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20th Annual San Diego Jewish Book Fair November 8-16

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By Karen Kenyon

The San Diego Center for Jewish Culture will present the 20th Annual San Diego Jewish Book Fair from Monday, November 8th, to Sunday, November 16th at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Cente, and at Temple Solel.

Besides authors talks, there will be panel discussions, local authors sitting at tables with their books, and a Family Day on November 16th from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. for kids 8 years and up.The headlining author this year will be Ari Shavit, author of My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. Shavit is hailed as the most influential journalist writing today about Israel and the Middle East.   [Read more…]

Defining a “Good Democrat”

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By Shannon Lienhart

This is a letter that I wrote in response to an email sent to me by a member of the Democratic Central Committee.  

In an earlier email exchange with members of DCC, I had referred to a “good Democrat”.  

I was then asked to define a what a good Democrat is.

Hi Richard –

I am so glad that you asked….   [Read more…]

Two Poems: Sex & Death in the Desert; The Hourglass

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By George Howell

Sex & Death in the Desert

The big female snout beetle plays dead
When I prod her with a stick,
Apoininae-like
As the field guide says,
Her smaller mate laying dead
In the debris collected in the plastic water bottle,
His legs and snout curled
In the rigid repose of death.

Life is fragile here
In the high desert …   [Read more…]

Cross Border Culture at The Front Art Gallery

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By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass

When you live in the South Bay, the city of Tijuana appears on the horizon just about wherever you go. If you don’t cross the border daily, then most of your neighbors and friends do. South Bay residents know that Tijuana offers shopping, art, business opportunities, time with family and, of course, good food and wine.

So when a wonderful on-line newspaper like Voice of San Diego descends upon our border neighborhood of San Ysidro, bringing with them an audience of “northerners” to tell them about how they should visit Tijuana, we South Bay locals look at each other rather perplexed. Don’t they already know that?

On October 22nd Voice of San Diego’s culture report writer, Alex Zaragoza, hosted a “Meeting of the Minds” at The Front Art Gallery: a building along historic San Ysidro Boulevard designed by famed architect Louis Gill in 1929. The purpose of the meeting was to highlight the many delights of Tijuana. Karl Strauss offered beer, perhaps to make the experience less frightening to the audience members who presumably trekked all the way from places like North Park to visit the depths of the border region.   [Read more…]

Who Runs San Diego? Co-opting an Icon in Hillcrest

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It’s a Gay Thing

By Linda Perine / Democratic Woman’s Club

As you may have noticed, October has not been a happy month for the San Diego LGBT community.

Earlier this month the Harvey Milk American Diner in Hillcrest closed abruptly, bouncing checks to workers and simply failing to pay others, including the Harvey Milk Foundation.

At an October 8 press conference an LA Times reporter began asking questions about allegations of sexual harassment against Republican Carl de Maio.  He is an openly gay candidate for the 52nd congressional district.

Both stories have grown into full-fledged embarrassments for the LGBT community.  Both stories reflect badly on the judgment and motivations of some of our community’s better known members.  Both stories are, and may become more, damaging to our community.  But most importantly, and possibly least apparently, both stories are part of a much larger and more corrosive identity crisis in the LGBT community.   [Read more…]

A Tour of Tijuana’s Maquiladoras

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By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass 

Each month, Enrique Davalos, a professor at City College, gives a tour along the U.S.-Mexico border of the Tijuana Maquiladoras. A social activist tour, Enrique as well as former employees of the maquilas brings awareness to American consumers about the poor working conditions and environmental exploitation taking place right along our frontera. 

What are maquiladoras?

Enrique’s tour passes the gates of several maquiladoras (or maquilas): foreign owned factories that have come to Mexico in order to benefit from cheap labor and lax environmental laws.

The tour begins at the San Ysidro Trolley in the U.S. where our group is taken through the busiest land port of entry in the world. On the Mexico side, a shuttle bus waits to take us along the border.   [Read more…]

In Defense of Uncertainty in the Development Approval Process

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By Murtaza H. Baxamusa, Ph.D., AICP / San Diego UrbDeZine

Nobody likes uncertainty.

Certainly not the developers of a billion dollar mixed-use project that encounters community opposition due to traffic impacts. Nor the public transportation agency that runs into fairy shrimp on the future route of a trolley line. Nor the city planners for multifamily housing around a transit station that face a revolt from their single-family neighbors.

Hence, there is a concerted effort by planners and policymakers locally and statewide, to reduce uncertainty in development project approvals. It takes the form of reducing discretion of public bodies, streamlining permit approvals through the use of specific plans and categorical exemptions, reforming the California Environmental Quality Act, and limiting opportunities for legal challenges to projects.   [Read more…]

Massive Dumping of Fracking Wastewater into Aquifers Shows Big Oil’s Power in California

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By Dan Bacher

As the oil industry spent record amounts on lobbying in Sacramento and made record profits, documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity reveal that almost 3 billion gallons of oil industry wastewater were illegally dumped into Central California aquifers that supply drinking water and irrigation water for farms.

