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Archives for July 2012

The writers group

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt /  Excuse Me, I’m Writing

We sat in my living room on a Saturday morning, our laptops and manuscripts strewn across the well-worn upholstery with its patina of cat hair — three writers, women, mothers, wives. I’m not sure what the order should be there. It probably depends on our moods, being girls and all. (I hate that stuff. I should probably stop bringing it up. It just encourages the misogynists.)

Physically, we were in similar stages of age-induced decay. We struggled against aching joints, weight gain in awkward places, frequent urination, and the pain and itching of invasive idiocy — the nation’s intoxicant of choice. We took advantage of the small but friendly audience we provided one another to rail in harmony at recent examples.

First was the sympathetic mourner who had asked if the lost loved one had been “saved.” Would the answer determine the depth of the mourner’s sympathy, we wondered, the volume of her prayers, the amount of tuna casserole she’d drop off? “What is wrong with people?” we asked, and it was not rhetorical, but we did not have an answer.
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The Starting Line – ‘Foreclosure Storm’ Set to Hit San Diego Social Media Today

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July 10, 2012- At long last….The Property Value Protection Ordinance (PVPO) will come before San Diego’s Land Use and Housing Committee tomorrow (July 11th) at City Hall, 202 C Street (12th floor) starting at 2pm. The act is aimed at reducing the negative impacts of foreclosures on surrounding neighborhoods by requiring banks to register with the city when they take action to foreclose a home and fining them $1000 a day to recover costs to the city and taxpayers when they fail to maintain their foreclosed properties.

Supporters of the measure, including the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), are cooking up a “social media storm” today between 5:30 and 6:30pm on Twitter (hashtag: #StopBankBlight) and Facebook (RSVPhere). The idea is to send positive messages to Land Use and Housing committee members Lori Zapf, Sherri Lightner, Todd Gloria and David Alvarez. For more information on the costs to neighborhoods and taxpayers caused by blighted foreclosures, visit: StopBankBlight.org.   [Read more…]

I Hate the 4th of July

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What is it about shooting off firecrackers that reduces big men to small boys? What is the thrill of the loud bang? What is the thrill of the possibility of doing real damage to property and living things? Why is it necessary to bring these illegal noise makers into neighborhoods that already famous for their firework shows year after year after year?

I have an eleven year old Golden Retriever. He is well trained; well mannered and scared to death of loud noises. When a fire cracker is shot off he tries to hide. Everywhere. He tries to get under the covers; he tries to get under the carpet; he tries to get under clothes in the closet. He will try to get into the shower; He runs through the house like the firecracker is tied onto his tail. Buddy is not a small dog. He weighs close to 115 pounds. Yet he is tormented by unthinking people that are into instant gratification every year at this time. …   [Read more…]

Local Coalition Staged March Against TPP Negotiations on Saturday

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Story & Photos by Nadin Abbott

July 7, 2012 (San Diego)– The mood at the Civic Center was defiant. The marchers were getting ready to take to the streets once again. They were protesting the Trans Pacific Trade Negotiations (TPP) happening at the Bayfront Hilton Hotel.

Among them was Kathy Mack-Burton, a resident of La Mesa, who told me, that she was “interested in stopping this secret negotiation that is not in the interest of the American people.” This treaty will come to a surrender of our sovereignty. Given the Finance Chapter that was leaked to Public Citizen has found arbitration will indeed move away from regular court systems, this fear is not unfounded.

She was not alone. According to Kim-Holmgrin of the Green Party, “the TPP pushes advantages away from the common person and expands corporate power. It even weakens our sovereignty.” He added that the Greens are also “really concerned about environmental and global warming,” and that the tribunals will be a violation of International Environmental treaties. He added that labor is at risk as well, with the weakening of labor standards.   [Read more…]

Obama 2012: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

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After a flurry of anxiety that Mitt Romney was surging it appears that the Obama campaign has righted the ship, leading handily in a recent Bloomberg poll and by narrower margins in other polls. More importantly, Obama appears to be doing quite well in most of the battleground states as his campaign hits Romney hard as the “outsourcer in chief.” Certainly, it doesn’t hurt Team Obama to be running against a guy who at times seems to be trying to mimic the cartoon capitalist in the board game Monopoly.

The bottom line is that Romney is a laughably terrible candidate, so distanced from the average Joe that he wouldn’t know what to do if he had to sit next to him during a game of “sport.” His presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country, a full-court press effort to further reward the plutocrats at the expense of everyone else while dishing out a few reactionary social policy moves to appease the rubes in the Tea Party and the Christian Right. But he will be the recipient of untold millions of dollars of help from the Koch brothers et al and stranger things have happened than Americans electing an unthinkably horrible President.   [Read more…]

#Yosoy132 Leads Protests Aimed at Vote Buying and Fraud in Mexico

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Mexicans turned out in twenty cities throughout that country on Saturday to protest against the electoral victory of president elect Pena Nieto. They accuse Nieto’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), of buying votes; some carried banners saying “Not another fraud”. He was declared the winner last week after a recount of nearly half the votes and denies the allegation, as he has with repeated scandals that threatened his career. It turns out he’s quite the cad, with extra baby mommas and recreational hookups galore–Ashleymadison.com, the dating website for married people, proudly put Peña Nieto on a billboard in Mexico City, saying, “Unfaithful to his family. Faithful and committed to his country.”

