By Doug Porter
The National Rifle Association is continually expanding its activities on many different fronts, and the newest of these campaigns, HuntForTruth.Org, has listed the San Diego Zoo as one of the non-governmental organizations it plans to “expose.”
Joining the Zoo as targets of this group are the Peregrine Fund, the Ventana Wildlife Society, the California Condor Recovery Team, the Raptor Education Group, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. All have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to ban hunters from using lead ammunition because of its effects on eagles, condors, swans and other birds.
The NRA announced this campaign via a press release recently, touting it as a means “to educate and assist lawmakers, regulators, hunters, recreational shooters and the general public about the efforts to ban lead ammunition nationwide”.
Self-proclaimed environmental organizations are pushing to prohibit the use of traditional lead ammunition in hunting and recreational shooting. These radical groups are now going so far as to claim that eating wild game taken with lead ammunition is a serious health risk to hunters and their families.
Legislation under consideration here in California (AB 711) would prohibit the use of all lead ammunition for hunting, and the NRA’s new program seems to have been created in response to its likely passage.
The National Park Service says that “lead poisoning is the biggest threat facing the successful recovery of the California condor.” The NRA says that anti-lead legislation is just one step along the slippery slope that will lead to a ban on all hunting and, eventually, all guns.
UPDATE: The NRA has pulled the plug on this project.
The City’s in the Bag for Jack in the Box
North Park residents protested at 30th & Upas yesterday, prompted by a resumption of construction at a Jack in the Box location that by all accounts simply lied to the City of San Diego during the permitting process.
At issue are two things: a pledge by the Jack in the Box that the permits were needed merely for a renovation, when in fact the old building was demolished and the inclusion of a drive thru window, which should have been eliminated as a non-conforming use.
KUSI’s Michael Turko was there, and his coverage attempted to portray the situation as yet further evidence of #Filnerfailure at City Hall. In fact, the situation is much more complicated than that, and even if the Dark Lord was mayor, the results would not have been different. (Except that DeMaio probably would have issued a press release touting the number of jobs created.)
While Mayor Filner did ask the City Attorney to issue a stop work order, Jan Goldsmith’s office reviewed the situation and decreed that any such work order would leave the city open to claims for damages from Jack in the Box, since the construction had been allowed to proceed to the point where it could not be undone.
Meanwhile Councilman Todd Gloria, who was not in attendance at the demonstration, let it be known yesterday that he was requesting:
The Development Service Department undertake a policy development process that will result in changes Land Development Code Section 12.7.1 related to General Review Procedures for Previously Conforming Premises and Uses.
In other words, “tough luck North Park suckers”.
Seems to me the only routes open are to sue Jack in the Box, something Jan Goldsmith would never, ever do, and boycotting that location. It’s a real shame. The folks protesting this travesty have bent over backwards to appear reasonable—saying as little negative as possible about the corporation—and trying to work the system from inside.
Meanwhile over at the UT-San Diego, which didn’t cover the protests, the Jack in the Box story is being touted as yet another example of Mayor Filner’s intrusions into the all important ‘business of San Diego’. No mention gets made of the nearby residents’ problems or the illegal construction.
Money quote:
“We’ve heard chatter within our industry that investors are getting a little leery of coming to San Diego with all of the uncertainty that is in play right now,” said Matt Adams, vice president of the Building Industry Association of San Diego County.
Election News?
Didn’t we just have one of those things? Yup, and we’re on track for another in 2014.
Already looking to be a big deal will be the race for District Attorney, pitting incumbent Bonnie Dumanis against lawyer Robert Brewer.
Dumanis has played nice with the local gentry for the most part, but there have been losers in the sweetheart deals she’s protected and the investigations she’s decided not to pursue. And they’ve coalesced behind Brewer, whose main thrust seems to be that he’ll keep the office out of politics.
Matt Potter over at the SD Reader has filed a report on all the cash flowing in this race. So far the score is: Dumanis $213,296 vs Brewer $281,243.
About Those NSA Spying Rules
Reuters news service has published a report concerning the DEA’s super secret Special Operations Division (SOD), based in Chantilly, Va.
It seems as though this unit is passing around information from overseas intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records, including data collected the National Security Agency to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal (non terrorism) investigations of Americans.
And then they teach them how to cover their tracks:
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses….
… One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a US citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.
Joke of the Day: ‘Too Regulated to Succeed’
This is the best ever Op-Ed written by Nita Ghei and reprinted from the Washington Times by Manchester’s minions at the UT-San Diego.
Here’s my favorite part:
Whatever caused the 2008 crisis, it wasn’t lack of regulation.
Maybe it was magic sprinkles from Ayn Rand up in…where ever she went…
Senators John McCain and Elizabeth Warren have introduced new legislation requiring banks to segregate federally insured deposits from all other diversified financial activities. That way, if the banks screw up, taxpayers aren’t on the hook.
But noooo….
A much simpler solution would be either to eliminate federal insurance entirely or reduce it sharply so that it is insuring only small depositors against losses, not well-off investors with the resources and access to expert advice…
Right. I guess the ‘discipline of the market’ will protect us. And those ‘trickle down dollars’ from the lightly taxed rich should be arriving any day now along with the free ponies.
On This Day: 1945 – A B-29 bomber, known as the Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb on an inhabited area. The bomb named “Little Boy” was dropped over the center of Hiroshima, Japan. An estimated 140,000 people were killed. 1991 – at a CERN facility in the Swiss Alps 36-year-old physicist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website. Info.cern.ch was the address of the world’s first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer. 2001 – While vacationing in Crawford, Texas, George W. Bush received at President’s Daily Intelligence Brief (PDB) containing a document entitled, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US”.
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Doug Porter
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OMG, Jack in the violates the building permit and the City is afraid to enforce the law? Todd Gloria you are a credit to your small animal torturing soul (oh wait – you sold that when?) Just spend all your time on kpBS trying to decide whether the sky is falling or “Don’t worry, be happy”. You slimy politician.
Would you expect different from anyone who chooses this line of work?
Especially in San Diego?
Better than that.
I arrived right at the zoo’s opening the other day and was able to attempt a meditation with a great ape for about 20 minutes before any other human arrived. I tried to ponder the feelings of this great creature being confined to virtual solitude in such a small space for the rest of its eternity. It was not happy thoughts.
In these ways the zoo can produce sadness and guilt, but the creatures are beautiful, visiting is somewhat educational, and it does inspire some thought about why they are there and what is and has been happening to the world. There is some goodness.
NRA game plan is obvious. They think they are going to show that it is more humane to kill an animal with a gun than it is to capture it live and put it on display. That’s really, really dishonest. I hope humanity is smart enough not to fall for it.
Imagine those “radical organizations” trying to tell us that lead is “a serious health risk”. Thank you NRA for injecting TRUTH into our wretched lives.
The permit process for this JiTB project was under Jerry Sanders’ DSD, not Bob Filner. Does anyone have a date when the final permit was signed off on? I suspect it was while Kelly Broughton (Sanders’ appointment) was still director of DSD.
I appreciated the comment of Bruce Fett about the mixed messages of zoos and the excruciating notion of thinking closely about what it means to be an incarcerated great ape. On a scale of goodness, the zoo is a better institution than the NRA, for sure, but I cannot stand to go there anymore, as it seems too commercial and too cruel.
Of course Papa Doug and his right-wing rag wouldn’t mention anything involving illegal construction. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved in it. Illegal construction is his MO. Look at the violations he’s racked up with the Grand Del Mar and the auto museum he built at the UT building.
Amen.