The Center said the wastewater entered the aquifers through at least nine injection disposal wells used by the oil industry to dispose of waste contaminated with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) fluids and other pollutants.

The documents also reveal that Central Valley Regional Water Quality Board testing found high levels of arsenic, thallium and nitrates, contaminants sometimes found in oil industry wastewater, in water-supply wells near these waste-disposal operations.   [Read more…]

Who Runs San Diego? Some Taxpayers Are More Equal Than Others at the County Taxpayers Association

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The Nerd, the Negotiator, the Pretender and its Protégé

By Linda Perine / Democratic Woman’s Club

This week’s article is a little more complex than some of our previous looks at Who Runs San Diego?.  When David (Cory Briggs) slays Goliath (Hoteliers Financing District) – that’s a good story!  When some (Sea World and certain electeds) tell us it’s OK to imprison and mistreat our sweet Shamu,  LOTS of folk get mad.  When our CD2/lifeguard good guy (Ed Harris) takes on tenants (Belmont Park) that seem a little moochy,  you can pump your fist.

My job this week, yes, I am the aforementioned “Nerd”, is to go behind the curtain of these and other deals involving our beaches, bays, parks, taxing authority and other civic assets to take a look at an organization that pretends to work for all taxpayers, but in reality represents its well- connected, conservative  donors.

By now it should be crystal clear that the regular folk of San Diego need someone tough and savvy to look out for us:  To stand up to the bigwigs, to call their bluff;  to fight for the greater good and get us the better part of the bargain.  We need a champion to make sure the taxpayer, not Papa Doug or the downtown elite, the affluent and the connected, get to skim the cream off the top.  After all – those bays and parks and waterfronts and beaches and taxing authority belong to us.   [Read more…]

Who Runs San Diego? The City’s Dubious Partnership with Sea World

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Well, this is a fine kettle of fish…

By Linda Perine / Democratic Woman’s Club

San Diego taxpayers find ourselves as mainly unwitting, possibly unwilling and almost certainly under-compensated partners with a corporation in a Sea World of hurt.  From Wall Street to Austin City Limits, Washington to Sacramento, Hollywood to Lindberg Field, Sea World is under attack for its treatment of Orcas (that’s Shamu to you and me)

In July, 2013 the documentary Blackfish about the 2010 death of a Sea World trainer finally caught the public’s attention after decades of challenges to Cetacean captivity.  The 2009 Academy Award winning documentary The Cove also raised questions about the possibility that Sea World obtained dolphins from the horrific Taiji dolphin drive.

Sea World vehemently denied the assertions of both documentaries.  However, Sea World stock prices have been cut in half since the Blackfish premier.  Sea World is now the target of shareholder class action lawsuits involving at least 6 law firms specializing in securities fraud for initially denying that Blackfish negatively affected attendance and for misrepresentation about its treatment of Orcas in its prospectus when it went public in 2013.   [Read more…]

Who Runs San Diego? Deals Like the One Proposed for Belmont Park Amount to a War on Taxpayers

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Guest column by Councilmember Ed Harris

Recently, the City Council was asked to grant an extension to the lease at Belmont Park in Mission Beach. Pacifica, a local developer and current leaseholder of the park’s commercial buildings, wanted the Council to approve a deal that would extend its current lease to 55 years.  Pacifica has held the lease for two years.

After reviewing the proposed lease, I asked the Independent Budget Analyst (IBA) to determine whether it was consistent with best practices of other cities, and whether a longer-term lease would be in the City’s long-term economic interests.

The IBA concluded that the 50 year term of the proposed extension is longer than the average municipal ground lease, and that its rental rates seemed lower than the percentage-rent average of comparable municipal leases in other California cities.   [Read more…]

Why Do Lawmakers Like Darrell Issa Want to Enable Illegal Ponzi Schemes?

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By Liana Molina

Recently a group of lawmakers, including Representative Darrell Isa, launched an attack against a Justice Department program known as Operation Choke Point. They portray it as a crazed government effort to make banks withhold services from a variety of law-abiding businesses. Its true purpose, some of these critics assert, is to shut down the payday lending industry.

The reality is a little more nuanced. Operation Choke Point grew out of an inter-agency consumer protection group and their concerns about a new generation of fraudsters who profit by using their access to people’s bank accounts to make illegal withdrawals – again and again and again. The real targets of this program are a subset of banks and payment companies who enable this fraud when, in the Department’s words, they “knowingly facilitate consumer scams, or that willfully look the other way in processing fraudulent transactions.”

Mass-market fraud, directed at businesses as well as individuals, causes tens of billions of dollars in losses every year. A large share of that ill-gotten money comes out of the pockets of senior citizens and financially desperate people.   [Read more…]

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