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Archives for 2013

An Analysis of The City of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan

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By John Lawrence

The City of San Diego has developed an elaborate Climate Action Plan (CAP), the goal of which is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The County of San Diego has one too as does the City of Chula Vista as does the Port of San Diego as does SANDAG as does the University of California at San Diego as does the San Diego County Water Authority. In fact, as mandated by the state, almost every political jurisdiction in the state has developed a CAP. The CAPs in general are long on bureaucracy and time frames and short on specific mandates and orders for compliance.   [Read more…]

Santa Claus Comes to Friars Road

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“First of all, Mr. Claus, I object to your use of the term “good,” as being vague and ambiguous. “

By Matt Valenti

When traffic in the right lane of Route 163 South slows to a crawl for two miles between the 805 merge and Friars Road, it must be Christmastime in San Diego.

I found myself suffering through this traffic last weekend for my daughters’ obligatory annual photo op with Santa Claus at Fashion Valley Mall.

I expected the traffic, of course, and expected it would take me at least an hour of circling through the parking lot looking for a spot, after dropping my wife and girls off outside of Nordstrom’s.   [Read more…]

Hot Spots: Radioactive San Francisco

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This story is important in and of itself, but also because it once again unearths the region’s role in the birth of the atomic age, and also highlights the radioactive legacy that continues to haunt us.

By Michael Steinberg /blackrainpress 

On November 13 the San Francisco Chronicle ran a lead story written by the SF-based Center For Investigative Reporting. The story was about the radioactive contamination of Treasure Island, a former US Navy base in the middle of the Bay.

The Chron article reported that 575 metal discs consisting of radioactive radium-226 had been found in the ground at Treasure Island as of 2011. The report did not mention that the radioactive life of radium-226 is millennia, over 16,000 years.

The Navy has claimed that all its radwaste on the island had already been hauled away. In August 2012 RT News, a Russian English language news service, reported “Navy contractors excavated and removed 16,000 yards of contaminated dirt, some with levels of radiation up to 400 times above the EPA limit for human exposure.   [Read more…]

GOP’s Congressional Shutdown To Cause Delayed Tax Refunds

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By Doug Porter

It’s pretty easy to dislike the Internal Revenue Service; a fact of life exploited by Congress on a regular basis. Since 2010 the agency’s budget has been slashed by more than $1 billion. Staffing has been reduced by 8000 employees, including 5000 frontline personnel.

Those staffing cuts, combined with October’s 16 day shutdown of the government by Tea Party ideologues hoping the repeal Obamacare, are at the center of an announcement yesterday that the opening date for tax filing season will start on Jan. 31, instead of the initially-planned Jan. 21.

A little noticed press release by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) quotes union President Colleen M. Kelley saying, “As the holiday credit card bills come due early in the year, millions of Americans count on a quick refund to help cover those costs. This year, that money may not be there when they need it.”   [Read more…]

Kevin Faulconer Has a Common Sense Problem

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By Lucas O’Connor/Two Cathedrals

Editor’s Note:  This piece was originally published at Two Cathedrals in September.  But with the mayoral runoff election beginning to heat up, it’s worth bringing back now.

Kevin Faulconer has a problem. He’s the Republican Party’s standard-bearer in the race for mayor, but the base doesn’t really know him yet. So in the early campaign he needs to be focused on proving his far-right bona fides to the base that Krvaric and DeMaio built, and to do that he has to go out and say some pretty outlandish things. It happened over the weekend when Faulconer tried to explain his common sense take on economics.

He also opposes raising California’s minimum wage from $8 an hour to $9 next July and to $10 in January 2016.

“I support more jobs for working families, not fewer jobs, which is what this bill will lead to,” Faulconer said Friday of the minimum wage bill. “Common sense tells us companies will hire fewer people, which could stall economic growth.”

  [Read more…]

Governor’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan Point Man Resigns

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By Dan Bacher/fishsniffer.com

Jerry Meral, Deputy Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency and Jerry Brown’s point man for the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels, announced his retirement from “state service,” effective December 31. 

The resignation was announced the day after over 400 people, including fishermen, Tribal leaders, farmers, Southern California water ratepayers, environmentalists and elected officials, rallied at the State Capitol in Sacramento against the proposed water export tunnels. 

In spite of a rapidly accumulating pile of evidence against the project, including the $54.1 billion estimated total cost and the scathing criticism of the plan’s “science” by federal scientists, Meral forecasted that the plan’s implementation is “virtually certain.”   [Read more…]

It’s Off to the Races! City Council Sets February 11th Mayoral Election Date, Barrio Logan Referendum Vote June 3rd -Plus Lots of 2014 Electioneering in Other Contests

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By Doug Porter

“Bring it on!”

That was the reaction of supporters of the Barrio Logan Community plan yesterday after the City Council voted to place a referendum sponsored by maritime industry interests on the June 3rd primary ballot.  Industry backers were hoping that a successful petition drive for the initiative would force the council to rescind the plan rather than face the costs and conflicts inherent in a contentious campaign.

The UT-San Diego wasted no time showing where its sympathies lie, running with a front page story using the industry’s un-provable contention that jobs would be lost in the lede of a supposed news article.  While a City of San Diego study projects more than 4,000 jobs would be created under the plan, opponents can do no better than quoting individuals who “think” jobs might be lost.