Numerous videos have emerged of Mexicans claiming they received gift cards in exchange for voting for the PRI; some even claim they are coming forward because they were shortchanged. Aljazeera cites Eduardo Huchim, formerly a senior official with the Electoral Institute of Mexico City, and currently a monitor with Civic Alliance, a UN-funded watchdog, as telling the Reforma newspaper that the July 1 election was “perhaps the largest operation of vote buying and coercion in the history of the country”. Voters inMexico City, an opposition stronghold, have been posting pictures via Twitter of alleged ballot tampering.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – It’s D-Day for Balboa Park as the San Diego City Council Votes on Parking Garage

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Today’s the Day…. The San Diego City Council will vote this afternoon at 2pm on the Irwin Jacobs sponsored proposal to building a by-pass roadway coming off the Cabrillo Bridge and a fee based parking garage.  Should the anticipated revenues from the parking structure fall short of expectations, city taxpayers will be expected to pony up for day-to-day operating costs and payments for bonds used to finance the deal. As part of its on-going campaign to support the use of taxpayer dollars for big and shiny structures that pump up the egos of our City’s mega-rich, the local daily paper has endorsed the plan, with editorial page editor William Osborne tweeting “A big opportunity that won’t come again. Don’t let it slip by, San Diego.”

There are plenty of people opposed to the Balboa Park plan, despite its promise to remove traffic congestion from Plaza de Panama.  Congressman/Mayoral candidate Bob Filner has promised to speak out against the plan at today’s hearings. A protest outside City Hall is scheduled for noon and preservationist groups are urging people to attend the hearing and speak out against the proposal.  Additionally there is a petition against the plan circulating that you can sign here. Additional coverage in the San Diego Free Press can be found here.   [Read more…]

The Balboa Park Controversy: Cats, birds, and bridges

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

I don’t know how the City Council hearing on the Balboa Park/Jacobs bypass bridge, scheduled for Monday afternoon, will end up.

I don’t know how many people will show up to support the Jacobs plan and how many will be there to condemn it.

I don’t know what the final vote will be if, indeed, there is a final vote.

But this I do know. We’re getting exactly what we should expect to get when private business is brought in to solve a public problem.

Irwin Jacobs has been at the receiving end of criticism, potshots, and denunciation since he stepped in to take care of traffic and parking problems at theLaurel Streetentrance toBalboaPark. But it’s misplaced fury.

It reminds me of the first time the cat deposited a dead bird on my kitchen floor. The kids yelled at poor pussy, berated her, told her she was bad.   [Read more…]

Ted Nugent’s Latest Idiotic Comment: ‘Perhaps We’d Be Better Off if the South Won the Civil War’

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AlterNet | By Angela Lee

Romney endorser/American rock singer Ted Nugent already has a long history of outlandish political statements, but now appears to have taken his BS to a whole new level.  In a Washington Times op-ed blasting Obamacare, Nugent suggested today that America would have been a better country had the South won the Civil War:

 Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers’ concept of limited government is dead.

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Pinta Island (Galapagos) Tortoise Now Extinct with Death of ‘Lonesome George’

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National Geographic News / Christine Dell’Amore

If there’s a giant tortoise heaven, Lonesome George is lonesome no more.

The century-old giant tortoise was found dead in his corral Sunday at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island (map), part of Galápagos National Park.

Perhaps best known for his apparent aversion to female tortoises—hence his nickname—George was the last known individual of his subspecies, Geochelone abingdoni, also called the Pinta Island tortoise or Abingdon Island tortoise.   [Read more…]

NAFTA on Steroids

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San Diego In World Spotlight Due to Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations

By Lori Wallach / The Nation (Article appeared in the July 16-23, 2012 edition)

While the Occupy movement has forced a public discussion of extreme corporate influence on every aspect of our lives, behind closed doors corporate America is implementing a stealth strategy to formalize its rule in a truly horrifying manner. The mechanism is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy, so you are in good company if you have never heard of it. But the thirteenth round of negotiations between the United States and eight Pacific Rim nations will be held in San Diego in early July.

The TPP has been cleverly misbranded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate boosters. As a result, since George W. Bush initiated negotiations in 2008, it has cruised along under the radar. The Obama administration initially paused the talks, ostensibly to develop a new approach compatible with candidate Obama’s pledges to replace the old NAFTA-based trade model. But by late 2009, talks restarted just where Bush had left off.   [Read more…]

Six Bogus Economic Arguments Used to Trash Local Food

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By Jill Richardson

Economists all know this joke, which “comes from the stereotype that many economic models require unrealistic or absurd assumptions in order to obtain results.” And yet, how many heed its warning?A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, “Let’s smash the can open with a rock.” The chemist says, “Let’s build a fire and heat the can first.” The economist says, “Let’s assume that we have a can-opener…”

A new book, The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000 Mile Diet by Pierre Desroches and Hiroku Shimizu, uses arguments from neoliberal economics to explain why those who advocate eating local food are wrong. Often, their arguments require assumptions as silly as the one in the joke. For example, in making the case that the world moved from a diet of local food to a global food system for a good reason (and therefore we should not return to eating local), they assume that modern locavores will face the same technological limitations as our ancestors, who were also locavores. But aside from the numerous strawman arguments found throughout the book, there are several points where economics are properly applied to food and agriculture and – the authors charge – prove that local food is a bad idea.

But perhaps the opposite is true instead; that the models used in neoliberal economics do not accurately apply here. Here are six economic principles that do not fit when it comes to food and agriculture:
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