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On Love and Meritocracy – Part 1

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We Don’t Need Another Gadget

What the world needs now is love… so wrote Hal David in 1965 with music by Burt Bacharach. It was true then and even truer now. We don’t need another gadget, we don’t need another smartphone, we don’t need another IPO which only increases the economic divide between the 1% and the 99%.

Economic progress has utterly failed us. It won’t prevent the world going up in flames and/or being flooded out due to global warming. It hasn’t prevented war and violence crowding out every other story on the evening news and getting worse by the day.   [Read more…]

General Dynamics, Once a San Diego Mainstay, Now Dearly Departed

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The following article appeared in the 1969 print edition of the San Diego Free Press. It has been transcribed from the microfilm at the San Diego Public Library.

As Frank Pace says in the Foreward to Dynamic America: A History of the General Dynamics Corporation by John Niven. “In 1960, ours is the most powerful of nations, intimately involved in all the earth’s daily business, the major bulwark against communism and so most threatened. From these times to the present, during our growth, from an insular agrarian society to the world’s political and industrial leader, the position of the United States in world politics has determined, almost exclusively, the flow of product research and development from General Dynamics.”   [Read more…]

The San Diego Convadium – Part 3

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If the taxpayers of San Diego swallow this hogwash and vote for the Chargers’ plan on the November ballot, they are voting for a pig in a poke. They are authorizing the City to go into debt for $1.15 billion without knowing the final terms and the small print in the contract with Wall Street for the bonds. They aren’t privy to the negotiations between Wall Street and the City. Despite the fact that the proposal states that there will be a firewall between the City’s General Fund and the Fund that pays the interest and principal on the bonds, Wall Street might have a different idea and then the City would have to go along with it or be sued by the Chargers if the voters approve of this proposal.

Finally, what about the homeless? In light of the City’s trying to remove them from the proposed area of the Chargers stadium in order that the All-Star game at Petco Park not have them littering up the streets, what would happen to them if a new Stadium was built right in the area where they all congregate? What mitigation is in this proposal for them? They are totally ignored although their impact on another stadium downtown would be crucial. What’s in this proposal for them? Nothing. They never even crossed the Chargers’ minds.   [Read more…]

Chargers Convadium Plan: Lipstick on a Pig

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Part 2 in a series

I previously reported on the 110 Pages of Gobbledygook that represents the Chargers’ proposal to build a combination football stadium and convention center expansion in downtown. It looks like it’s not going to happen because Mayor Kevin Faulconer and a lot of conservative businessmen are against it.

Perhaps the Chargers assumed that Faulconer would immediately climb on the bandwagon and start cheering for the so-called convadium. Faulconer, however, to his credit has been cautious, questioning the $1.15 billion in new debt the City would have to take on as its part in this endeavor. The Chargers casually gloss over this in their gobbledygook proposal. And they say nothing about the $50 million still owed on Qualcomm Stadium as if that’s not even something worth mentioning.   [Read more…]

GDP is a Poor Measure of Progress

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Gross Domestic Product does not measure the well-being of human beings.

War, natural disasters, incarcerations all add to positive GDP growth. Profits from casinos, drug sales, cigarette sales, junk food all add to economic growth. Stock buybacks contribute to GDP. GDP is based on distorted values. If I pay down my debt, that does not add to GDP. If I borrow more money and go into debt and go out and buy stuff, that increases GDP.

Wall Street insistence on short-term profits, as opposed to long-term growth, does add to GDP. GDP is f’d up, yet for every politician and government functionary it’s the sine qua non of economic indicators. Every swindler that parts someone with a buck contributes to GDP growth.   [Read more…]

The Gig Economy: OK If the Profits Went to the Giggers

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There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of working a job here and a job there according to the worker’s convenience and other activities. The problem is that the profits go to some centralized corporation rather than being spread out among all the giggers in proportion to their participation in the system.

If Uber or Lyft were a co-op, the profits would go to all the worker/owners instead of a handful of investors. Then the gig economy would offer not only a technique for working at one’s convenience and fitting into one’s schedule whether that schedule might be educational or child care or surfing or whatever.