Framing the conflict as one of “jobs” versus “neighborhood planning” is exactly the strategy pursued thus far by maritime industry advocates, who’ve managed to twist both ends of that equation (46,000 jobs will be lost! Yuppie condos are coming!) into an narrative so unpalatable that gathering signatures for an initiative was a cakewalk.   [Read more…]

Barrio Logan Community Plan Process Was Truly Democratic

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By Georgette Gomez

Editor’s Note: The following presentation was given by Georgette Gomez, Associate Director of the Environmental Health Coalition, at the San Diego City Council meeting on December 17. Ms. Gomez has been at the forefront of the struggle to get the Barrio Logan Community Plan approved. At this meeting there were only two options available for the council: rescind the Barrio Logan Plan or move forward with the Maritime Industry backed referendum. Residents and advocates chose to go to the ballot box. For more information on this issue go here.

Good afternoon, Georgette Gomez with Environmental Health Coalition.

Here we are again, defending the action that the majority of the Council took, not once but twice and now for the third time. You will hear today from residents, allies and our union workers, urging you to stand behind your adoption of the new plan for Barrio Logan and take it to the June ballot.

The Plan that the Council adopted is a great compromise plan that finally addresses the environmental injustice that Barrio Logan has endured for decades.   [Read more…]

Folks with Interesting Faces

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By Ernie McCray

A little while back I spent some time with friends of mine in Tucson who, like me, went to Dunbar, the “colored” school.

My girlfriend, Maria, said to me, as we were re-living the trip, “You all have such interesting faces.” And it’s true. We do. For us it would be hard not to. We’ve had the kinds of lives that go into making interesting faces.

For one thing we had to swim on top of each other when we sought relief from the frying heat of summer in the “colored” pool, a water hole no bigger than some I’ve seen in backyards in middle class neighborhoods. On the deck a sign said “No Running” and that wasn’t just a mere suggestion as it was hard to slowly tip toe on that ice-like surface without your feet spinning rapidly beneath you like the roadrunner’s. A cracked head will make your face look extremely interesting, let me tell you.   [Read more…]

Trucking Companies to California: Your Puny Laws Don’t Apply to Us

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By Jon Zerolnick/Capital & Main

Several leading port trucking companies have taken a bold new position in the ongoing battle over whether or not they are misclassifying drivers as independent contractors. In recent filings with the U.S. District Court, they have attempted to position themselves as beyond the reach of California’s employee protection laws. In effect, they are saying that whether or not they are misclassifying drivers there is nothing the State of California can do about it.

Some background: Of the approximately 12,000 port truck drivers in Southern California – about 110,000 nationwide – the overwhelming majority are improperly classified as “independent contractors.” This has dramatic repercussions, as these low-income, mostly immigrant drivers are thereby denied basic workplace rights and protections: no minimum wage or overtime or OSHA protections, no disability or workers comp or unemployment insurance, no legal right to organize a union. Instead, drivers are saddled with payments for the trucks they drive, leaving them to sometimes make pennies per hour for a 60+ hour work week.   [Read more…]

Chargers and Aztecs: Please Stop With the Nonsense!

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No, the Chargers are NOT going to the playoffs, and no, the Aztecs should NOT replace Rocky Long.

By Andy Cohen

Alright, so let’s have some fun. A little diversion from the world of San Diego politics for a moment.

Bolts Playoff Bound? Not a Chance!

First, let’s dispel any notion that the San Diego Chargers have any hope whatsoever at making the playoffs. Via Twitter yesterday, the Chargers issued a poll, asking followers whether, with two games remaining, will the team make the playoffs? They then joyfully tweeted out the results of the poll (a tweet that has oddly since been deleted….but thankfully someone else was smart enough to retweet the Chargers’ tweet) showing that 69% of respondents enthusiastically replied “Yes, the Chargers will make the playoffs!”

(I don’t really know how enthusiastic they were….I totally made that part up).   [Read more…]

The Narrative Shifts in the Battle for Barrio Logan

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Alvarez comes on strong, shipyard labor calls out maritime lies and affordable housing advocates join the fray

By Brent E. Beltrán

On an unseasonably warm winter’s day in the heavily polluted community of Barrio Logan a shift in Maritime Industry’s false jobs narrative occurred.

At the home of Barrio Logan resident Hector Villegas (the same home that Councilman David Alvarez grew up in and caught asthma) the Environmental Health Coalition, under the leadership of Georgette Gomez, organized a press conference featuring Alvarez, Villegas, union leader Bobby Godiñez and affordable housing advocate Susan Riggs, executive director of the San Diego Housing Federation.

Before the assembled media hordes David Alvarez called out, in no uncertain terms, Maritime Industry lies and deception [see full text of his presentation below]. In his strongest opposition to the referendum yet he emphatically stated, “out-of-state billionaires launched and funded a referendum process to scare voters and overturn the democratically created and approved plan. It is truly regrettable that their paid petition gatherers have spread outright lies to fool voters into signing the referendum petition, threatening the City Council’s effort to create jobs and a healthy community for children.”

He went on to say, “The most egregious lie told by signature gatherers is also the easiest to disprove: it is categorically false that all maritime business must leave under the plan, all existing businesses can stay and expand up to 20 percent.”   [Read more…]

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