasons I’ll speak of later) hunches over the keyboard so the Cheetos shards don’t fall on the rug. He wears a Padres cap to keep his hair out of his eyes. His little belly is soft, but big enough to make his t-shirt catch some of the salt and crumbs from the chips. He’s smart enough to be snarky but in print he appears at times to be dumb. That’s because some of the chip debris now and then drops onto the keyboard and brings about the odd misspelling that sabotages the comment he’s working hard at producing.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Evading Taxes as a ‘Human Right’ (?!)

The Starting Line – Evading Taxes as a ‘Human Right’ (?!)

by Doug Porter 04.29.2013 Business

By Doug Porter

Say what? Will these people ever stop with the twisting of words?

Does it say that in the Bible? Is it in the UN Charter? Did the founders include it in the Constitution on orders from Jesus?

Cut me a break, already.

Bloomberg news has a story up detailing how tough things are becoming for gazillionaires who want to hide their money in overseas accounts.  It seems as though many of the world’s safe havens are becoming more transparent in the face of international pressure from countries tired of seeing cashed stashed in places where they can’t tax it. So now, somehow, evading taxes is becoming a human right.

INSIDE: International Workers Memorial Day, Brown Gets Down on Prison Court Orders, Basketball Player Comes Out, Guns and Votes

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Thumbnail image for Victor Ochoa – Mural Maestro of Chicano Park

Victor Ochoa – Mural Maestro of Chicano Park

by Frank Gormlie 04.26.2013 Activism

By Frank Gormlie

As we were sitting in Victor Ochoa’s studio garage in Golden Hill the other day, I realized that even though we’d been friends since the late 1970′s, I didn’t know a whole lot about his earlier life before those heady days of the Seventies decade. I was wondering whether he remembered that I had helped arrange for him to be hired to paint murals at the Che Cafe up at UCSD – way back in in 1980 and 81. He did but he had a few different details.

“This is my favorite garage,” Victor said, as we settled in for our talk. Surrounding us on three sides inside the garage were painting materials and large plastic bins holding more painting stuff stacked up on shelves, brushes, cans of paint piled on each other, cans of spray paint in a shallow closest. There was a gas-powered airbrush machine that looked like a cross between a lawn mower and a Mars Rover.

In one corner, he had set up a type of shrine to his past, his family, his culture, with various memorabilia of his life. On another wall were posters of Pancho Villa and of more recent Chicano heroes, like Corky Gonzalez, and local activist Marco Anguiano. And along part of one of the walls were the books, the notebooks, the 3-ring binders, paper records, the manuscripts, the slides.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – California Education Issues Come Front and Center

The Starting Line – California Education Issues Come Front and Center

by Doug Porter 04.25.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

There’s a lull between big electoral periods right now (except for Los Angeles) and, fortunately this means there’s space available for bytes or ink with articles discussing education without the overlay of various campaigns.

The Big Issue in education since the “A Nation at Risk” study released during the Reagan administration has been reform. The changing needs of the nation’s workplaces, spurred by the revolution in technology, ran smack dab into the rising credo that argued for a smaller role for the public sector.

The word ‘reform’ has become tainted, laden with expectations or fears that private enterprise would alter the educational landscape. Three decades of interventions (and, yes, the ‘reformers’ have had many opportunities to try out their ideas) have left us only incrementally better off than we were when this entire hubbub started.

Along the way, programs not central to the theology of ‘teach to the test’ have been downgraded or discarded. Playing clarinet will not enhance your abilities to fill in bubbles on test sheets.  And earlier attempts at ‘scientifically’ updating instructional methods were conveniently forgotten. (Anybody remember the ‘New Math’?)

So it’s interesting that so many angles on the quest for a better education are in the news this week.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – GOP’s Lincoln Club Smear Campaign Suggests The “R” in Republican Stands for Racism

The Starting Line – GOP’s Lincoln Club Smear Campaign Suggests The “R” in Republican Stands for Racism

by Doug Porter 04.24.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

Voters for the upcoming City Council runoff elections got a familiar sounding piece of mail this week. They’re getting campaign literature crafted by and credited to the Lincoln Club of San Diego, making many of the same claims made in the primary by the shadowy PAC calling itself San Diego County Voters for Progress and Reform.

Never mind that these claims have been debunked. Never mind that the group behind the original mailer tried (and failed) to fool voters into thinking the propaganda was somehow from the City of San Diego by putting an official looking logo at the top.

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Thumbnail image for Parts of Barrio Logan Have No Sidewalks – Does Anyone Care?

Parts of Barrio Logan Have No Sidewalks – Does Anyone Care?

by John P. Anderson 04.24.2013 Editor's Picks

Voice of San Diego doesn’t want to make judgment calls on that issue

By John Anderson

Voice of San Diego (VOSD) has been operating a Tumblr site featuring the damaged state of sidewalks across San Diego coined The Stumblr.  San Diegans are encouraged to send in photos from their neighborhood and the images are added to the site.  It’s a great idea to bring a public issue to light and has even received some love nationally including a nod from The Atlantic.

In preparation for our SDFP focus on Barrio Logan, fellow writer Brent Beltran noted the poor (read: non-existent) status of sidewalks in parts of the neighborhood, specifically along Harbor Drive.  Brent has a young son and mentioned he, and other Barrio residents, would like to be able to walk up to Seaport Village, the bayfront, Convention Center, and other destinations in the south-western part of Downtown.  No surprise – that area of Downtown is popular with locals and visitors alike and is a great place for a stroll, picnic, or throwing a frisbee.

I was already familiar with the area, but am usually on my bicycle and not paying particular attention to sidewalks.  I went out to specifically check out the area and take some photos.  There are large distances with nary a bit of cement sidewalk.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Politicians Pandering to Prejudice in Boston Marathon Bombing Case

The Starting Line – Politicians Pandering to Prejudice in Boston Marathon Bombing Case

by Doug Porter 04.22.2013 Columns

By Doug Porter

Now that one Boston Marathon bombing suspect is dead and another has been captured the debate on the right seems to have swung around to arguing over whether or not a trial is even needed before execution takes place.

After all, this is “terrorism” by baby-killing “Muslims”. Be afraid, they say. Be very afraid. And the only rational “fight or flight” response in the conservative mindset is more violence.

Some public officials have called for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be tried as a military combatant rather than in civilian courts. Others have urged that torture be used, although waterboarding might not be as effective as they dream it might be, given that Tsarnaev has a hole in his throat from a failed suicide attempt.

INSIDE: Was Boston bombing Terrorism?, Koch Bid to Buy LA Times Update, Issa Takes Border Crossing Hostage, The “Other” News in Texas Last Week

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