In other words making up one’s own work schedule so it fits into your life is not a bad thing as long as the enterprise is co-operatively owned and provides not only convenience but worker protections.   [Read more…]

Democracy in Action at City Council Rules Committee

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On Wednesday, June 15, 2016, there was a well attended meeting of the Rules Committee of the San Diego City Council. Many diverse topics were covered, some at exhaustive lengths. The meeting lasted over three hours with a dozen or more speakers pleading their causes. Most were asking the Rules Committee to take their issues to the full City Council and have them vote to put them on the November ballot.

There was a discussion of the nature of the voting system. The way it is right now someone running for office who gets 50% of the vote plus one in the June primary is considered elected. Any less than that and there is a run-off on the November ballot between the top two vote getters. Jeff Marston of the Independent Voter Project maintained that, since more voters vote in the November election than in the primary, all final votes should be in that election in which more voters would have a say. A new voter Marissa Gomez, 19, favored that approach.   [Read more…]

Of Dentistry in Tijuana and Cross Border Friendship

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I have been writing about my friend Dr. Luis Garcia for almost 10 years. That’s how long he has been doing my dental work in Tijuana at the Baja Oral Center. Over the course of those years, Dr. Garcia has become much more than my dentist; he has become my friend. Way back in 2007 I had broken my front tooth off by biting into an English muffin that was hard as a rock.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: May 2016 – Canada Burns, India’s Extreme Heat Record, US Tornadoes

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Too Hot to Go Outside

By John Lawrence

A city in western India set an all-time heat record of 123.8 degrees F in May. Authorities issued a severe heat wave alert which means that people can expect temperatures of 117 degrees F or more. In addition, drought is affecting much of the country. The heat will probably not let up until the monsoon rains come sometime in June.

The prolonged heat wave has already killed hundreds and destroyed crops in more than 13 states. Hundreds of small farmers have reportedly killed themselves, and tens of thousands have been forced to abandon their lands and live in squalor in urban slums in order to eke out a living.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump’s Republican Nomination Win Could Be a Fluke

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Trump’s Win Could Be an Artifact of the Voting System

Not many people give much thought to the dynamics of the voting system. We just accept that you vote for one guy or the other and everybody gets one vote and the person who gets the most votes wins. This system, called plurality voting or first-past-the-post, seems obvious, but there are a myriad of other kinds of voting systems.

In the case of the Republican primary the single vote per voter with so many candidates almost guaranteed some sort of anomaly. A total of 17 candidates started off in the primary on March 23, 2015. As each state was ticked off, Trump garnered most of the votes; however, a majority of the voters voted for one of the other candidates.

The result was that Trump was reported as having “won” the state, especially if it was a winner-take-all state. As Trump won, his momentum built up and before too long, his winning the primary seemed inevitable. Even after all but Cruz and Kasich had dropped out, Cruz and Kasich were splitting the anti-Trump vote.   [Read more…]

Jazz Flautist Lori Bell Wows Them at the La Jolla Community Center

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Friday, May 27, Lori Bell had one of her long standing gigs at the La Jolla Community Center with Mike Garson, piano, and Ron Satterfield, guitar and vocals. Amiable and buoyant, Lori established good rapport with the packed audience. She’s the kind of person you wish you had for a classmate when you were going to school. The music was excellent with stellar performances from Ron Satterfield, a major talent, and Mike Garson, former pianist with David Bowie. That being said this review will be packed with anecdotes like the time Lori gave piano lessons to my granddaughter, Monique. She was so good with her and a wonderful teacher.   [Read more…]

The US Made a Deal With the Devil in Saudi Arabia

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Did Saudi Arabia Aid the 9/11 Hijackers?

All indications are that our biggest buddy in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, was directly involved with the 9/11 hijackers, and what’s more, exports its extreme form of Islam, Wahhabism, to al Qaeda, ISIS and other groups determined to wipe out the West and Western values. The Senate recently passed legislation that allows families of victims of the 9/11 tragedy to sue the Saudi government for any role it played in the terrorist plot.

The Saudis have gone so far as to say that, if the legislation is enacted, they would dump $750 billion worth of US Treasury bonds on the world market. That would blow up not only our relationship with the Saudis, but the world financial system which is predicated on the US dollar being the world’s reserve currency and its being necessary for the purchase of oil.   [Read more…]

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